UnEpic

The Good
Zeratul is a very fun partner-character and the way he's implemented into the story makes for a fun chemistry with the protagonist.

The quests are generally decent and often require problem-solving skills to overcome.

The castle is very much drenched into tabletop logic.

A very fair challenge with plenty of difficulty settings to tune the experience.

Bosses are very fun to beat.

The Bad
There is no real freedom of progression.

The writing is obnoxiously horrible with many spelling/grammar errors.

Main character is an obnoxious douche whose every line involves drugs, sex or a pop-culture reference.

Random loot doesn't work at all.

The Bottom Line
I play a lot of tabletop RPG in my spare time; a friend of mine runs a custom game that, despite using plenty of fantasy conventions, has a very rich lore and plenty of political intrigue. It's a very story-driven game, but I've also played different games that were more about the combat, the loot and the quests. The latter is the type of tabletop game UnEpic seeks to emulate, though it's methods are, admittedly, a bit odd.

In UnEpic you take on the role of Daniel, a terrible tabletop gamer who leaves the game for a piss and is magically transported to a castle. He concludes that his friends must have drugged him and decides to play out the adventure before him, which quickly results in a phantom trying (and failing) to posses him and getting stuck in Daniel's body. Daniel quickly learns that, in order to return home, he must defeat the lord of the castle and that his hallucination might be a little more real than he initially thought.

What I like most about the story is the inclusion of the phantom and, to be quite honest, he is more interesting than the main character could ever hope to be. He takes on a sort of Navi-esque role where he advises Daniel throughout the adventure, but often his words are outright lies and deceptions. As the story progresses, though, he also develops in a very interesting way, based on whether or not the player has triggered certain events to occur.

The main character, on the other hand, is an obnoxious douchebag from start to finish. Part of the fun of a tabletop RPG lies in abandoning everything you know about luxury and technology and simply losing yourself in the world created by the host, but Daniel instead chooses to go through this fantasy casually referencing all kinds of video games, movies and science fiction. This makes it difficult to really immerse yourself in the world and it just feels out of place for a game that laments the tabletop genre.

Aside from the main story, you can also choose to pick up several quests as you venture through the castle. These are usually pretty fun and never demand you to go too far out of your way to complete them. Most quests also reward you with items or gold, instead of experience points, which is nice, since it means you aren't punished for skipping them too much. I can especially recommend the Pure Spirit quests, as they really influence the story in a major way.

The second most-important part of a tabletop is, of course, the statistics. This is the part of the game that is very disappointing, though, as the game doesn't really offer a great amount of skills to play around with. You got your basic set of skills that govern all your physical weapons and then another set of skills for all magic schools; that is all there is. A real tabletop would offer skills like: sneaking, lock-picking, cunning (disabling traps) and smithing, which would also open up a lot of new play-styles AND increase the replay-value of the game. A real tabletop RPG also wouldn't lock all the magic schools and have you unlock them one by one through the story, as that means a player can't possibly focus on becoming a mage of any sort; if you were planning on playing a necromancer, for example, then I hope you don't mind hoarding points, because the associated magic school isn't unlocked until the very end of the game.

It also feels very pointless to specialize in any skill, since each enemy has weaknesses and strengths, but they are also generally limited to certain areas. For example, once you reach the catacombs, it suddenly becomes very useful to have leveled up your skill in maces, as they do tons of damage to skeletons. However, maces are almost always weaker than swords in any other part of the game, which are, in turn, useless against skeletons. Skeletons, subsequently, do appear outside of the catacombs section, but not in any numbers great enough to be worth the skill points you'd have to put into maces. It's a very obnoxious problem that I can only really attribute to the designer's inexperience.

The game also boasts randomized loot, which is true, but this isn't something like Borderlands where all the data for weapons and armor could fill up a decent hard drive. UnEpic has a very short list of weapons and the differences between them are in effect alone, i.e. they all use the same few sprites. Aside from one or two exceptions, I found most of these weapons to be quite pointless, like a scimitar that did 20% more damage against plants, which dropped two levels after I finished the freaking garden stage. You'll probably end up using the standard items from the store most of the time.

The presentation is pretty spot-on, however, and I am not just talking about the serviceable pixelated art-style. The game has some very useful audio and visual ques that help out very well in the gameplay. An enemy that spots you, for example, receives a large exclamation mark over his head, Metal Gear Solid style. A sound-effect also briefly plays over the background music to let you know that you've been spotted and may have to defend yourself. An equally fitting sound-effect plays whenever you activate a trap, which plays just soon enough for you to potentially step backwards, but also with a timing that makes you say "oh crap" whenever you hear it. The standard noises that indicate low health are also present, but instead of repeatedly playing these constantly, there is enough time in-between beeps to give your ears some rest, and the pitch is also not too high.

Sprites are also very nice, though nothing to be truly impressed by. One little touch I did enjoy was that Daniel goes naked if you choose to unequip or drop his armor.

Overall, UnEpic is not a great RPG, but since the indie genre is particularly starving for decent role-playing games at this point, and it comes at a pretty low price, it's probably worth your time if you're looking for a less-complex RPG or a distraction from more conventional games.