So bored... why can't I stop playing it? @_@;
Stop for a moment and imagine the ultimate RPG experience. Maybe you'd take the storytelling of Planescape Torment, the scope of WoW, the combat of Diablo and the music of Final Fantasy. Well, Legend of the Void seems like a love letter to the RPGs of the past, borrowing elements from all of these games. Unfortunately, it got the storytelling of WoW, the music of Diablo, the combat of Final Fantasy, and the loot of Planescape Torment. The result is a game that underwhelms RPG fans on virtually every possible level, despite solid construction, tons of obvious effort, and (marginally) successful Skinner Box methodologies.
Potions feel like a solution in search of a problem. Almost like they said "Well, it's an RPG, it has to have potions in it." But it doesn't force the player to chug 50 of them after every fight like final fantasy does. It's turn-based, not real-time, so unlike Diablo or WoW, there's no timing involved in using them to best advantage. And cooldown plays such a drastic role in limiting the use of your best abilities that, far from being the lifeblood of combat, they are a band-aid you only turn to when you're out of other options, or perhaps very rarely to free up your mage to take another, more important action on his turn.
Let's talk about builds. I went mage on a whim, and then min-maxxed the hell out of this thing after taking one look at the skill trees. I only put points into Magic. For skills I went fireball - sub zero - earthquake, (though truth be told I could have stopped at Lightning Storm, earthquake sucks!) then Heal - Forcefield. Mass Heal on a whim even though Forcefield prevents it from ever being necessary. I saved Vision for the last skill I take since I don't know if the 25% happens once when you level up or if it gets constantly updated over the top of your other stats as you level up.
The point is, if I could do this, anyone could, because that's what gamers DO. They look for the shortcuts. The entire philosophy behind the skill trees is broken. You can get your first capstone ability by level 4, and a second one by level 9 if you want it that badly. Worse, though, the tier 3-4 abilities are often stronger and more versatile than the higher level stuff.
That said, I am NOT saying you should nerf the build I used, or any build. Why not? Because min-maxing my character was the most FUN I had with this game. I felt like I was actually learning something.
The rest of the game is just marching through identical forests and lava-caves for a couple hours, clicking through some completely functional text that does nothing to engage the player either mechanically or emotionally. Fighting basically the same battle over and over again, progressing when you run out of stuff to kill. Then you're locked out of the earlier levels of the game (why, I have no idea,) so that if you missed some optional battles, you might get to the end game and find out that your saved game is borked, you screwed yourself around level 3 and didn't realize it.
The difficulty curve is a strange one. As you progress, battles get easier rather than harder. This is because your new abilities buy you breathing room disproportionate to the rate at which the enemies increase in power. Again, all of this is a side-effect of the asymmetries introduced by the skill tree.
Also, your low level spells don't scale with your character's power as he levels up, to the point where basic attacks soon do much more damage than a fireball spell. All skill trees have SOME baggage you take just to unlock other skills, but actually using a skill and then watching it become useless is just plain sad.
I have to commend the designer for the amount of effort he's putting into supporting it. In an age when Flash games are pushed out the door as quickly as possible to generate ad revenue, this guy is actually trying to build a community and a fanbase around the game. I wish him the best of luck. Somewhere under the surface of this, there's a great game struggling to get out.
Bah, running out of space. Lose the cooldowns! Add female heroes!