Hard to Be a God Review
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Sound & Localization For the most part, music and sound effects in this game are solid. The music is atmospheric and ambient, switching to faster tracks for combat. It's not particularly optimistic music, which fits into the game's world and setting well. Sound effects aren't always convincing (in particular the sound spiders make when they spot you), but they're effective.
It's probably no big surprise when I note the localization is pretty bad. They opted to leave the PC unvoiced (except in cutscenes), which is a bit jarring because of the way dialogue is set up (in the Russian version, the PC is voiced), and a number of anonymous NPCs are unvoiced too. The voice over work of the other NPCs varies in quality, there are not many really annoying voices and some are pretty well-done, but the overall quality is not high.
The text translations are actually significantly worse than the voice overs (since the voice actors will some times correct the mistakes in the written translation). While not impossible to understand, the translations are bad enough that a lot of context is completely lost. Since the plot gets fairly complex at points, you shouldn't be surprised if you hit points where you simply have no idea what the other person is talking about any more. For me, the high point of this was when my character triumphantly declared (Aha! That's another pair of shoes!)
There are a few typos as well. Most embarrassing is the inexplicable tendency of the game to misname characters. Look for Phat? You'll find his name in the game is (Phat's servant). Looking for the priest? You'll find his name reads (priest's cloak).
Combat & Skills
Combat is simple and easy, but can be very challenging due to the frustrating design. Whatever weapon you choose, you can block with spacebar, attack with the left-mouse button for up to three-hit combinations (depending on your timing), do a special move with the right mouse button and finish off knocked-down opponents with the third mouse-button. The differences between the 3 different weapon skills play out very well, for example in the fact that heavier weapons have a better chance of knocking someone down, but finishing off someone with a heavy weapon also takes a longer time leaving you exposed to attacks for a longer time. Blocking of arrows is impossible unless you have a shield.
The problem with combat is not in the concept but like so many things in this game in the execution. Combat happens with an awkward combination of WASD and mouse, in which several fighters all step forward and form a straight line while attacking. A number of the monster creatures do this, but human fighters especially those armed with light weapons (including the PC) also step forwards a lot. This means that if you want to keep attacking, you'll end up swinging the camera around quite a lot in a very disorienting manner.
This leads to a certain rinse-and-repeat strategy regardless of what weapon set you have: do a special move to start, block, do another special move, run away or block until your special moves recharge. This prevents disorienting circling combat, while allowing you to do maximum damage while taking minimum damage.
Thankfully, the game's enemies do have some variation. Nothing impressive, but enough to make you adapt your tactic slightly every now and again. Fighting a mass of wolves is different from fighting 2 or 3 high-level bandits (especially since bandits often have bows or crossbows), not to mention the game's weirder monsters like the giant leeches or forest guardians.
Speaking of damage, what makes combat particularly easy once you get a hang of it is the fact that it pauses when you open up your inventory. You can just dine on 20-25 pumpkins to heal up fully prior to restarting combat, and you can buy such healing fruits & veggies fairly cheap. I finished the game without having to resort to the use of health potions right until the final area.
The game also features stamina and stamina-restoring potions. You'll rarely run out of stamina as it regenerates while you block or run away (blocking takes some stamina, but not much). However, if you keep on pressing your attacks you'll run out of stamina pretty quick, and if it runs out your character can't move or block. It's pretty important to keep an eye on this statistic, especially early on.
The character system is mostly about your combat skills. There are 3 sets of combat skills each of which contains two sets of weapon types; light weapons which includes one-handed and dual-wielded weapons, medium weapons which includes staves and double-bladed weapons, and heavy weapons which includes two-handed heavy weapons and one-handed weapon with shield combinations. Each set has two special moves assigned to it, which unlock as you increase the combat skill from a range of 0 to 10.
The other skills, which all have a range of 0 to 15, are ranged weapons, diplomacy, stamina, health and medicine. Stamina and health are self-explanatory, medicine increases the usefulness of healing items. Diplomacy is used very rarely, but when it's used it is often the only way to avoid combat. Ranged weapons looks odd in this group, but it's not actually a full-fledged combat skill like the above 3. It doesn't have special moves and I doubt you could survive the entire game using only ranged weapons.
The last thing of note here is horse-back combat. I'd like to call horse-back combat (appropriately awkward). There's just no way you're going to be able to do well in fighting off 3 guards with pikes from horseback or wheel your horse around quickly in a narrow alley at full speed. And that makes sense. Horseback fighting gives you an edge very early on in the game as the horse absorbs some of the blows, but around the time your weapon skill reaches 5 or 6 points you'll find using a special move (which you can only do when unmounted) makes a lot more sense than attacking from horseback. Circling enemies to fight them can remain a good opener in fights, but generally you'll find that you want to stick with your trusted horse for transportation only.
What helps you in all of the above is that combat AI isn't very good; it's easy to trick enemy combatants. It's also a bit too easy to trick people into doing your dirty work for you and then attack them in the back.
