Believe it or not, there is a story here, but without a preamble to supply it, when players first step into the world of Hard to be a God, you are confronted with a quest-driven role-playing game that makes little sense – initially.

But for those who do wonder about such things, and who are interested, Hard to be a God – from Akella and Burut – is the tale of two worlds. Here is the official plot line to the game:

“The planets of Earth and Tsurinak were once very similar, and for centuries their people shared both history and friendship. After a terrible war between the planets, the two societies split apart and lived a secluded existence. While Earth prospered and grew, Tsurinak became strangely stagnated. This stagnation is shrouded in mystery, with Tsurinak barely evolving and remaining rooted in a medieval society. During this time Earth continued to evolve, mastering incredible technologies. Intrigued by the situation of their former patriots the Empire decided to send in a secret agent.”

You, obviously, are the agent. Of course, you won’t discover that point of it until you work your way into the story and get past the initial moments of hack ‘n slash (which is contrived and a bit broken – but more on the combat in a moment).  Hard to be a God thrusts you right into the think of the story, giving you a character that starts out like any other RPG character – low level, without much in the way of skills and with the barest of armor and weapons. You beat on level one bandits and kill some wolves and work your way up the food chain. There are, of course, side quests to collect and execute along the way, which gives the game more flavor than merely running through the world on a slaughter rampage.

But while Hard to be a God has many elements standard to RPGs, it does step away from the stock fare in some nice ways. For example, you can choose different ways to overcome the game’s various challenges, other than merely use brute force. You can use diplomacy (if the chat options allow for it) to create alliances, and you can even work enemies into favorable locations where friendly units will assist.

Death, though, in this single-player title is unforgiving. Die and it’s game over. You must save whenever you can and then use those save points to respawn should death hit you. And the chances that it will get you a couple of times is rather good because of the stamina meter. The user interface is a little different than most RPGs. The movement is keyboard driven and you must be facing your target when you attack. Ranged attacks have limits, so you can’t just stand on one side of the screen and bomb away at enemies on the other side. The tab key acts as the switch from peaceful to combat, either drawing your weapon or putting it away. You cannot loot bodies of the fallen if you are prepared for combat. The combat is also dependent on the mouse buttons with the middle button launching a different combat attack when using a melee weapon.

But combat is dependent on the stamina meter, a blue bar under your health meter. Each attack draws that stamina down, and when it is empty you do not move, you do not defend, you just stand there – defenseless and taking enemy blows. The meter does recharge rapidly, but you can take a good amount of damage in the few seconds that it takes to go from empty to anything resembling an attack posture.

Graphically the game is not that strong. It looks like a title that might have been published 3-5 years ago, but the maps are diverse and detailed. The sound is minimal.

The user interface is not as intuitive as it could have been, so expect a small learning curve here, or simply take the time to remap the keys.

At first blush, Hard to be a God is an ordinary RPG, but the game starts to unfold as you delve into the depths of the story. There are twists and turns and you will be wondering just what is going on half the time and the other half will involve thinking you have it only to be unceremoniously returned to the land of the befuddled. It is the story that drives this game.

Hard to be a God could have benefited from a better graphics engine, and more sound work. The ideas are there but the game stumbles in the presentation.

Gameplay: 7.5
The stamina influence on the combat scheme is a pain, and the interface has a mild and small learning curve (most of it struggling with the camera directions), but everything is kept simple enough to allow easy access to the game.

Graphics: 7.5
Serviceable but not spectacular. The point-of-view sometimes gets a bit muddled (targeting can be a pain because you can’t click on the target), but the world is lush and nicely done with diverse environments.

Sound: 6.5
What is there is Ok.

Difficulty: Medium

Concept: 8.4
The story is solid, with lots of intrigue and snippets of information that will certainly drive players forward toward the end of the game. On the surface, though, this looks like a stock RPG.

Overall: 7.5
The game is a bit of a mixed bag – old-style graphics, minimalist sound but with an engaging story. You actually have to invest some time in it to start benefiting from the tale here, but there are a lot of side quests to keep you distracted. The developers did a nice job with making the world feel like a sand box through the side quests and such, giving the game a more robust feel.

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