It seems these days there's no end to the number of games that try to integrate repetitive hack and slashing, but still making it fun. This is no easy feat to pull off because it's, well, repetitive. Still, there are things that make these kinds of games fun to play, like the enjoyment of making your character stronger, giving him or her more and more gear, or facing bigger and tougher foes (with the ability to defeat them, of course). Most games do some of these things well. A select few do all of them well. Others… don't do any of them well. Welcome to The Chosen: Well of Souls.

The game starts out poorly, with some of the worst voice acting I've ever heard. I feel like they recorded someone speaking as he fell asleep then replayed it at various speeds. The words spoken aren't much better, describing a cliched plot of evil this stealing powerful that to destroy the world. Enter hero from stage left to save the day! You're given the choice between three classes, a monk, hunter and an alchemist, which are really just fancy names for a fighter, a bowman, and a magic-user. Though choosing your character does have some minor effect on the game (notably your starting stats), it's almost inconsequential. You share the same skill trees, same spells, and same equipment.

Like any hack-and-slash game, you're given a linear path to follow, a slew of enemies to kill, loot to collect, and a cycle to repeat ad nauseam. To aid you in your quest, you'll find NPCs on the road that will follow you and fight until they are dead. So, about ten minutes after finding them, you'll need new allies, since corpses generally don't fight too well. You're given the ability to summon two monsters two your assistance: a large, slow, melee-oriented golem; and a bee-like flying neferkar. Both gain experience as they fight, their stats (vitality and strength) can be improved, and in general they're quite a bit of help. Except for their revival fee.

Most games give you a lot of stuff to pick up, such as gold, items, scrolls, bits of monsters, bits of humans, whatever. The point is, you get a lot of cash and you feel rich until you purchase your next Sword of Infinite Death (mana+2). Well of Souls never does this. The offerings of enemies are meagre to the point of poverty, and there's always minor costs that quickly eat away at all your funds, leaving you with very little to actually upgrade yourself with. This problem gets mitigated as you progress, but you're often left at the edge of destitution, just because you had the audacity to purchase a new shield. Your equipment deteriorates like paper in a rainstorm, and you have to repair it constantly. Then there's the issue of actually getting new equipment (good luck with that). Want to revive your dead golem/bee-thing? That's another charge right there. Then there's the cost of potions, spell books, scrolls, identifying spells that cost more than the item itself, and anything else. You never have any money, the enemies never drop any interesting loot, and you're thus generally stuck with the same continuously half-broken equipment at level fifteen that you had at level five.

The game's Cauldron of Creation is a neat idea that would've been fantastic, had the financial model allowed you to do anything with it. Essentially, you have a base item, and you add more items to it. Each item does things like add more attack (weapons), defence (armour), special abilities, durability, and so forth. So, the idea of a mage wearing a simple piece of heavily modified cowhide leather (the only armour that can be equipped without raising his strength) is enough to warrant interest. Unfortunately, like everything else in the game, the cauldron costs a ridiculous amount of cash that just can't be amassed.

Perhaps the only positive thing that can be said about the title is its uniqueness in the skill system: there are three sets of skills titled 'offence,' 'defence,' and 'other,' each with a series of passive abilities. The key is that you can only select a single ability from each group at a time. Now, I mentioned this system was unique, not good. Because of this 'only one at a time' mechanic, combined with the clunky nature of switching between abilities, all you can really do is find a skill that you like in each group and upgrade it to the exclusion of all others. This would be easier if there were some useful skills though, as most of them are pretty useless and for whatever reason, they all max out after four upgrades.

Later on, you also get the ability to summon demons, powerful and immortal creatures that do quite a bit of damage. The problem here is that by 'later on', I mean hours and hours and hours of mind-numbing gameplay. The game mentions the summoning often in the manual and the in-game guide, but never mentions that you have to wait as long as you do for it, so for the longest time it almost feels as if it was added to the manual, but then completely forgotten about.

There're a lot of little things to nitpick as well. For one, the variation of enemies is just terrible. You'll be fighting the same enemies at the beginning of the game as many hours later (only they'll be larger, if that). There are also bugs here and there, like the time when my character's voice and appearance changed into a completely different class. There are periods of night and day, and monsters that benefit from the night, but there's no warning about the time changing, so there's nothing that really changes your gameplay. One minute it's bright and sunny, and seconds later the moon is up. Moving from nitpick to full-blown complaint: there's no multiplayer. No local-area, no Internet gameplay, nothing. How that was passed up in this kind of title is just beyond me.

The Chosen: Well of Souls doesn't really have anything going for it. It lacks all the elements that make this kind of game enjoyable: there's no sense of power or accomplishment as you progress, there's barely any variation in the enemies, there isn't even a challenge since teleporting back to the safe zone is as easy as pressing 'B' at any time, even during boss fights. The game is reduced to a mindless routine of repeatedly clicking, with no prospect of progression in sight. Only much later is the game's feeling of poverty somewhat lifted, but it's so far into the game that either you like it despite its many flaws or you're being forced to play it, so it doesn't matter anyway.