Exile

~ EXILE ~

Renovation / Telenet / Working Designs (US)

CD-ROM

1992 (JPN: 1991)

Exile is a decent action-RPG; it might even look like a good one from afar. After all, it does star a badass protagonist in Sadler...

...and many of the monsters he slays look pretty darn cool.

The music is very good; and the story is fairly interesting, so even the overhead-view "talk to people" scenes are usually entertaining.

Unfortunately, the game is extremely short and stupidly easy. None of the bosses came even remotely close to doing significant damage to me. I never needed to use any items, nor did I cast any spells except for Warp to save myself time (in the Japanese version, that is; Working Designs chose to leave that particular incantation out of the US game). And in light of the lack of challenge, I guess it's a blessing that the journey is a brief one; during the final stretch, I just wanted it to end. Since I knew I wasn't going to face any sort of challenge and the designers didn't provide anything particularly interesting in the way of level designs or puzzles, it all started to seem rather pointless. Vic Ireland and company did buff up the monsters for the US release, but not to the ridiculous Wicked Phenomenon extent, and the poor creatures still can't put up much of a fight.

The only real difference WD's "efforts" made is that some of the still-easy bosses take a lot longer to kill (especially the last fool).

If you don't think you'll mind the ridiculously low level of difficulty, then Exile plays well enough, but it's certainly not in the same league as The Legend of Xanadu and Blood Gear. Not even close.