Hit and miss effort from the venerable Telenet, localized for the US by Working Designs. The game has nice bright, well-shaded graphics, some parallax where it counts, good to great music and an easy to navigate and use menu system. The game falters in the one area that really counts, though-- the gameplay. I played through this game for the first time in about 4 hours and never once really felt challenged. Some of the level designs are kind of nice and maze-like (I liked that aspect), but on the whole the game felt very short and perhaps somewhat rushed during the design and planning phase (although what IS there, looks nice and polished). Leveling up is pretty quick and painless, and you are usually always strong enough to defeat your foes without much effort whatsoever. After such epic adventures like Anearth Fantasy Stories and The Legend of Xanadu, this game almost feels like a joke, but at least the superficials keep it a bearable one. Keep this in mind with the score I give it, as it earned 80% of these points based on those merits alone. Without them, Exile would be a very sad state of affairs. 6/10.
