Pretty good
I must commend the artwork and sound in this game. The lich laughter was well done and generally satisfying until I started killing everything in one hit and he laughed all the time.
The game had me stuck for awhile since I went finesse and then magic. However, I then realized that stun attack was extremely overpowered. I made another game, saved up some skill points for when I got stun and started pounding. It's only disadvantage was that it didn't crit, but when weighed against the defensive advantage of stunning the enemies attacking you indefinitely it was more then worthwhile. I got just enough finesse to move around properly and then piled on the brute force, which gives greater offensive and defensive bonuses than finesse. Soon I was killing everything in two hits, and kings were bloody easy when I could permastun them. I think by the end of the game I must have had a stun length greater than 40 seconds, but that didn't matter because I was insta killing everything but kings (but those took only 8-12 hits.
Overall the game suffers from a few things: the imbalances that you are already aware of, a skill attribute system similar to Diablo II that suffers the same difficulties with balance issues and useless skills, and being horribly repetitive. If I hadn't been one shotting all of the baddies at the end I never would have finished the game. Just... too much grind, not enough change. I mean, all the enemies ever did was get more health and do more damage. This repetitiveness is actually emphasized by the music, which completely fails to change through the entire game. I'd borrow an idea or two from Diablo II, the champion of hack and slash games, which threw one or two interesting things in there to spice things up, like the odd tougher-than-normal enemy, unique bosses and such.
Moreover, having those horizontal shooting guys reaaaly defeats the point of gravity. The poor mage liches need all the help they can get to stay alive...
That said, I'll also mention that while the offensive spell tree was fairly fun to use (while it worked), it seemed decidedly un-lichy. The defensive tree didn't have that problem, as terrify and frenzy were undead-y. Terrify (and slam) strike me as useless, because if you *do* have a problem with being surrounded it (a) will only hit melee guys and (b) you can easily jump and run away from melee guys with around 30 finesse. It's ranged guys who are the most annoying.
The only wonky thing about using spells is now camera dependent comet and lighting are. lighting won't strike enemies that are off the screen, even if there's a horde of archers shooting at you from there. Even if they're two feet away, as long as they're behind that protective invisibility they don't die. And comet can be hard to aim sometimes, I tended to stick to a corner so that it would be easier.
finally, I started running into a bug where my lich would start a battle, appear in the bottom lefthand corner, and then proceed to not do anything. nothing would happen, I'd have to reload and start from where it autosaved.
Anyways, still a good game overall, I must say good job with the artwork and voices.
