Insane, dense Lovecraftian atmosphere, enjoyable combat mechanics and very captivating storyline - I enjoyed it a lot highly recommended. Didn't expect to like it as much as I did

I was so excited to play this game. A retro RPG with turn-based combat, pixelated graphics, and Lovecraftian horror theme! Count me in!

It started wonderfully. I restarted a few times to try different characters (hence my 15 hours), then settled on one and started playing. The game was very fun, engaging, and like a breath of fresh air among all other modern "RPG" games.

Then why the negative vote? Simple: It has bugs so severe that you are locked out of progressing in the game. Here be spoilers: A quest asks you to find food for refugees. You have two options: buy food from smugglers, or take some farmer's goats. The leader of smugglers didn't even present the first option to me, so I went with the second option. I convinced the farmer through diplomacy to hand over his goats, but the game didn't register it! So I took his goats by force and brought them to the camp, but then the questgiver didn't present me the option to complete the quest! So here I was, being locked out from progressing the game. I had the same problem with a side quest but I had moved on, but this was the final nail in the coffin for me.

So try this game at your own risk. You can enjoy it for hours, only then to get locked out of progressing.

It was good! I really enjoyed the writing, the combat mechanics, and the overall vibe. The art is fantastic as well. (I want to put Iago's character art on my wall)

The story is very grimdark, which may not be for everyone, but I liked it!

I played with a controller plugged into my steamdeck; the controls were a bit clunky, but functional. Maybe tweak those a bit.

In style, it is intended to be a throwback to retro crpgs... but full disclosure, I never actually played any! So I can't speak to how well it throws back to those older games. But I guess I _can_ speak for it as a first impression of the genre, and my first impression is: I had a lot of fun!

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

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

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.

I am v much against the Black Priory.
-5 stars

Hoping there is a sequel in the works.

cons:

absolute no-nos
-- game takes away your inventory after you carefully loot and comb through the ship you start on -- instant downvote. when's it gonna happen next? midway through?
-- completely illegible pseudo-90s font with some weird backshading that makes 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.
-- constant misclicks during combat. it is often impossible to see if you are in the correct position to hit something and even if you are sure and you are indeed correct, in like 10% of cases, you send your NPCs running around, not attacking.
-- trash mobs drop basically no loot
-- click to move is not smooth. it is extremely clunky. compared to e.g Moonring, it is absolutely unusable.
-- save slots in a tiny game with tiniest amounts of save data. I have an 8TB SSD, let me have my infinite save slots!!!! WTF is wrong with this dev?
-- to overwrite a save, you need to rename it first, because otherwise, the old date of when you made the save stays and you end up thinking you accidentally deleted your current save. then you need to again click on it, because the game does not stay on it and THEN you can overwrite it.
-- my thief lady misses 60% of her attacks, unlike EVERYONE ELSE in my party, even thoughn she uses blades, has invested into the blades and light weapons accuracy traits. if you have a system that just rolls %, it can happen that someone contantly rolls extremely low and eventually quits the game. you need to have a system that makes sure the character hits in the correct % overall, averaged over several fights, not roll to roll.
-- I'm deep into the game by now and there are no crafting stations for arrows or any gear. so I guess there really isn't crafting, besides potions. cooking and the 1 arrow maybe when camping does not count.
-- respeccing seems impossible. I end up walking around with 10 unspent skill points per character because I never know if I am speccing into weapons or skills I won't even use. this is the second biggest fun killer so far behind the never ending misclicks in combat and both got me to quit the game. money is so tight and weapons are so ultra rare that you may need to stick to e.g. axes even though you've specced into clubs.
-- no map and constant contracting fog of war. you can never just explore something, no, you have to re-explore so many things and you never see anything or know where you are. especially when it actually matters, like in caves, the game makes it impossible to be sure you've explored everything

the whole game feels like pure nostalgia bait
I'd STILL play wizardry 7 from the early 90s because it's a lot of fun. this isn't. it's dreary, depressing and fake

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


this game deserves a 70 rating *maybe*. absolutely nothing above that.

Fun CRPG with fantastic horror elements.

Only complaints were, annoying random events in the world map, and some puzzles were more annoying than engaging.