Nightcaster is a pretty old title for the US people and it’s probably already a budget title by now. I got the game a few months back and it took me a while to finish it between school, thesis and finals.
It’s actually your basic rpg with a world that has fallen into eternal darkness and can only be saved by a young magician named Arran. And guess what magical powers you can rely on? Fire, water, light and dark… All non hardcore rpg gamers are probably running like hell and to be honest, I can't blame them.

If the story isn’t good, what will be then? Checking out the graphics doesn’t really help the game much. Although it’s supposed to be part of the whole “eternal darkness” thing this game has going on, the graphics are just too dark and get depressing after a few hours. They are pretty detailed but not at munchkin’s odyssey level. The monsters have these silly colours that make them easy to spot and all but realistic. The only good point of the graphics is the effects of the spells which are more then ok.

The sound of the game is just present but it doesn’t do anything more than that. At some times it was just a bit too absent but nothing wrong in this department. The speech is nicely done and sounds like professional voiceovers.

Now serving the main course: the gameplay. When you are just running around in the levels you get this third person view that makes its pretty easy to manoeuvre and look for stuff. Once you take out your magical staff you smoothly switch to a sort of top view. Why you ask? Well it wasn’t that clear to me at first but after a few minutes I got the whole point. Your staff has this magical ball in front that you can move with your stick, all the way around you. The spells you cast are aimed towards the ball so it’s possible to run away and still attack the monsters behind you. The top view makes it easier to fight and navigate at the same time. Too bad the fights are a bit easy
The rest of the gameplay is pretty mediocre and it got boring after a while. The ending is pretty sweet though.

So what can we conclude for this game? Except from the very nice battle engine we have a pretty standard game that never ever rises above the rpg mass. A real shame if you ask me.