Please be aware that this is actually half a game - the second installment (The Three Musketeers: Milady's Vengeance) carries on from the moment this game ends - therefore the ending to this first installment is a somewhat abrupt and unexpected cliffhanger. You play as d'Artagnan and leave your home village on your knackered old horse to travel to Paris and enlist in the Musketeers. Once there you find yourself in an atmosphere of intrigue, conspiracy and secret love-affairs. Not being particularly acquainted with the story of The Three Musketeers, I can only assume that the game's plot follows that of the book and I was quickly drawn into the story and eager to see how it would progress. This game is perhaps best described as an R.P.G.- Lite. As with any typical Role-Playing Game you explore your surroundings, talk to people, go on missions and quests and engage in combat. You level up and you raid chests, barrels and crates to gain items and money to upgrade your weapons and clothing. However unlike the majority of R.P.G.s, the story isn't open-ended (being based on the book, it has to follow the story) and you have to do most tasks and quests in a certain order. You can't get lost as a set of footprints leads to where you need to go, although you can turn these off for more of a challenge. Also there aren't pages of menus to wade through or a million stats to attend to (just 4 - attack, defence, honour and musket fire-power which all improve as you level up and can be further improved by equipping weapons and clothing) and you don't have to worry about magic or mana or whether you can survive a lightning attack with the hat you're wearing and all the other complications that deter many from playing R.P.G.s. In fact combat is simple yet effective (and authentic) - it's in real-time and is semi-automatic. You click on an opponent to engage them in combat, but then d'Artagnan pretty much fights the duels himself, thrusting and parrying with no user input needed. You have no control over defense and so you

I am gushing over this game. I knew within probably 10 minutes or less that I'd be buying it. I've been telling everybody that i know who plays pc/mac games to go and try this out. It is NOT a mass-produced thoughtless, mindless, hastily put together game like everything else out there. Nuff said. Great piece of work & I cant wait to try whatever else is related to this. I hear there are sequels - I HOPE there are sequels!