There are minor annoyances in the game, like having you confirm every single item you sell over and over, or not being able to hit a small creature like a spider that you are pointing at directly. Then there are bigger issues, like ranged enemies attacking you outside the camera view or masses of enemies suddenly spawning en masse right next to you. But it was at the point I spawned into a new room just to receive an attack from a ranged enemy that I gave up on this game.

Realms of Ancient War feels like a first attempt at a Diablo style action-RPG which is fine as I'll play anything half decent. Unfortunately, this game does not qualify. It seemed the only way this game could provide a challenge is by swarming you with enemies that weren't on the same spot a second ago. Or you may be trapped in a tiny area with no room to move around while fighting a boss. Obviously things like this give the player a bad impression as opposed to any sense of challenge. It seems I'm spending all my time attacking dwarves and spiders with the occasional lizard.

Environment serves mostly to get in the way if you're a bow or magic wielder. Even small rocks just above the ground can block your ranged weapons. To make matters worse, they console-ify the game by limiting you to four available skills at one time along with a health and mana potion. That reminds me a little too much of the limiting skillset of Diablo 3. You can switch to a second skill set by pressing Tab while using the same keys, but that is terribly unintuitive compared to just giving us the action keys we need. Keys are not rebindable either.

I made it to level 10 but could not continue any further. I suspect most will drop the game before this point.

Inspired by games like the Diablo franchise or Torchlight, Realms of Ancient War is an old school hack and slash dungeon crawler with very limited depth and breadth that is hard to overlook even tough it isn't a triple-A title. The story in the game is not the worst we've seen so far, in all honesty it's fairly interesting and one of the stronger points of the game. The game starts years after the so called Ancient War which divided the land to 4 territories (East, West, South and North...duh, imagination at it's best). The Northern King proposed truce so he invited the remaining kings to the Hero's Garden. Something went wrong because the Northern King was never to be seen again and the rest of the kings became soulless zombies. Yes, clichés after clichés, but it's not all that bad. The game contains some witty dialogues and turns.

We can pick from 3 unnamed characters: wizard, warrior and rogue. Each have different styles but they aren't that different that any would change the gameplay significantly. Each class has it's own skill tree, where you can level up your attacks. There are 1 level and 3 level skills. Skills open up gradually. The first group right after the beginning of the game, the second after you reach lvl 10, the last after lvl 20. However, there are two problems related to your skill management. First, in every stage you can gain exactly one level. No matter how much you fight or how many side quest (there aren't that many) you complete. You can only get 1 skill point in each stage. That makes the whole level grinding procedure useless and dropping all the challenge. You will get your skill point no matter what.

The second problem comes with the use of your skills. You have only 4 skills at your use at a given time. Two of them are to be activated with the mouse and two with keystrokes on the keyboard. You can program these skills to the aforementioned buttons. If you want to use other skills you have to use the alternative set. Essentially you have 2 sets of skills, which can be changed at any time with a button push. Easy enough, in theory at least. Practice is a different beast. Remembering which skill you have assigned to which button in which set is pointless, painful and horrible. When a dozens of foes are attacking you there is no way this system can be use properly. Using this method is understandable on consoles where there are limited buttons to use, but on a PC it's unacceptable. This is where you realize that 4 skills/attacks are well enough to complete the game.

At least the fighting and hack'n slashing is exciting. You are continuously attacked by tens of enemies, making the game challenging and intense. Sometimes it is hard to hit smaller enemies, like spiders which live everywhere, rain forests or volcanoes it doesn't matter for them. Graphically the game doesn't excel, but it's not bad either. For an XBLA title it's passable. Not are the audio tracks though. Audio effects are horrible and repeating. Listening to the same 3 grindings throughout 8-10 hours when you hit enemies is annoying. The music is on par with the rest of the audio. You get one passable song which plays when you start the game, the rest of the music tracks during gameplay are just pointless burrs.

R.A.W. is a below average hack and slash game that tries to build upon it's great predecessors of the genre but fails in every possible way. It's chaotic, mediocre and boring. A game that is hard to recommend when you can get a dozen of it's kind cheaper (or even for free). If you can finish it once there is no point starting the game ever again.

Rating: 45/100; Replay Value: 1/5; To Beat: 8-9 hours; Played on: normal.

