An attempt at a serious third-person RPG. No spoilers.
The game is announced for the Windows platform.
LYRICAL INTRODUCTION
I played well, but I can’t say that I thoroughly understood this world. I am very far from some of the announced things. Therefore – first glance.
There is also a very twisted. Our hero comes to his senses after the portal explosion. The partners died, and the protagonist seems to have absorbed some powerful artifact. Something needs to be done urgently, otherwise the demons will completely loose their belts. I won’t spoil how exactly, but the plot is presented in an original way.
The gameplay is an ARPG that tries to lean towards RPG.
At the beginning we are introduced to a relatively simple but interesting combat system. It consists of combining regular melee (perhaps there is also ranged, but I haven’t seen it yet) combat with magic.
Before you go on an adventure, you will need to show that you have mastered the basic combat skills.
The simplicity of the battles is only apparent; here you can:
– Throw simple and heavy blows.
– Parry with Daze.
– Supplement regular strikes at the right time with magic, including from one-time scrolls.
“Like in the best houses” – there is stamina and its consumption.
Among other things, this game implements a system where every enemy is dangerous. Several bad decisions in battle usually mean losing, especially if the battle is against a more or less equal opponent.
You need to very carefully analyze each battle and think about how ready the hero is for a particular clash. It is imperative to keep an eye on your health level; if you are beaten, you can die from one simple blow, not to mention if the crit passes. Some boar can kill you with a couple of pokes. This world is harsh.
But there are opportunities to even the odds. If you sneak up from behind or successfully hit from the side, you can count on a crit in your favor.
Character leveling is not fast. And when all-slots-casino.uk levels are gained, this is not enough, you also need to find an appropriate teacher who can help in development. The leveling tree is small but cute.
The game has a huge amount of loot, materials and recipes for crafting, a variety of useful consumables, there is a lot to delve into. Each item is accompanied by a detailed description.
The world is very big and in some ways beautiful. It is clear that a lot of work has been put into this, there are many secret places and points of interest. It’s impossible to say that the picture is magical. But to my old-fag eye it was pleasant (with the exception of a few joyless moments).
AND NOW ABOUT THE SAD THINGS
I read quite a lot of information about the problems in the game reviews. There really are bugs. I tried to systematize them, this is what came out:
– Poor jumping and climbing, the hero does not cling where he should obviously cling. Since I stubbornly climbed every pixel in the starting location, I can state that it’s good if the hero climbs where he should climb unambiguously and without problems after the fifth time. I found at least two such places, moreover, they are all significant and good loot is hidden somewhere there.
– Light and shadow. Everything looks fine on the street. When entering under the minimal roof, it’s as if night is falling.
– When opening chests, an ugly description of the item appears from the top left cell, which covers almost everything. It would be nice to implement a mouse cursor here and have the description appear only when the mouse is hovered over the item.
– In some places the fonts are relatively small. I think it could have been made bigger.
– Textures and gaps in them. It doesn’t happen all the time, but I caught this about 5-7 times in about five hours. I didn’t specifically look for such places, there would probably be more. This also includes a display problem if the hero enters a room with a low ceiling.
Graphic bloopers.
Graphic bloopers.
– The world seems harsh, but for some reason in the village you can calmly pocket everything you see. I don’t seem to be against such a freebie, but somehow it’s not implemented well. I would like some kind of system for theft and fines. To be fair, it should be noted that there are locked chests, you will have to tinker with them somehow until you understand how.
– Double-clicking on a new save/load works poorly and is unstable. Sometimes you have to press five times to get what you want.
– Poor optimization. Much more “heavy” games load the video card less, here it thrashes almost at maximum, despite the fact that everything that is possible is turned down in MSI Afterburner.
GALLOP THROUGH EUROPE
There is a construction system. I found various building materials, but I still don’t understand what to do with them. It has been announced that we will almost spoil the magic academy. But so far even a small hut does not want to be built.
Let’s look at the pros and cons of the game and summarize.
+ Good music and sound.
+ Interesting plot, many NPCs.
+ A large number of weapons, armor and other equipment.
+ Good hero development system. You not only need to gain levels, but also find a teacher.
+ Excellent, very dangerous enemies.
+ Good Russian text localization.
THINGS THAT CAN BE BOTH A PLUS AND A MINUS:
+- The graphics are certainly not 2022. But this is purely an individual perception. Personally, after 10 minutes it no longer bothered me, with the exception of rare jambs with textures and dips in them.
– Everything from the section "And now about the sad".
CONCLUSIONS OBJECTIVE
The game really has a ton of problems. But, in fact, it turns out that these are minor technical bugs that can be easily corrected if desired and which, of course, affect the process, but not critically – you can play. I hope the shortcomings will be corrected, then it will become more noticeable that a lot of work has been put into this.
CONCLUSIONS ARE SUBJECTIVE
So what happened is Gothic, which, in their own words, inspired the developers? To me, it looks like a mixture of Gothic (some mechanics and relative difficulty out of the blue) and Two Worlds (high density of interesting places). It’s immediately obvious that the smoke is thinner, especially considering the year of release, but it’s quite good, it’s played with nostalgia. The world is interesting to explore, enemies don’t let you sleep, there’s a lot of loot and secrets, the game doesn’t lead you by the hand. There are many small technical problems that, like a fly in the ointment, can ruin a barrel of honey.
PS: I probably didn’t cover all the aspects, I might have missed something. I will be glad to add/correct the review or answer questions along the way in the comments.