Beat the TBOL a few days ago and I must tell: the most decent of the indy's commercial games, which I would suggest anyone, who has choice to buy only a few games(trust me, I passed quite a few of those commercial games, not considering the millenium series)
Important: if you played laxius power before TBOL - it may spoil the ending of TBOL big time.(may not, depending on your memory and deduction)
In laxius power there was a dialogue(god I don't even remember which chapter it was, but probably LP3) where there was a dialogue, where you were told that demons can talk to animals.
This along with the suspicious start made me assume from the beginning that jordan was a demon or aligned with them. But past that I had another theory - Jordan did this all on purpose(ressurecting demons), hiding it from his party afterwards.
Also the people in the castle all looked suspicious from the beginning(I am actually surprised not all of them were partnered with demons for some reason.. the king for example looked the most suspicious, I swear I could bet 100$ that he was one of the masterminds behind the whole plan)
But unless you count that - story was pretty good, there weren't too many twists, but it was a strong 4 for sure.
What I loved the most - like in most others indi games - the Characters:
Jordan - well, I can't tell if I loved him or hated him the most lol. I loved him character wise - he was a bit overly proud of the powers he had, but the personality was pretty good - egoistic, but not disrespectful. He also acted a bit more mature headly than random big time.
Probably loved him more than random, he seems worth of being a random father so to say... actually I wouldn't be surprised if the child he had with melusine would be random, who would the run away from being a future king to become a wanderer like father XD
But I hate having spent so much on developing him just so that he becomes weaker than hans lol(also he can equip what 3 or 4 weapons throughout whole game and 1 of this is from the secret traditional shop? o-o too low for main hero for sure XD the nunchaku from traditional shop pretty much lasted until I repaired the secret rod, which afterwards lasted till the end o-o)
Hans - hands down, with 1 or 2 dialogues he had, he impressed me enough to make him my most used character. I realy expected to grow a beast out of this chicken XD
Too bad nothing happened in lvl 99, I thought that him wanting to stop being the bottom of food chain was a personal challenge or something XD
Animals - quite useful, much better than in LP series, as all have their own use basically. Also what I loved is animal balance(tiger>bear>wolf), loved that the strength realy depended on type of animal and even with lvl 99 the chicken wouldn't be as strong as pacha at his starting level.
Also cow/horse/raccoon/fox all had their own interesting uses(first for milk, which was more of a for fun, 2nd was for world map fastening, 3rd and 4th helped in more than 1 quest)
Nagam - the biggest amount of funny dialogues were containing him, so he is a great character with his own personal goal.
Luis - overly proud dragon, reminded me of nash big time(also was quite strong like nash used to be, at least before everyone got overpowered relics in LP3)
Now onto main heroines:
Jasmine - the first you encounter, relations with jordan remind me of a random-wendala relations, something like slave/master. She was pretty fine, but I did betray her, so I can't tell much about her.
Melusine - the girl I chose.. well, she was practical let's say, just chose her to abuse to be honest - many advantages come with allying a princess I guess o-o Didn't have a single regret of choosing her - no matter what I did, I always saw melusine doing something good for you(be it paying for you or even giving you money directly or even helping someone in a side quest)
You could compare her to sarah from LP series - proud of herself, pretty active, but kind hearted. The only difference is sarah doesn't have an overly huge pride of her status, since well.. she wasn't someone to begin with, a simple elf XD Relations were also similiar to random-sarah.
Alex - well, pretty interesting character, a 'popular girl'. She was pretty lovely, but why do all weak girls tell they are fighters(melusine and alex), while some like zetta, who actually seems the strongest in the world never ever mentioned her power o-o
Choosing chars from different schools - interesting system, where you can pick chars, but it would be great if they at least described their powers BEFORE I chose, like a fast party display or something, didn't want to bother with save/load + you never know what spells they get with lvls.. I wanted to choose ana's school first, since ana looked awesome, almost as demonical as jordan and she sounded like she was strongest, but then I chose zetta/zara, since I simply have some fetish for melancholic girls(but it turned out they were crazily strong too, so I enjoyed my choice, doubt that even ana could surprass those 2, but didn't try her, so can't tell)
Well, enough with the chars.
Sounds, Graphics, Mapping - pretty good, it's a 5-, since it had some texture misses, so in some places you could walk through walls or even partly walk in the air(I think I clicked on every tile in this game, so I found quite a lot of those bugs lol) and knowing you I was waliking around searching for a secret, before finally realising this was either a bug or tease XD That's all you and your random secrets, I even still remember the sword dropping from the sky in LP3, so in some places that looked suspicious I even left to make tea just in case there will be something along those lines XD
Side quests/secrets - not that rewarding most of the time, out of 15 or so hidden objects only 1 or 2 were equips and out of 3 equips only 1 was actually more worth it than shop one.
Also some side quests didn't even give any reward, which is weird. In some you had to find hidden reward which is pretty logical, but not having a reward at all can be sad.
If I were to make positive/negative sides of the game compared to other commercial games, it would look like this:
+: Good characters(but that counts for most of your games tho)
Enjoyable storyline, doesn't get boring at the very least, so you have interest throughout whole game.
Probably the most mature out of commercial games up to the date(it could still be better, but anything's better than having 99% of only polite dialogues as in most of other commercial only games, jordan added at least a bit of mildly harsh dialogues)
Variety of choices that affect ending in some way(although not as hugely as it may have been)
-: No puzzles/minigames/something unique(I loved such stuff, like blades of heaven used to have or a few small lever games in LP series, anything would be good, as long as it distracts from the same killing of stuff over and over)
Not challenging/too many encounters(I consider there should be quality over quantity in random battles - battles happened way too often and they were way too easy to enjoy, need to be the other way - less battles, but actually challenging and rewarding)
Balance is rather bad(spells were too weak, especially single target, some weapons were overly strong - I look at you, mortel and legendary assassin sabre.. although both are optional rewards,having even those 2 makes close to any battle last 1 turn)
Overall though, it was realy enjoyable, especially compared to all the other stand alone 1 chapter games and the few negative points it had didn't prevent from having fun with it :D