Sound

Clang Ching Bang!

The sound effects are quite decent and believable. When fighting one of your enemies, you sometimes bounce your sword off his armor and the clang is quite believable. Attacking with your sword gives off a good "whoosh", and if you do a special move with it you'll be pleasantly surprised by the audible feedback. Weak weapons (like the catapult/slingshot) sound weak while stronger ones sound stronger. The sounds are not necessarily 100% realistic but hey, they're fun.

Talk to the merchant.

Ooh - the buy menu

Raise Your Voice and Be Heard

The speech within the game was really standard stuff - clear and to the point. Nothing in particular to recommend it, but at least the actors didn't embarrass the game by attempting more than they should. There was a distinct lack of emotion in certain scenes where it should be present, but that's a minor quibble. If you get annoyed with it, there's an option to switch to text only.

He's the chronicler AKA save point.

Just look at how amazing that looks

Dialogue is linear with no choices presented and the most important stuff is always scripted, so you can't help but follow the plot. Still, it really pays off talking to everyone you can, since they often give hints, offer items or might even teach you a special move. There is also quite a bit of wit and humor to be found. The characters all take on a lot of personality through both the voice acting and the lines they are given.

Nasty mistake there

The 'pie' menu

Music

The music is calm and pleasant, fitting the scenery very well. Although the game has a dark premise, it doesn't go all out to support it. Similarly, the music follows the same track. The music is in wav format (but they look like MP3s…) so it takes up a fair chunk of your hard drive (over 100MB) but the quality is good. Songs tend to be either melancholy, foreboding or threatening. They fit in quite nicely as a foil to the generally cheery backgrounds, giving the feeling that yes, this is a beautiful world, but all is not well.

You can download some of the songs here.