Lionheart is a very dark fantasy based on a combination of the Crusades of the 12th century and the Inquisition of the 15th century. Before I get into this, let me make clear that I do not rate demos unless specifically requested.

Graphics: Simply gorgeous. His characters and NPCs are all rendered in 3D, Max McGee's maps are beautifully made. Everything in this game appears to be custom. In fact, all of the artwork is simply splendid. The only thing that bothers me is the facechips, which have a distinct Poser or Daz3D quality to them.

Music: The music is not custom, but it definitely fits the dark mood and atmosphere of this very gothic game. Excellent selection for this demo.

Writing: Story telling is excellent, again, but it's a bit verbose. The beginning is long and it's a considerable amount of time before you get to gameplay. True, most of this goes to setting the scene and to character development. The scene in which Lionheart is assigned to his mission cannot be truncated without hurting the narrative, but the scene in which he goes over the mission plan with his team members could certainly stand to be shortened. Keep it for the demo because obviously, this is the only time to introduce these characters, but for the main game, there's absolutely no reason these characters can't be fleshed out a little bit later, after you've gone on a mission with them.

The intro, which you have the option to skip, almost doubles the time from the moment you start a new game to the time you actually get into gameplay. There's a great deal of lore to this game, most of which could probably be scattered throughout actual story telling so that the player doesn't have to deal with a sudden information dump at the beginning of the game. Thankfully, it's also put in a Word file so you can always choose to read that and skip the intro without missing anything. The only bad thing about this is that you miss some beautifully drawn images.

The map scene bothers me. You go from this dark setting of political intrigue where you're being given a quest to destroy the root of evil in the world to the world map and two years later. The transition is a little jarring. Suddenly, this dark game about corrupt forces in the government and church becomes a war game. Surely there's a way to marry these two concepts without such a jarring transition.

Now, this has nothing to do with my feelings about the game at this point, but are the introduction of dwarves and elves really necessary? What do they add to the narrative besides a cliche alerting us that this is a fantasy as if demons attacking the city and witches causing trouble didn't announce that fact? It looks to me like you're going for a Tolkien scale type of story, but the narrative as it stands doesn't really call for that, and is fine on it's own. That's just a suggestion. These alternate races just seem a bit like dead weight to the narrative. I worry once you get deep into the narrative, you'll end up painting yourself into a corner.

Gameplay: As for navigating the map, there's only one speed; moderately slow, but that's the type of game this is. It doesn't really bother me that there isn't a shift run. What's going to be of concern to the player is combat. It's a little screwy to work out at first, but once you've figured it out, it plays very smoothly. The characters are very well balanced. You've got Lionheart, who is a heavy-hitter, you've got a support, and you've got a third fighter that's rather the equivalent of a spellsword. Button mashing will work for the weaker enemies like the winterwulf's, but tougher guys, like the griffin need your players working together. Pay attention to break points. Once you've used special abilities so often, you'll need to replenish your break points, which is done in battle. It could use some polishing, but all in all, it's very well done.

Conclusion: There is a lot of good writing in here and the game has tremendous potential. I worry about beautiful games, though as often too much attention is given to the looks and not the gameplay.

If this were a finished game, I'd give it three stars, maybe 3 and a half if the story didn't end up getting too convoluted.