The gameplay is mostly fun and I really like the pixel-graphics. If you love RPGs like these, its probably something for you.. The main reason why I am not recommendig the game is the story. Its a story driven game, a lot of text, so it has a high value to me. Meaning it has to be good to be recommended. But that doesnt have to mean that you wouldnt like it. Maybe you do. But I dont.

The game isnt that long, since 2 optional quests can be skipped if wanted (I dont recommend skipping them). You cant miss them. The game is throwing them at you, when you progress the main story. If you ask yourself, why I am saying these are optional quests, its because they never mattered after that. All we learned there didnt affect the main story. Also they didnt felt like "main story". So I will just claim, that they are optional. Its only purpose would be leveling, I guess.

Now for the story: this is a big meh. Dont get me wrong, the first 90% of the story are good, really interesting and makes you want for more (I think?). But the last part of the story, the remaining 10%, is just awful. The game really built up a high expectation, but after the final boss, the explanation for everything is just. well, you know the old “Aliens” meme from that guy from history channel? Yeah, thats the explanation.

The game has taken inspiration from many different things, has built its own world on it, but in the end nothing its just meh. Its just “there” because it's cool? Because its mainstream? I am not satisfied.

Died in my second combat while trying to click on things to read about them and figure out how to play the game. Pretty unforgiving in that regard, that there isn't a confirmation or something before an action is performed. Also slightly annoyed that they go for a retro style just for the cool points. Not sure why people think it's cool to use ♥♥♥♥ graphics in a game.

Gameplay seems fun. If they retooled the thing so it has a better interface I'd give it another go, but if a game slaps me down this quickly due entirely to input error, I'm not about to subject myself to potentially more frustration because I misclick a button.

cons:

absolute no-nos
-- game takes away your inventory after you carefully loot and comb through the ship you start on -- instant downvote
-- completely illegible pseudo-90s font with some weird backshading that bakes it even more illegible. CAN NOT BE TURNED OFF even though there's a whole setting for it, 99% of the game text will remain unchanged.
-- graphics are way too low rez. you can barely even see what's supposed to be a chest and what's scenery. I understand the need to go somewhat low rez to keep cost down, but this is about half the detail you need to immediately understand what's what. this takes conscious effort to see stuff and it takes conscious effort to read the illegible fonts. it's annoying and makes the game not fun.


pet peeves:
- D&D system where you pre-choose how gimped your character is. i.e. a 'mage' can't use xyz and so on. never made any sense ever and only exists to force people into certain behaviors in pen and paper games. computer games do not need such incentives to make sure a group of 5 real people sitting next to eachother to play a pen and paper game don't all choose the same build.
it's stupid.
D&D is not for the heterosexual man, let's just put it like that.
if you make classes, use the Wizardry system where you can learn any class and skill with enough XP. and you can switch classes.

- game starts sequences from nowhere, like I click on something just to find out what's it supposed to be, *because you can't tell because it's so low rez* and suddenly there's this point of no return triggered and you watch some sequence you have no control over

pros:
+ story seems pretty decent
+ item descriptions and descriptions of skills and such exist and are actually helpful

I quite enjoyed this. Great art, satisfying battles, and a wonderful little world to pick apart.

Some parts felt unfinished in a rather unsatisfying way. Like the baby in the woods, I wandered around and got two different pop ups about it, but nothing ever resolved. Or dialogue never really changes with certain characters.

First few chapters were great until the later chapters. It's still good but it left me rather bittersweet.

come for the gameplay, stay for the story. H.P. Lovecraft, eat your heart out.

A love letter to CRPGs and retro-artstyle, which also happens to welcome newcomers of the genre with it's easy to learn but just deep enough systems. And the integration of information about the world lore and gameplay mechanics with just 1 right click above anything is amazing for people who wants to immerse into the game.

