Overall most helpful review

Posted on: June 29, 2016

sinfulangel

Games: 200 Reviews: 2

Jackie Chan woodcutter simulator

I have played this game for few hours and definitely I can tell that I was looking for smth like this for a long time. You will find here: - simple but interesting leveling and character customization - nice story and interesting dialogs - pleasant old school graphics - really interesting craft system, somehow reminds about morrowind alchemy but wider. You can create armor/weapons/food/potions without having recipes, just by combining different items for getting their bonuses and probably unique bonuses. - building your own hideout - dreams and nightmares - a lot of woodcutter work to get perfect pinewood piece. Also you will spend most time gathering everything that you can touch. - turn based world - much fun :) - starving and dehydrating, diseases, curses and other suffering. - you can steal almost everything from villagers homes The only two things I hate so far - the character moves in a bit strange way and path can be blocked by any item like small bush or plant. - it seems you can repair items only with NPC paying money, but not on your own. Or at least such option is not available from the start even if you have crafting skill selected

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Posted on: July 2, 2016

DeadjackFr

Verified owner

Games: 522 Reviews: 25

Flawed and tedious. Needs updates !

The idea was great to mix a Diablo like action rpg, bits of survival/basic needs management, base/house/farm building, deep crafting system with fancy stuff like cleaning scrolls, puzzles or pet taming. But so many flaws... Moving you hero is a pain. You can choose between mouse clicking or keyboard. The problem is the isometric view where only 4 keys are available for 8 directions making diagonal movements nearly impossible without the mouse (grid can be toggle) And the mouse is rather unaccurate especially during fights. You can select Master difficulty and dare like me to challenge your nerves... because this mode is extremely difficult. Hard to accept if you consider many problems of gameplay like for some classes (3 in total). As an example, begin a wizard is a pain. Expensive to level up, constant regen and forced to collect anything that looks like a plant. Being a wizard is also a problem due to spell hit miss. Actually the game should update your character sheet about spell hit depending on the target you aim giving the opportunity to know if you can manage your mana pool and at least have a chance to beat your opponent. In general it will be a matter of luck especially if you consider that enemies have in general more skills/spells than you and your pet together. By talking about pets, note that you can tame few animals to help you in combat. The bear is a tank, the mantis is a more magical one, the wolf is fast, ect... Sounds good on the paper but in game pets tends to be stupid and rather dangerous is narrow rooms. They block your path, bring unwanted attention. Developpers tried to be realistic with many buffs and cooldowns to play as a real hero: potion overdoses, diseases, fear, hunger, thirst, exhausting. Funny to see that in a game where you are unable to mount a horse or anything that helps to prevent "constant robot walking". Many ideas brought down by mistakes and tedious gameplay. Disappointing even with good crafting and farming.

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Posted on: July 3, 2016

CastleRivacheg

Games: Reviews: 44

Balrum- interesting but with problems

Balrum is a game with a nice interesting starting setting, set in a dark wooded village that lives in isolation after feeling from the cruel decedent world. Good points -Around 40 hours of playtime-length. -Interesting crafting system. -Can Build own house. -Day/ Night cycle and weather effects. Bad Points -Very Grindy. -Slow leveling and lack of stat adjusting. -Lots of slow walking everywhere. (even with teleports) - Plot is rather drab. - Just about all quests are fetch quests and skip-through text windows. -Many themes are repeated. -Linearity. -Boring and not very well balanced combat. -No player real choices. -Poor movement system.

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Posted on: July 6, 2016

GregT_314

Verified owner

Games: 1132 Reviews: 45

Ambitious, fascinating, flawed

Balrum's got a great concept - mixing a deep and intriguing crafting system reminiscent of Minecraft with a tactical retro RPG in the style of Fallout or Avernum. If that sounds interesting to you, you'll probably find hours of fun here. But to a large extent its reach exceeds its grasp. The crafting system is well-implemented and has lots to explore. But players wanting to just spend hours crafting will be frustrated by the rest of the game, which effectively gates meaningful crafting improvement behind main-quest XP rewards. The quest itself isn't very memorable, the combat is dull and overly punitive, and for much of the game the loot you find outpaces your crafting skills, making the game's best system feel unrewarding and obsolete. There's still a lot of great ideas here, and for a budget price it's worth making your own mind up.

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Posted on: December 15, 2017

Lookda

Verified owner

Games: 413 Reviews: 53

Balrum suffers from feature creep

Overall Balrum is a nice, relaxing game. I have enjoyed picking up mushrooms, meeting strange people whom, on occasion can turn into a mantis a lich, or simply tell me the secret of silver bark. However, a year of refinement would make this good game a great game. Maybe something to look out for in Balrum 2? Orientation in Balrum is confusing and movement really requires some getting used to. Combat is not much better. As a mage, I felt like a small boy burning ant’s nests with matches, one ant at the time. Trying to take on multi creatures at once mostly resulted in a reload of the last save game. The only good about encounters is that they are no walkovers. You cannot bash in the skull of a swamp frog without using multiple skills. Yet, skills are unbalanced, some useless, others, like speed potions, basically break the game. Fortunately, combat isn’t the meat of Balrum. Exploring, gathering and crafting are. Top tip: learn crafting skills, as these make gathering meaningful. There are dozens of different mushrooms, plants, rocks to mine, melt and process in equipment. You can build a house or a farm with seeds that you find. There are many features, such as potions that turn you into a mouse to get in secret areas, caves with puzzles, lost treasure in tree trunks. All great stuff, but somehow there is no cohesion. I like to call it feature creep. For example, harvesting crops is fun at first, but becomes a repetitive click fest. A special event make your crop spoils by disease. Using a curing potion and it is as if no disease never occurred. There is no real impact between features. The character progression system could also use some polish. Skill books and attribute boost pedestals, for example, are restricted to a specific level. Find a book of alchemy lvl 2, just after learning that same skill with hard earned skill points is not funny. Why don't you find unique books that yield skills that cannot be obtained otherwise?

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