They have crafted Revenant, a game that could be called a “Diablo clone” in a sense, but they have taken what Diablo first created and implemented a slew of new ideas that help make it a fresh experience. Developer Cinematix has actually improved upon Blizzard’s forte, creating what is a much better game in the end.

The most apparent change from most of the other games on the market that are similar to this is that it abandoned the normal sprite-based characters in favor of the more flexible - and better looking - polygons. Another action RPG, DarkStone, also tried this same approach, but most of the characters were much simpler, which wasn’t necessarily a terribly bad thing, but Revenant looks much, much better. Pre-rendered backgrounds are still the order of the day, and Revenant’s are just as detailed as its competitors, if not more so. It is all exquisitely detailed, but at times seem too static, and it would have been a nice addition to see the backgrounds moving around a little more, instead of standing there looking only like fixed 2D bitmaps. For example, the water just sits there doing nothing. It doesn’t even move - at all!

When you first start playing Revenant, the main difference between it and Diablo isn’t readily apparent: combat. The developers have given you two options in how to go about fighting off the evils that inhabit the world of Ahkuilon. The easiest, and the one that I started using at first, was simply tapping on the mouse button and it will randomly pull out a move to slam upon the opponent. This works most of the time, but there are situations that this isn’t as effective because of one of Revenant’s new additions to the genre: the stamina bar. Every time you pull off an attack or run the stamina bar slowly decreases, but will regain quickly once you stop and let the character rest. Using the A, S and D keys, weak, medium, and hard blows can be utilized.

Sometimes on a fast enemy it would be to your advantage to use the A (weak) slash to get in a large succession of not as powerful, but much faster and less stamina intensive attacks. This new factor into combat helps make it less monotonous and more strategic, as you have to think which attacks would be the most useful and make it so you don’t have to bail out of a battle mid-way through to let the bar recharge.

Before I made it into the caves section of Revenant, the game hadn’t been that repetitious and boring. The caves, however, stretch on for what seems like (and if you want to find everything, are) hours and hours. And it isn’t like the scenery changes all that much, either. A new foe is placed in every once a while, but for the most part it is simply a matter of killing off a monk or spider-creature every couple of feet. Another problem that first uprooted itself in the caves was collision detection. I’d attempt to walk down a flight of stairs only to find myself stuck and unable to move in any direction. By waiting a few seconds this problem was usually easily remedied, but the quirk shows itself constantly, making it a huge annoyance.