Gears of Fantasy

Disclaimer: I only played Singleplayer

The graphics are dated but could be worse.
The levels are often very similar, but there are some cool set pieces in between.

There are some annoying bugs. At one point, I had to reload the last checkpoint, and countless times an ability consumed mana but did nothing.

The story is lame, and the dialogue ranges from mildly entertaining to mostly cringe.

There is some side content and optional dungeons, but they never felt worth doing.

The progression system is very bare-bones, lacking depth and meaningful choices.
The gear is as boring as it gets, basically boiling down to "bow with 50 damage vs. bow with 55 damage."

The combat is also pretty bare-bones, consisting mostly of simple one-button attack spamming with some abilities on top.
Hit feedback is good against small enemies but lacks impact against big ones.
The enemy variety is a bit lacking. Every miniboss gets recycled countless times later on.
Most of the bigger boss fights aren’t fought with your own abilities but with stationary catapults/ballistas.

The controls are a bit clunky, especially for ranged weapons. I don’t know who thought this was a good idea, but sprinting with a ranged weapon feels infinitely worse for no reason, since you can’t change direction while doing so.
Also, dodge roll and taking cover are bound to the same button, which regularly leads to getting hit when you actually want to dodge.
The mouse sensitivity is way too high even on the lowest setting, so I had to change it manually.

The worst part of the game is by far the balancing.
Why should I use an ability that destroys one shield when I can use another ability that kills five shielded enemies at once?
Some niche abilities feel completely useless, even in their perfect use case, while others are the best solution for every situation.
Some abilities do barely any damage, while others can one-shot almost anything.

TL;DR

- Half hack-and-slash, half cover shooter
- Very simple combat and progression
- Horrible balancing
- Lame story and cringe dialogue
- I only recommend it because of the low price
- It can be fun for one short playthrough, but don’t expect anything special

Also, from what I’ve read, co-op isn’t supported anymore. You can still play it, but you need third-party tools to get it running.