This is one of those titles that you should not play unless you know what to expect going into it. On the surface, R.A.W. is another Diablo-style hack & slash RPG lootfest wherein you slay endless waves of strikingly homogenous minions and swap gear out for marginally better gear. In this respect, R.A.W. succeeds where many others succeed and fails where many others fail; gameplay is satisfying (if repetitive at times), programming is relatively bug-free, and the story is... well.. there's a story at least, some games don't even have that. What R.A.W. provides for Steam, however, is all of this formula that can be enjoyed both with a controller and with a local friend. If you own at least one 360 controller, you and a friend can enjoy quite a few hours of good old mindless RPG baddie slaughter. Overall, I'd give this game a 6.5/10; solid gameplay, proper controller support, and local multiplayer often outshine the game's general lack of ambition.

En enjoyable if average hack and slash. I played and beat the game while listening/watching podcasts/vids so it's a really good for multitasking since it's basically just brainless smashing of baddies across different stages.

RAW has good variety and I had fun the whole way through using a very tanky build for my warrior with an escape skill if I ever got surrounded by too big of a mob (which was really only an issue early on in the game, properly built the warrior basically becomes unkillable at higher levels).

So if you are into hack and slash and diablo-likes this game will scratch that itch quite suitably. The game is nothing special but it doesn't have to be to be a fun time waster. And it looks fairly nice from start to finish. I didn't quite like it enough to replay it with the other two classes but that's more on me having a huge backlog than any fault of the game itself.

So give it a go when it goes on sale or comes up in a bundle. I'm surprised the game is rated this low but it seems the worst thing a game can do is be mediocre and thus forgettable but it still has all the genre staples to satisfy those that are looking to slay hordes of baddies.

I'm five hours in this game and I have to say:
I must be an alien from another planet to differ from the overall opinion about R.A.W. - It might be a guilty pleasure, but I like it. The game is simple, you aren't doing much more than slashing through waves over waves of enemies and take their mostly not so spectacular loot.
I wouldn't say it's too repetetive judged by the level design, which has quite the variety from each area. There's sand levels, ice levels, fairy forests, dark jungles, castles and a weird meta ghost world. And that's not even all. Enemy types could be more diverse, but at least there IS change to it - plus smaller and bigger bosses.
You have three classes, I'm playing as warrior - and the levelable skills are satisfactory in my eyes. You can choose to be more defensive or more of a battle type.

I don't about the story, but from what I understand it's okay to have a reason for all the monsters and quests.

The game is very linear, don't expect any open world / sandbox feeling.

If you search for a pure action RPG with lots of monster killing and dig a nice graphic style, then you might wanna try this out. You liked Greed: Black Border? Then definitely try this out. You want a lot of open world feel, a great variety of quests, a lot of voiced over dialogue? Then you might wanna skip this.

Oh: You should play this with an Xbox 360 controller, if you have one. It plays GREAT with it ;)

OK, I do not write reviews, never have and probably never will again. I do not understand why everyone seems to put this game down. If you configure the game (Not a separate program like someone stated) and set the controls correctly it works just great. It doesn’t crash, it doesn’t lag and it plays on windows 10 just fine. So, make this my first review, the games fine to play. So, go and Hack and Slash till you’re feeling good or bad or whatever.

Do you have what it takes to tolerate more than an hour of Realms of Ancient War? Do you crave bland action, boring levels, and uninteresting loot? Is the idea of pointlessly slaughtering millions of dull creatures for pitiful rewards getting you all hot and bothered? Then I dare you to take the ultimate challenge: Attempt to complete this game without pushing your PC out a window.

I really tried to stomach R.A.W. I did everything I could to make the experience more pleasant for me. I played my favorite music, had something good to drink, and dreamed about beautiful and amazing things. Unfortunately, this game is just so by-the-numbers and repetitive. The way I see it, quitting the game would free up the use of my hands. These hands could be used for more entertaining activities...... Like drumming on the desk.

R.A.W. is split up into multiple stages. In each stage you kill a few hundred enemies, and a boss or three. Sometimes these minions and/or bosses use ranged-attacks. Aside from the demon army from hell that constantly spawns, you'll also kill skeletons, spiders, humans, dwarves, AND elves. It's pretty silly if you think about it, since there's a complete lack of explanation as to why the races of the world hate your guts. The only people who aren't trying to kill you have quests or objects to sell. I recall at one point a man told me to kill a dwarf, but then the dwarf told me to kill the man, but when I went back to the man, he told me to kill the dwarf, so I gave up and moved on. The quests usually award an item that's worse than whatever you have equipped anyway.

