Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader

TL; DR Lionheart puts a lot of emphasis on its combat, and that is a shame, because it is easily the worst aspect of the title. It provides an interesting alternative history, a serviceable story, but again, you will mostly be fighting, you need to invest in combat.
If you can look past that or if happen to enjoy the subpar gameplay then it is a recommendation, otherwise there are better ways to spend your time.

Note Certain reviews reference the DLC, saying it is not included, but this version does include the bonus content (at least now), however, it is literally just a single quest.

Story

At Acre Lionheart, and Saladin joined forces, they beat back the tide of evil and saved the world from certain destruction. Yet Earth was forever changed, demons haunt the lands, the dead arise, and despite our great victory, we were brought to the brink of ruin.
Things have changed by the grace of the Inquisition, the honourable Knights Templars, and the heroic Order of Saladin. Humanity can prosper again, but mages, the English, and those who carry spirits within them are prosecuted and tried for their witchcraft.
You, as the descendant of one of Lionheart’s illegitimate children, carry a spirit within you, and that makes you a target, but the Old Man of the Mountain has his own plans.

A compelling narrative is key to a great CRPG, and Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader does have a fascinating alternative history, with plenty of fantastical elements to go around, but its story does leave things to be desired.
Take the prologue, you are attacked by assassins and saved in the nick of time, your would-be killers will only be relevant again several hours later, and their actions will only receive little elucidation before the final act. The Scion of Lionheart is more preoccupied with keeping a low profile and finding a job than dealing with them.
However, you can parse a few things, they are after our relics! Or maybe, it is the English, a good thing that the entire Spanish Armada is prepared for war, we will not let them get away with their dark, druidic sorcery!

What I found far more entertaining was the historical cameos, I do not even care that they all just happened to find themselves in Barcelona, I do not care that they did not live at the same time, all I care about is meeting historical and cultural figures.
My personal favourite has to be Cervantes, but everyone has their own tiny piece of a side quest, and they are great fun, far more entertaining than the main quest, or the faction quests. I always looked forward to meeting the next person, because you never really knew who you would happen upon, it could be writer, it could be a famous knight, or that one guy.
I especially like the fact that I can screw over Cortés if I choose to, because he probably deserves whatever is coming to him, unfortunately he is also tied to one of the longer quests in the game, which is inaccessible if you choose not to help him, I made my choice, and I happily gave up the rewards.

Presentation

I think that prerendered backgrounds are nice, and that Lionheart has a couple of very pretty areas, Barcelona is beautiful, as is Alamut, but I also think that the dungeons are especially bland. Caves look the same, crypts are same, it feels very repetitive, especially when you stay put in the same multifloored dungeon for an hour or more.
It also avoids the trap of prerendered background, interactable chests do not stick out like a sore thumb, they blend into the environment, as if they were really there, however, they blend into the background, it can be easy to confuse an interactable chest, with something that is simply set dressing, and that can be disappointing.

As for its audio, it is a mixed bag, songs like Crypt of the Lance and the Final Battle are really cool, and I can say the same for the rest of the OST, a total shock when the composer is responsible for some of my favourite scores of all time.
The issue is with the dialogue, which is typically bland, or not there at all, or with the soundscape, the soundscape is the worst, it can be absolute pandemonium, grunts, and squeals, and grunts and whines, and cries, and barks. It gets awful.

Gameplay

Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader emphasis the combat, you can get value out of skills like speech, heavy investment included, however, if you are not built for combat you will not have a good time. Similarly, you might have a tough time if you are built for melee, ranged characters are simply easier to play.
I wanted to play a paladin, but I ended up becoming a Sonic in slow-motion, i.e. an actual hedgehog. Learn from my mistakes.

Considering the massive amount of combat, you might expect it to be good, and getting crits feels fun, the knockback is great, as is the big damage number, but unfortunately, the combat is not good, not as a whole, it frequently feels padded out, and not really worth the time. This is due in part to the lacklustre encounter design, you will find few interesting fights, and the ones that try something gimmicky are either fun, but rare, this would be the Daeva fights, or tedious and a slog, like the entire final dungeon.

What usually happens is that you fight one group of enemies, that are within the aggro-range of another set of foes, so you end up fighting two groups at once, or perhaps you are fighting one group while harassed by archers, but by going after the archers you trigger another encounter with a different set of archers, and so forth throughout the entire area. It gets quite tedious quite quickly.
However, this issue is alleviated to some extent by the spirits, enemies drop them, and they recover health or mana depending on their colour, this means you can stay in a fight for longer, and potentially enjoy an epic battle, so when the game really turns into a slog after completing France, they removed them. Thanks, I sure love the latter half of Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader.

You will be tempted to do two things, maybe in conjunction with one another, pick encounters apart by aggroing one enemy at the time or by bringing a boatload of companions. Neither option is particularly thrilling.
You do get powerful companions, but only later, and you have zero control over them, which means that they will aggro several groups of enemies at once, and you are better off telling them to stay in a corner somewhere and luring the enemies to them a couple at a time.
There is also the fact that you need to click to attack in-between every spell, or knockdown, and if you click on a companion, you will enter dialogue, but the game will not pause!
This is not the only issue with the companions, early on with the weak helpers, and later with the annoying encounters, companions feel like your wards, Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader has turned into an escort quest.
A simple gust of wind can take the life of a bear, will you reload the fight ad nauseam to save their life? I recommend not doing that, because it is annoying, the companions are there to even out the action economy and to soak up damage, if they cannot do that and live, then they will do that and die.

pretty fun

The game has potential that it never quite manages to live up to. At first I was very positively surprised by the character creation, it's like Arcanum meets Fallout with a ton of choice. Then you get into the game and it's pretty janky, but playable. The combat isn't good, but hey, it's a CRPG, it's not like the game's going to be ALL combat, right?

Well, it turns out, once you get past the first city that's basically all there is. Every single area is packed with the same enemies over and over again, like the map was designed for a hack-and-slash ARPG or something. It's very disappointing because the first part of the game did show some real potential.

Edit: I made another character, this time I min-maxed it and built for combat (1h instead of 2h, surprisingly it seems to do more damage). It felt better playing up to the point where I quit playing my first character, but after catching up I realized I hadn't even gotten to the really bad part yet when I wrote my initial comment. It gets so, so, so much worse. The entire second half of the game is basically just padding, enemy after enemy placed so tightly that if you try to walk up to an archer that's shooting you you're most likely going to pull the next pack of enemies too. Your skills start to cost more skill points per level (but you still get the same amount to spend), you'll run out of interesting perks to pick, and your character progression will slowly grind to a halt, even as you level up your character barely improves, and you're just stuck fighting the same enemies over and over again hoping that the next part of the story is coming up soon. This game fails both as a CRPG and as an ARPG.

Play this game only for nostalgia purposes. Otherwise, do not even bother. Only "good" part of this game is the amount of detail it has in the character creation.