This movie/game tells the story of a party of adventurers sent to capture a rogue Cleric of Pholtus and bring him back to his temple. The situation gets complicated though when the party meets another group intent on stopping him more permanently...
The movie plays for segments lasting up to 3 minutes, before presenting the viewer with a choice of which way the characters should progress the story. After selecting a choice, the movie continues along that path, presenting another choice every couple of minutes through the movie. A full 'viewing' of the film takes about 40 minutes.
As one other viewer noted, it is not possible to fast-forward through scenes that you have seen before, BUT you CAN use the chapter skip button on your DVD to skip to the end of the scene and straight to the next choice. This means that the absence of a fast forward is a very minor annoyance.
The story changes quite significantly depending on the choices made, though these different arcs will tend to rejoin later in the film. Some choices can result in death, though if these are midway through the film an option to restart at the last choice made is given. There are 4 different endings, each with differing amounts of success.
Dungeons and Dragons players (especially 3rd Edition) will see many aspects of the game faithfully reproduced in the movie. Spells, creatures and even some of the standard characters appear. I was pleased to see that this is not a 'kiddy' film, covering everything with cotton wool the way that the Dungeons and Dragons film did.
While the animation won't win any awards, it does the job and looks pretty good. My major gripe is the wooden animation in many fight sequences.
My rating of 7 assumes that the viewer will be at least familiar with the Dungeons and Dragons setting. Casual viewers may find it rates closer to a 6. I look forward to seeing more of these movies released in the future.
