Definite Promise
In so many ways, this game is great. It's good fun, with a good degree of character customization and some nice over the top cheesy voiceovers to provide some humor. The premise, combining a sidescrolling hack-and-slash with a typical castle defense game, is a good one and it works well.
Unfortunately given the numerous flaws in the game i just can't justify giving this game better than a 7. None of the issues are necessarily game-breaking, but they do make it considerably more agravating to go through.
For a start, the hit detection is ridiculous. Hitting the enemies in mele seems to require quite a bit of precision, and in the first level where you have to defend the castle it can be really annoying to run forward, swing with you axe, and miss. Particularly because half the time the enemies will keep moving, and because you can't pass through them you basically have to let them go by you and then start jostling yourself around until you end up in the right position to hit them, by which point you've already been flanked by three more enemies and the first one has started smashing your fairly fragile castle. If the melee weapons were just a bit more generous in their hit detection, it could go a long way.
Second is the fact that the levels are long and filled with enemies, and you only get one life. Restarting takes you straight back to the beginning of the stage. While I appreciate not having to start the game over, it would be nice if you had one or two lives to go through before you died, or if the "resist death" skill were made passive (Frankly I never could figure out how that was supposed to work, and was too distracted 90% of the time to try to find out). A checkpoint system or just more shorter levels would also be an excellent solution.
Another issue that I'm not quite sure about is the bloodlust ability. As I mentioned earlier, it's easy to get distracted, but it seemed like it didn't apply when I was killing things with magic (or that it just doesn't give much health back). It seems to me that since magic users are at a disadvantage for health and have few ranged spells that can take out all the enemies coming at them before they have to engage in melee, this would be nearly essential for them.
Finally, while this isn't a flaw, the game seems a little short. Three stages, the last of which is unusually short compared to the others, seems a bit light. Especially given that you are encouraged to spend money upgrading a castle at the first level, which as it turns out becomes useless after that first level. All the other things you can spend the money on stay with you the entire game. As it is, it feels almost like a demo for a larger game. If you do do a sequel, it would be nice to have perhaps a few more castle defence levels interspersed with the side scrolling levels.