When I first played this game, which was around the time it came out, I didn't know much of anything about the ancient world, and it conquered me with its atmosphere. It was an adventure with a gorgeous artstyle and pretty decent combat, which is something you rarely see in RPGs. In the years since, I haven't been able to revisit it properly. But now I'm returning to it as a grown man, and it's kinda ... not good.

In these kinda KotOR-like RPGs the most important aspect is the immersion. Some people would say the story, but I'd argue that even in KotOR (the best game in its subgenre) itself the story is actually not that great. But it's elevated by the player's ability to guide its direction. KotOR is very smart in what it allows the player to do, giving them a sense of agency in a world brought to life through various NPCs, side-quests, mini-games and the freedom to explore it at your own pace. All of this hinges on immersion. Individual systems are often not that good, but coming together they sell you the illusion of inhabiting a real world.

So, if the immersion is the most important aspect, breaking it is the biggest sin a game like this can commit. When I was young, even with my complete ignorance, I knew that this game wasn't faithful to the Argonautica. If there was any dead giveaway, it was the presence of Achilles in the game. It was also easy to tell that the game was drawing heavily from movies, such as 300, Troy, Gladiator and the Jason and the Argonauts TV series from 2000 (at least the design of King Lycomedes seems to have been inspired by it). That didn't bother me because I've always believed in taking creative liberties in adaptations. Even myths themselves often had many different versions. Plus, considering the scale and budget of a project like this, it only made sense to try and make it about more than just the Argonautica and include other mythological characters and stories. But ultimately, I think, any work must be able to at least sell you on the illusion. After all, why even set the game in ancient Greece if it's not gonna feel like ancient Greece (Christopher Nolan, I'm asking you)?

After the first introductory location, I choose to land on Mycenae, and immediately the immersion crashed hard, when the game forces you to partake in gladiator fights. But I had remembered that from my first playthrough, so I wasn't very bothered. Surprisingly, the moment that ruined my immersion much more was when this little boy told me that he had escaped an orphanage where he was beaten. For some reason, it's much easier for me to swallow gladiator fights than an orphanage, perhaps because the Roman Empire, as far away as it's removed from the Bronze Age Greece, my brain still perceives it as the ancient world, while the orphanage is a very modern concept. Almost immediately after that I run into an Egyptian slave-trader who offers to sell me two boys, and my only options are to either yell at him angrily or to accuse him of breaking the law. Wtf? This is ancient Greece! Both slavery and child-labor, and even pedophilia are ubiquitous and protected by the law! GIVE ME MY GODDAMN SLAVE BOYS!!!

Anyway, at that point I felt that the game wasn't just inaccurate, but had almost nothing to do with the setting it claimed to be set in. Can't even pretend that it's a fantasy version of it. It's just not Greece in the slightest. I also find it amusing how they shoved some black characters in the game because apparently that's the thing to do in period fiction these days, but the Egyptian slave-trader looks white. Tbf it's very common for North-Africans to have white skin (and was even more common back then), but if you're trying to appease African-Americans that seek to find identity in these modern-day bastardizations of old myths a sense of identity, why not make the Egyptian guy black? After all, that's what a lot of them believe Egyptians were. Idk, maybe they thought making the most despicable character in the game black would be racist. But see, you wouldn't be in this situation in the first place, if you made all the white Greeks pedophiles and slave-owners. But I guess that would make the game harder to sell. Then the question is: why even mention child-slavery in the first place?

With the sense of immersion broken, the gameplay itself fails to engage. Every location is extremely linear, basically composed of a few corridors. Dialogue options are extremely limited, you barely feel like you have control over the story. It's actually almost bizarre how little choice you have. It often feels like the game is teasing you, by presenting you with something that should be an option, but is not. For example, shortly after meeting Daedalus and learning that he is an escaped prisoner, you run into a Cretan government agent looking for him. It only makes sense that you would have a choice of whether to help Daedalus or betray him, but nope. You go all the way back to Daedalus and he tells you what to tell the agent, then you go all the way back to the agent again and thell him that. How exciting! There are also plenty of NPCs that the game breaks into a dialogue with, but there are no dialogue options and they just exchange a couple of inane phrases like:

• Hey, stranger, come buy my fish.
• No, thank you.

What is the point? You could just make him yell that as you pass him by. Why make let me engage with him and treate it as a dialogue?

The single best thing about this game is the combat. It's not good enough by action game standards, but for an RPG, it's really good. You have three weapons, you can switch between them on the fly, there are various combos and even more to unlock. Your character is very nimble, can block and dodge, and it's very responsive. Way ahead of what Jade Empire was doing in 2005. And that game was an RPG about martial arts!

The RPG elements here are just as poor as the dialogues and level/world design. You have this cool system where you get points for various gods, and each god gives you different skills. Something similar to the game Loki (a Diablo-clone from 2007). But then most of the skills are just damage multipliers. Furthermore, it's weird how you basically have to commit to certain dialogue options because they would give you the points you want, thus making the dialogues even less immersive. There are also no stats or loot to collect. Really, calling this game an Action-RPG is a stretch. It's more of story-driven Action-Adventure.