So I'm about five or six hours into "Brütal Legend" and my love for this game continues to grow. Ironically, the characters in this comedic and often irreverent ode to heavy metal rock are more fully rounded than some book series I read, which says a lot for the overall quality of the world building and the writing.

Their various asides make the characters stand out in very realistic contrasts to their finer qualities. Lars Halford, the elected king of the Ironheade resistance to Emperor Doviculus and the evil Tainted Coil Army, comes across as noble in his cut scenes when delivering speeches, and yet hilariously is pushed to new levels of anger when he sees a poster mocking his washboard abs by drawing him as an obese slob and in another scene, asks you "How long should I let my hair grow?" after a particularly major battle and before a very shocking cut scene. 'Vain' is not the right word to describe him; the characterization comes across as 'Proud' and I think the fact that this distinction is made without shoehorning it into the storyline in an overly obvious way is awesome!

The addition of the tactical command elements could have been handled better. I understand where they were going with it, but the command buttons shift depending on which form Eddie (the main character you control is in), so when you fly, the buttons sending units to certain places differ from when you are on land, which is quite annoying. I think "Dragon Ages" handled this better - while issuing commands to your allies paused the action, they at least did what you directed them to do. I actually am fairly good with tactical battle systems, and more than once I found myself issuing orders, and then upon returning to the home base, found everyone waiting around. Only later did I realize that I had to be close to them so they could hear the orders. While this made sense, it was a bit weird considering that Eddie had a walky/talky that he used to communicate to HQ in cut scenes. It was just one thing that didn't make sense and actually was quite annoying during the larger scale battles. This becomes more annoying as the battles become larger and more epic, and it makes me thing that they should have stuck to one tactical command menu or command type regardless of where Eddie was. We'll see if this improves later on.

Regardless of that minor annoyance, I'm still having a ton of fun with this game, and I'm actually very invested in the characters that we are presented with. This actually manages to be more epic than most RPGs and JRPGs are; perhaps it is the merger of heavy metal operatic themes with the consistency with which the laws of this universe are applied make this one of the most fun games I've played in the last ten years. It reminds me more of "Full Throttle", "Kings Quest" and "Legend of Zelda" more so than all the imitators, knockoffs and amateur attempts to duplicate those games combined without being angsty. I actually feel a bit bad about buying this from the used game section - games this good deserve to get the validation that sales figures and profits deliver! Loving it!

TRAILER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V56Lmo-RRFA