It was fun, but there were points where it felt like it was dragging for me.

Definitely worth the $2.50 I paid for it though.

I'll just post a quick review as my mind's reeling from all that Red Bull in the morning. What I really liked about the game was the combat system. The story is uninspiring and teeming with an awful presentation of voice acting. The hand-drawn cutscenes are good though.

So there lies one of the problems. The story is not compelling, so after a while, it fails to motivate you to keep playing. The combat system is what keeps things refreshing. Earlier on, you're really weak and most enemies can kill you in a few hits. To fight effectively, you will have to combine dodging, acquired special moves and twitch-based reflexes. When you get really good, you'll find yourself whirling about skeletons and spiders while performing combo after combo, which are usually performed by pressing movement keys followed by the attack button. Personally, I like it because of its fluidity when the action is heated up.

As far as it being an RPG goes, the best way to develop your character seems to be to specialize in one school of magic. There are only two: Blood and Soul. Blood focuses on close combat, Soul on ranged. There's a third discipline that emphasizes on summoning creatures, though the creature AI is rather stupid and half the time my summoned creatures run to me when they should have been attacking the enemy. Still, it's good for shits and giggles.

The game loses its luster after 3/4 of its progression - right about the time you max out your skills. As I mentioned, the story is typical fantasy-cliched fare, which means that when you get some of the better items and max out your skill tree, the carrot disappears. Furthermore, after the first half of the game, the same monsters are recycled for the rest of it, causing the game to lose its sense of variety. Some of those monsters are scary difficult, and often have unfair attacks that quickly take out half your health meter; the best way to take them out is to aggro or pull away the weaker ones (which is easy, playing as a Blood Mage), then fight the hard ones vis-a-vis. Problem is, you do this too often, and it devolves into repetition.

And yet, I still had fun for three quarters of the game. I can easily recommend it, but at the same time, it's easy to see where much of its criticism comes from. So there you have it. An action RPG with a cool combat system, that doesn't quite live up to its fullest potential.

I played and finished the spanish version of the game and well, it's not great, but it's totally worth 2,25€. Plot and characters are funny, combat is funny and is not too long (10-15 hours). I enjoyed it much more than, for example, Torchlight.

Sorry for the necro'ing, but currently I am playing the Avencast demo right now. I have had this sort of gamers block (read: I have not played any games properly since 21/12/2011 last year). I am hoping that this will be the game that ends the block.

So far I kind of like the demo. I use the follow camera. Movement is a bit slow there, but I think so far I still manage it. The settings seem to be rather interesting (I mean, I have left university for quite some time now, so yeah I kind of miss those days, but not the studying for exams part though :-P )

I didn't win the [url=http://www.gog.com/en/forum/general/a_mage_mostly_makes_merriment_macerating_monsters_modern_mages_methods ]Runehamster's contest on Avencast[/url] the other day, but maybe I'll pick the game after all when I have finished the demo (I'll decide afterwards).

I realize people have written down their opinions on this thread (I haven't fully read them yet, I just sort of skimmed through the page and post this first), so I'll shut up now and go back to read them first, then try to finish the demo, see if I like the game enough to pick it up.

Ah, that little game. I remember enjoying it quite a lot, to my surprise. It's not much of an RPG, the focus is combat, although there are some clever puzzles and secrets here and there.
A note about the controls - there are a couple of options for controlling the camera - make sure you fiddle with them and pick the one you're most comfortable with.
There are two magic schools to pick or mix and match - the ranged one (forgot the name) and the more melee-focused (blood magic I think). I picked the blood magic and goddamn, kicking ass felt really great, varied and powerful.

I might have to replay that sometime.