Garshasp: The Monster Slayer Critic Reviews

Gashasp: The Monster Slayer reminds me a little of each Prince of Persia, God of War, and Conan the Barbarian, all mixed together to make a pretty nice combination. Once you get a hang of all of the controls, and are able to recognize intractable objects, or even avoidable situations, the game plays so smoothly it's like watching a movie. With its mix of strategy, faced paced action, and attractive visuals, this game is a great buy.

Garshasp is an immature but good game. It's a beginning title with some production problems, but overall worth his cost.

Garshasp shows some sign of promise, but these are soon worn thin as you trudge your way through bugs, frame rate issues, camera hiccups and only about 3 hours of gameplay. With a little more care and attention this could have been a pleasant surprise. Instead Garshasp: The Monster Slayer will leave you feeling out of pocket.

This game is short, and it pales in comparison to bigger-budget titles.

Garshasp: The Monster Slayer has nothing to keep you playing for hours. The camera sucks, the fights are boring and there is not enough story.

Garshasp: The Monster Slayer has monstrous ambitions, but it doesn't deliver where it counts.

The story is where the game had an advantage, but unfortunately it drops the ball with the weird narration, lack of dialogue, and limited cutscenes.

Everything they've thrown in says "look what we can do" - and that' a sentiment New Zealanders can probably appreciate more than most.

Dead Mage Studio took on a huge challenge in creating a compelling combat action game. They succeed in picking an interesting and mostly untouched mythology, but it's a shame that it's bogged down with a lack of polish and glitches.

Garshasp emulates some of God of War's traits quite successfully but it's the core elements of the gameplay – like collision detection during combat – that the developer stumbled over.

A Hobbesian God of War clone: nasty, brutish, and short.

If it weren't for technical issues, such as the troubled controls and occassional coughs from the graphical engine, Garshasp could have been a decent copy of games like God of War, which we rarely see on the PC. But the game is filled with beginners mistake, and feels like a developer's first attempt at making a game, which is exactly what it is.

Only the fact that games like this are rare on PC may make Garshasp an interesting game for some people. But we hardly had any fun with it. What did the developers do during the three years of development time?

Garshasp falls short of genre standards in nearly every way, and its shortcomings are too numerous to compensate for.

Garhasp was developed by a nine people studio, and taking this into account, it's impressive. But that's the only way it is. It's not enough to deliver 3 hours of gameplay with poor production values, especially considering its current price.

On a good day, it's even approaching mediocre or average. Then you fall into the swamp because the killing animation took you over the edge of your small raft and you die instantly.

There are average hack & slash games that have their faults, like Conan or Viking: Battle for Asgard, but fans of the genre can usually overlook them in favor of having fun. Garshasp, however, sadly doesn't come close to being one of those games.

Dead Mage Studios have said they are going to put out an update to fix these issues but for the time being we will just have to make do. Garshasp shows potential but it needs some fixes to make it worth that $19.99. At only three and a half hours of gameplay and with all the constant bugs and glitches, I can't condone the pricing when you are going to be regretting it more and more as you play through.

Rather than a careful exposition of Persian themes and stories we get a shambling mess of a game that fails to deliver on any front. What's most disappointing is that rather than making the classic text accessible, Garshasp's narrative just mires too deep in forgotten lore to be interesting to anyone who doesn't already know what it's about. This is definitely a game about Persians and by Persians but it lacks the fundamentals to be enjoyed by anyone, including Persians.