It's the little things that take an average game to that next level.  A game may have a great concept or an intriguing story but if the execution is lacking, all of that potential amounts to nothing.  Sadly, this is the case for Necromancer by Deadmanintheocean.  The game has a lot going for it.  The story is not your average noble-knight-saves-the-world kind that we have seen time and time again.  It also has a unique leveling system that allows for some truly specialized character creation.  Unfortunately, the game is lacking the polish it takes to make these features truly shine.


As I said, this is not your typical fantasy RPG story.  I mean, there is a castle and there is a plot to overthrow the king and take over the world but the characters are unique and the setup is original.  Put it this way: the main character is not on a quest to collect some element-based crystals in order to defeat the Ultimate Evil.  At least not in this demo.  I don't know where future releases will take the story but for now it is fairly original.   The graphics are nice and the music really helps to set the mood, too.


The leveling system in the game is probably its strongest feature.  Throughout the course of the adventure, you find orbs scattered around the game world.  These orbs can be used to purchase stat points which can then be used to customize your party members in any manner that you see fit.  This amount of freedom is truly fantastic and reminds me a lot of the leveling systems that we see in games such as Oblivion and Mass Effect.  It allows the player to mould the characters in a manner that is conducive to their particular playing style.  Of course, this would be far more useful if the battles in this game weren't so mind numbingly boring.


This brings us to the things that hold this game back.  The battles are a huge problem.  I have never before played a game where the battles were this slow.  Adding to the tedium is the fact that all of the enemies have way too many HP.  The player learns some new skills and attacks but there is never a need to use them in battle because the normal attacks do just as much (if not more) damage.  So what you end up with are some highly-customized heroes all performing their basic attacks.  This seems to defeat the purpose of having such a great leveling system. 


The menus are sometimes set up in a strange manner, too.  The first time I traded my orbs in, I thought I only had one option to spend them on.  So instead of buying permanent stat increases, I bought temporary HP bumps.  It wasn't until the second time that I played through the game that I realized there was another menu that could only be accessed by quitting out of the first menu.  This is a very odd setup, especially when neither menu is even close to being full.  Why not just put all of the available options on one menu?


The dialogue could also use some cleaning up.  It isn't the worst I've seen, but it isn't the best either.  The characters didn't really have much... well, character.  Towards the end of the demo, it was fairly obvious that the author rushed through some of the text boxes.  Actually, towards the end, some of the NPCs didn't have any dialogue at all.  I also have to mention the interrogation mini game.  I can appreciate the author trying to insert a light-hearted easter egg into the game but this was just lame.  Honestly.   


Overall, this game has a lot of potential.  With a little time and effort, this could be a very enjoyable gaming experience.  The battles desperately need to be tweaked so that they go faster and that they take advantage of the fantastic leveling system.  It's a good start and hopefully Deadmanintheocean will stick with this game long enough for us to see a couple updates.