Legends of Dawn is not Skyrim, hell it's not even Dragon's Dogma or Kingdoms of Amalur. Oh, it tries to be; Dreamatrix's fantasy RPG trots out every feature and move in the playbook of nearly every successful RPG and tries to combine them into a sort of superball of an RPG, but the result is more of a mooshy pile of failed ideas and game breaking bugs. Legends of Dawn fails in almost every way and should have never been released as a full game, even if it is only $20.

"...the same tired story that's been dragged out for decades..."

To say that Legends of Dawn barely even tries to be anything more than a cheap cash in on the success of games like Skyrim is a bold and flat out lie. Just look at the game's story - a hero needs to find the pieces of a magical relic that some bad guys broke. That's it. It's the same tired story that's been dragged out for decades and seems reserved for SNES era games. There's no hint at hidden meanings or morals, no attempt at story swerves or even interesting characters. This is the definition of the bare minimum.

Legends of Dawn is completely unfinished and it shows at almost every turn. Draw distances are no more than fifteen feet ahead of you so the game just sprouts giant blades of green grass everywhere you turn to try to distract you from it (spoiler: it doesn't work). The game is seemingly built on the idea of random encounters as nothing in the story makes sense, characters and plot ideas are introduced but dropped with no thought or mention minutes later and perhaps worst is that the game often seems to be confused by it's own story. I was constantly told one thing by one character, but then told the complete opposite by another.

"Legends of Dawn is littered with game breaking bugs..."

If that wasn't bad enough, Legends of Dawn is littered with game breaking bugs that make the game nearly unplayable. I went through a good portion of the game for this review, only to have the game crash every time I went to save. Characters get stuck in walls and objects and I was even stopped from leveling up my character at one point for no apparent reason. Combat in Legends of Dawn seems to work, but it may as well be broken, you click on enemies to attack them. That's it. There are no special moves and no subtle nuances, just the bare minimum like the rest of the game. It's painful and dumb. And painfully dumb.

It may be early, but Legends of Dawn is an early contender for worst game of the year. It takes ideas that worked (and often worked well) in other fantasy RPGs and mangles it into a messy ball of gaming clichés and terrible design that no one should ever have the misfortune of playing. There are undeniably better games to play and they're about the same price if not cheaper. You owe it to yourself to play great crafted games like Skyrim, and not this jumbled failure of a game.