At first it starts slow and kind of dull, but after the first couple of hours and recruiting a pair of companions later, the game becomes addictive with the roll of dice in stat checks, the sink of metal into the flesh of monsters, the mage powerful spells blazing through enemies as the player rolls into succesive cascade effects, supports casting powerful spells that change the tide of the entire battle, amazing.

The only complain is that I can't sell "legal" items if a "stolen" item is on the stack.

I'm looking forward to the next adventure in the world of SKALD.

8.5/10 Great game

As far as entertainment for cost goes, I'd definitely say Skald is worth it. Classic old school RPG that really managed to scratch some lovecraftian and cosmic horror itches for me. I enjoyed the theme and the world, and would happily revisit it for another game or dlc.

That being said, there are some glaring issues people need to know about. Firstly, this game should NOT be played on steam deck or a handheld. I bought it thinking it'd be great on my legion go, but the control scheme (which you can't edit) is so god awful I couldn't even get my character made and get through the first encounter in my first night trying to play the game. I seriously doubt the devs tested it at all on handheld or with a controller, it's gotta be the worst control scheme ive ever had the displeasure of trying to sort out. Once on pc though, it was a much smoother experience.

That is, until the second half of the game where the performance became so bad I had to turn off the lighting, vsync, and
weather effects just to play, and I'm on a Lenovo Legion pro 7. Horribly unoptimized. I never had a stutter with bg3 on max settings but my pc couldn't handle the "fancy lighting" effects.

And one final gripe about the game design- a few quest necessary items and such are behind awareness checks. Meaning you can walk into the room you need to be in, but if your characters' invisible awareness check fails, the quest item straight up doesn't spawn in. Several times I had explored everywhere near where a quest doohickey was, and had to check the discussions only to find that I had passed it by a dozen times, but it didn't spawn in so I had to walk a few screens away multiple times just to get the quest item. Seriously, who locks progression behind perception checks? Any dm knows thats a terrible idea.

I also wasn't a huge fan of the ending, but it was definitely effective for the tone of the story.

Now, I know I just wrote several paragraphs ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on the game, but I still recommend it. If you like classic rpg's, and you like lovecraftian cosmic horror, then this game is definitely worth a purchase. I've stayed up past my bedtime for the past week playing because I was so drawn into it, but I wish I had known the things I pointed out before I picked it up.

It's good to understand what this game is, first. SKALD is a story about struggling very hard against entities and cosmic movements you can hardly understand, much less hope to prevent. As a writer and a lover of Horror and Fantasy books, it is also perhaps the best written game I can remember playing. The person who wrote this really knew what they were doing. There isn't a single bad quest, side-quest or encounter (except maybe the random encounters -- but you can turn those off). It's also one of the only video-games I can name which actually capture a sense Cosmic Horror, instead of just the tentacled and mind-flayer cloaked aesthetic. I'd definitely recommend this one. It's an experience you won't find elsewhere. The pixel art is also gorgeous.

It's not perfect, of course. I really would call it a "story you play" as much as a game. It's a campaign, basically. The game-play is good, and definitely nothing to sneeze at, but you can see through the cracks in its design. But I mostly say this because things are (for the most part) linear, with only a few side-quests, and no really big choices to make. Normally I wouldn't even bring this up (after all, I wouldn't critique a FPS campaign or a traditional Horror game for being too linear), but the way SKALD presents itself is a lot closer to more open-world, big-decisions-matter, many-factions, type games, when it really isn't that. This isn't a bad thing, but it is something to be aware of and understand going in.

(Also worth noting my playtime was inflated by leaving the game open in the middle of a fight while eating dinner a couple times. The actual full playtime is probably more like 12-18 hours depending on how thorough you are.)

Game is good. Game made by someone who loves D&D. Game has flavs mostly in gameplay where you need to FEEL of what to do in right order. There is not much clarity. Also some checks have truble to be rolled with someone else, but nontheless this is work of art to be proud of yourself. Game was made like oneshot. Never to have continuation, but I belive the person who made this game should continue grind and serve something equally good with gameplay fixed. Great job