Hard to be a God Preview

2404.org has dished up a short hands-on preview of Akella and Burut's upcoming RPG, Hard to be a God.
The combat is fairly simple: attack is the left mouse button, (perk) is the right mouse button, and the middle button is used for a fatal blow while your opponent is on the ground. One thing that I found to be lacking at this point is the opportunity to use the shields. I'm assuming it is either done automatically or will be added in but at this point, there didn't seem to be a way to defend yourself with the shields you can collect or purchase. Another aspect that I didn't really care for in regard to combat was that every time I attacked, the character would take a step forward. Keep attacking and the characters will run into each other, which can make it hard to avoid blows from the enemy.

The impression I received from the graphics was that the game seemed a bit dated. They're alright but certainly weren't impressive. The game has video settings but doesn't provide a widescreen resolution, which probably degraded the graphics a bit more for me. You are able to zoom in and out by scrolling with the mouse wheel and the viewpoint is almost a top-down view. I personally didn't enjoy this very much and always found myself wanting to tilt the camera up to see further ahead but didn't find a way to accomplish this. The view makes shooting the bow and arrow, for example, challenging. Even though you don't seem to really aim yourself, I always wanted to see further.