Sadly, the quests are perhaps the only time the game actually tries. Everything else that occurs in each stage is merely tedious. You'll spend large chunks of the game with only 1 or 2 skills to use, which makes combat even less exciting. The level-up system is an absolute joke. When you enter a new stage, the first level-up will come very quickly. After that, the experience point awards drop off a cliff. The cycle begins anew as soon as you reach the next stage. Why even bother having an experience system? Just have the player choose what skills they want, as soon as they arrive at a new location. Instead there has to be this mind-numbing half-baked system. The enemies drop mostly junk, so outside of the slim possibility a boss will drop something decent, there's no incentive to fight. Once you get your guaranteed level-up, you could probably just run past everything. It doesn't seem to matter one way or another.

While the opportunity to slay countless elves & dwarves does sound appealing to me, I had to get rid of R.A.W. It's a thoroughly mindless hack & slash that is bested by hundreds of other titles. If you happen to discover this game in your library. My advice is not to panic. It probably crept into one of your indie bundle purchases. Just ignore it and move on.

My buddy and I had a great time playing this one together... took us about 25 hours to get through the whole thing, and we didn't fret too much over finding every little nook and cranny, but we're probably a little more methodical than most (i.e. slow). We played a couple areas multiple times to beef up a bit for the next area, but not enough to be annoying. I detest games that make me do the same stuff over and over. The game is nothing super-duper regarding story, graphics, sound, gameplay... but it all was perfectly okay IMO, and most importantly, it was fun and kept us playing. And I'm kinda tired of the "this game sucks unless it has 34 stats to compare on every item and 17 branches in each skill tree of 20 different classes" mentality in all the ARPGs these days... I don't really think that makes a game MORE FUN. If anything, it kinda turns it into a "job". Replay value? Grinding the same thing over and over provides little or no replay value (to me). Anyway, the combat can be tough at times (usually due to certain mobs catching you off-guard), but in general, the game is rather easy once you get the hang of it. There are some of the skills that work in tandem between the characters different characters. There was a "suck all the enemies to me" skill on one of our characters, and a "BOOM goes the neighbors" skill on our other character, and the combo just seemed to never get old when we got the timing right.

If you like games Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance, Grim Dawn, Torchlight, etc., or maybe you're just tired of over-statting and grinding, or you just wanna get a friend and go hack and slash and blow up stuff with magic... then this is likely be a good fit for you.

Use gamepads... everything is laid out to take advantage of an XB-compatible pad. I appreciate how they made this work. It reminded me of LotR: War in the North, which I really liked as well (an others hate on because there's not 34 stats to compare and 20 classes and 17 branches... blah blah blah).

This game is definitely worth it for a Diablo-style romp with friends. Didn't play single-player, so that might be a different story. I find that ARPGs are generally better co-op anyway, especially if there aren't any NPCs or summoned companions to force the fights away from the "everything on the screen just shoots and chases ME"... BORING!

Anyway, get this puppy on sale, and grab a friend or two, some gamepads and put it up on the big screen...

An absolute travesty and abomination, there exists a distinction between disliking a game due to its elements and being genuinely angered by it. Despite enduring a few play sessions, the game failed to launch after the 5th or 6th attempt. To elaborate, it would initiate with a brief introduction of the studio's name only to abruptly display a message stating, "Game settings are not compatible" or something of the sort. Despite scouring various forums, a viable solution eluded me. It seems reasonable to anticipate such issues with a 2012 game in 2024, a time when hardly any player would have dared to engage with it earlier. It appears this game might not be designed to function beyond the Windows XP era. My advice: either transport yourself back to 2012 or steer clear of purchasing this game.

R.A.W. is a hack’n’slash RPG where you choose from the standard characters of warrior, dark sorcerer, or rogue. The four kings met in the North to fight back an ancient evil which is trying to come back. Only three made it out beaten and worn and the North King was frozen in crystal. This is where you come in and find the North King and he speaks to you telepathically asking for your help. He melds with your body and sets you on a task to open the four portals of north, south, east, and west lands.

Playing the game isn’t bad it’s just not great. There isn’t much variety in enemies as you’ll fight mostly the same ones over and over which will become monotonous over time. Your weapons and armor don’t really make much of a difference in what you use. Basically you find a better one and it gives you a higher damage or defense. You can also have elemental damage of fire or poison to your weapons but those didn’t seem to add anything noticeable. Skills get added each level but none of them were that great or make me excited to level them up or unlock them.

The story is pretty weak and didn’t really hold me or make me want to pay attention much. You’ll fight through the same levels or what seems like the same levels many times. Make it halfway through the game and then go back and do it all over again. Not too exciting if you ask me.

Overall R.A.W. is a mediocre game which wasn’t bad to play but not worth playing more than once. Co-op may add a little fun to it but since I played it already by myself I don’t see the real reason to play it again unless you want all the achievements.

Bear Rating: 6/10