It's free until you buy

The story to the game is a somewhat confusing tale of three people who become grouped together in various ways and are fighting their way through Byzan, the main city, to get to The Soul Siren, the bad lady.

The gameplay is pretty straight forward. You pick one of the three heroes an assassin, a mercenary or a wizard.

Each hero is a different class. The wizard is rage, the mercenary is close-up and the assassin is a mix of range and close fighting.

There are no cool multiple button attack, just four different button attacks. After a while of button mashing it does free a little boring, even though sometimes the enemies will get a few good hits on you and you'll have to really think about how to fight them, but not often enough.

Fight your way through the level, collect the gold and then upgrade your hero with the gold by buying new weapons and armor. After upgrading go to the next level and do it all over again.

The biggest draw back to the game is that it tricks you into getting it. The game is free to download, which sounds great because it's not a demo. It's the whole game. You can play the first and 1/8 of the next level, but no more than that without money.

If you want to really play the game you must give them the 800 Microsoft points or $10 to buy a single character and only play that one character.

There is also online, but if you didn't buy a character you can't play it. Online gameplay is exactly the same as playing alone, but there are areas in the game that requires you to have a partner to get pass. One puzzle was to hit four pegs before the timer runs out, which would need another person to do it.

The cut scenes are paintings with voice overs. They worked well enough, but it was a bit difficult to know who was talking if you didn't already know their voices. The music when audible was okay. It fit into the game, but it wasn't anything special.

Crimson Alliance wouldn't be a first thought recommendation because of the ridiculous pricing scheme, but if you really wanted to play a "Diablo" type of game, then Crimson Alliance would be a decent substitute.