Just not that great
At the outset, AoD seems like a really great game. I was willing to overlook a bunch of the mechanical terribleness that literally ever other game on the market has solved. Like, having to find a quest NPC who is essentially hiding in a closet in the middle of a large city, when the sum total of your instruction is 'Oh yeah, he's somewhere in that city.' Frustrating doesn't begin to describe it, especially when this exact scenario happens 10 or 20 times throughout the course of the game. If I hadn't gone online and found some suggestions, I'd have deleted the game about 4 hours in.
There's a lot of talk about choice and replayability, but frankly, that's all a load of crap. The game starts in City 1, progresses to City 2. then to City 3, then to the Final Temple. Yeah, you can fool around with different professions and sidequests, but it's essentially running around a racetrack, and you get to choose whether you run in lane 1 or lane 6. Wheee.
Summary: Interesting world and story, awful mechanics, nonexistent replayability. Worth an afternoon or two at $10, but certainly not worth $25-30.
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