Silver (PC) Review

The following is one of those titles that probably won't excite anyone right now, but it's actually not hard at all to imagine a young kid playing this back when it came out, and falling completely in love with its somewhat strong charm. However, most who have picked its recent re-release keep praising it just for its nostalgic factor, and, to be honest, there's nothing worthy of mention here besides that. Yours truly accepts that he has the same kind of guilty love for a few "unknown classics," but truth be told, Silver just isn't that good.

Starting with the story, while numerous character interactions and so on will ensue, this doesn't really have a plot (or characters) worth paying attention to, as it's your standard fantasy ride of good versus evil. The titular warlord has captured the women of a small town, one of them is the wife of young knight David, and so he must do something about it. What's that? Well, find some magic orbs, of course! In other words, the oldest trope in the world of videogame RPGs.

The NPCs are nothing more than a bunch of people that David can talk or fight with, with no character development whatsoever. Audio-visually things are much better, although the world is bland as it is good-looking, and the simplistic, and blocky, Final Fantasy VII-esque LEGO characters lack the latter's distinctive design. Finally, the symphonic tunes are as pleasant as they are forgettable, and the voice acting very mixed; sometimes great, sometimes decent, and, in the case of the very protagonist, lifeless to the point of admiration.

It's the actual gameplay that disappoints the most, though, with the first reason being that it's not an RPG like it's supposed to be. Silver gives you the impression that you can strengthen the lead character and then explore its vast world. The reality is that this is an on-rails, 15-to-20-hour trip towards the end, and as for the 'strengthen' bit, levelling-up only happens when defeating a boss, therefore, there's not really a point in the existence of a level-up system in the first place.

In reality, this is a hack 'n' slasher with some elements of resource management, meaning that, since it's not possible to go to a town and improve your gear or rest at an inn, the only thing that can be done is to push on moving from area to area, and hope that the health-replenishing items will last. Oh, and by the way, saving only happens in some very specific spots, and once done so, the save… disappears forever!

In conclusion, the only thing that could serve as a saving grace for this quest is nothing more than the action… and, unfortunately, it too disappoints. For many, the initial problem would seem to be the somewhat strange control scheme, which requires holding the Ctrl key along with moving the mouse in a certain way to perform jabs, swings, blocks, evasions, and so on, but the more you play, the more you get comfortable with this system.

The problems start when the actual action begins. The controls work great in one-on-one situations, but the vast majority of this adventure is about fighting groups of enemies. Battles soon get very chaotic, and not the good kind of chaotic, but the what-the-heck-is-happening one, since it's extremely easy to mess up, and instead of hitting an enemy, open up the (extremely frustrating) radial inventory, pick a character from your party, run around like stupid, and other "fun" things like that - and don't even mention the liability that is the CPU-controlled allies.

Surprisingly, Silver can be quite addictive because, while all this is enough to annoy people to death, the issues are not enough to bore them to death, which leads to the main problem: the repetitive nature of it all. This is basically a marathon of slowly moving from small area to small area, killing every single monster that appears on-screen, and repeating this for more than 10 hours. Yes, that could be said for pretty much every other hack 'n' slash action title, but most have that extra something that makes the whole experience more… tolerable.