What's It All About:
Sometimes there's nothing that will satisfy your gamer appetite the way a good hack-and-slash adventure will, which can make the Nintendo Wii a frustrating console. After all, if you're looking to get your fill of God of War-style action with your Wiimote, your choices are limited. Very limited. To help fill that void, D3Publisher comes along with an original swordplay outing that uses the console's motion-sensing capabilities as an integral part of the controls, with a story written by fantasy author Richard A. Knaak. This third-person adventure follows Dal, the last survivor of a ransacked village, who's led by the spirit of Valthorian, a dragon who was betrayed by his fellow dragon leaders. His powers were spread among the area's kings, who use them to support their evil rule. For Dal to gain vengeance for his village, and his dead finance, he must defeat the kings, to take their powers, and the dragons who turned on Valthorian.

Gameplay:
This couldn't be simpler. Move forward, kill stuff. Repeat. A lot. As you move Dal through the various levels of the game, which are rigidly defined by annoying invisible walls, you face wave after wave of sword-fodder, including wolves, spiders and lizard-men. The format of the level design is equally simple, with journey segments (featuring the previously mentioned hordes) leading to first a king (i.e. miniboss) battle and then a dragon final battle. The journey segments are repetitive and pointless, with no rewards for fighting and nothing to collect outside of a suit of armor that makes little difference to the gameplay. After playing for a while, it became more fun to play the game like Madden, avoiding enemies like they were tacklers on a quick run to the next "lock-down" where mystical barriers force you into combat with a slew of bad guys.

In battling these enemies, the disparity in the rogues' attack abilities is immediately obvious, with the spiders and similar nuisances taking small bites from you, while the larger minotaurs with axes (deja vu, huh?) are ridiculous. The kings don't do the kind of damage the minotaurs are capable of, as they can take you out in a few strikes and in some odd moments, just one mighty blow. It's especially frustrating, since you often face these beasts in the tight confines of the lock-downs. It gets sillier though, since you can take them out just as easily using your dragon powers. You'd think such bruisers would be made of sterner stuff.

The king and dragon battles are more impressive, though defeating these bosses is mostly a matter of recognizing patterns (which should be easy, since they are mostly the same) and responding with special attacks. That's basically the whole game. There aren't any puzzles, there are no time challenges and there aren't any side quests to attempt. The only thing you can do to get some more play out of this game is to go back and replay levels to better your clear times or clear all kills and items. Odder yet, the levels seem to have been designed to make you explore, with side paths and all, but there's no reason to do so, other than to annoy yourself with more monsters to fight.

Controls
The controls are the best and worst part of the game. Dal's sword strokes are controlled by swinging your Wiimote up, down, left and right, or thrusting it forward. While this scheme certainly puts you right in the game, it isn't the most responsive ever seen on the Wii, as the up and down strokes are hard to pull off. Not that it matters as most of the time you'll be waving wildly to beat off attackers, as pulling off the nifty combo attacks available is more a matter of luck than skill. The game has variable settings for sensitivity, but only the most sensitive level is acceptable for gameplay. After a while, you'll start to feel the burn from the amount of flailing you do.

In addition to the attacks, you have a jump/evade button on the nunchuck and lock-on and defend buttons on the Wiimote, which allow you to keep out of harm's way. Unlike the attacks, these work well. Too well. In fact, in most cases, if you just hold down all three and hack away, you'll wipe out you foes without taking much damage. Cheap, but it's effective. Once you acquire a dragon power, you just us the D-pad to activate it and, once again, hack away. The dragon power has a limited energy source though, so you must be judicial in its use until you can refill by killing foes and smashing stuff. These power attacks are easily the coolest part of the game and the most powerful weapon you have in your arsenal.

Graphics
The firey effects of the sword are also the best part of the games graphics, as they are well detailed and have solid movement that's very eye-catching. The graphics that open the game are also really quite nice, and quite creative in the way they lay out the back-story of the game. The problem is, the quality of the in-game graphics isn't nearly as impressive, playing into the complaints about the Wii's graphic abilities. The limited scope of the levels leads to some repetitive landscapes and wasted cinematics that look the same as the in-game material. The worst thing about the graphics though, outside of the weak textures and harsh aliasing, is the camera. Following behind you for a third-person perspective, too frequently it gets stuck either behind a barrier, too close to you to see anything, or somehow in front of you, leaving you at the mercy of unseen enemies. Hitting the C button should reset the camera, but it doesn't always work, especially when you need it, like in the lock-downs.

Sound
The sound won't impress anyone, as the game's dialogue is limited to some minor grunts and groans (leaving the lengthy dialogue to subtitles (making for cheaper localization one would assume.)) Beyond that, there are some generic sound effects, average enemy noise and a repetitive "historic" orchestral score that could have come from any similar fantasy/medieval game. Though you have a choice between mono, stereo and Dolby Pro Logic II presentations, you won't hear much of a difference between the two higher-end mixes, which are clean, but vanilla.

And in the End...
My fair lady picked up the Wiimote, and after swinging it around for a few minutes and killing everything in her path, she asked me "Is this all there is?" That pretty much encapsulated the whole game: very easy to pick up, but not enthralling enough to keep you involved. Add in awkward controls, repetitive gameplay and a less-than-fantastic presentation, and you have the kind of game that begs for a rental. There's a definite enjoyment to be gained from the Wiimote-swinging mayhem, but not enough to justify a purchase, even for a so-called budget title.