Ember

First, this is rather linear, and you don't get a lot of choices. No sneaking, and not skills for speech or intimidation. There is only one way through, and that is to fight. So in that sense, it is rather limiting. But for what it is, it is a lot of fun. There is sort of a class system: melee, archer, or mage. You don't have to pick a class, but you sort of do by where you spend your upgrade points. All weapons have a controlling stat that means that they can't be used by non-class characters. Also, every class has a choice of 1-handed or 2-handed weapons, which means that you can choose between more damage or the ability to hold a shield for more defense. The thing that sets your "magic" users apart is just the ability to use wands or staffs. They do not learn spells. All magic comes from enhancements on your items, and the list of available spells is rather small. So, the game is fun and enjoyable for what it is. If you want an open-world RPG, this is not for you. If you want something with a bit more depth than Diablo or Torchlight, give this one a try!

A bit flat story-wise and with very simple mechanics. A veteran of rpgs should play this on hard as it is too easy. The crafting system is simple but adequate for this game and it is rewarding. The dialogues are yes or no and can be repeated with no penalty. I think I cloaked at less than 20 hours with meticulous exploring. Still I enjoyed it and at that price it is a steal.

This is a great RPG with a lot of atmosphere. The graphics are beautiful and the music and sound effects are very well done and get you really immersed in the game. There are a ton of quests and a lot of areas to explore. Crafting is very easy and well worth your time, as the best gear is what you can craft, not what you buy or find (except for certain items later in the game). The dialogue and text throughout, including books, are all very well written and the voice acting is exceptional. I found the main story as well as the side quests to be very entertaining and engaging. I bought this on sale, but it's well worth full price.

This game has much of the look of a Diablo-alike, but it isn't ... quite. This has pros and cons. Movement can be extremely balky at times, but being able to pause the game and set movements and attacks to execute on unpause makes up for a lot of that. It doesn't necessarily make up for some of the downsides of the oblique-third-person view — for instance, several times I've had to restore from saves because my party member died during a fight because I couldn't see him to heal him because there was a tree in the way. That gets irritating fast. There's also omissions such as, there's apparently a fairly rich set of cooking recipes to make healing and (possibly?) buffing food items ... but if there's a way to learn the recipes for them other than total blind trial and error, I've yet to find it. Hey, guys, um, a recipe book or two might be nice...? Now, these downsides aside, it's a very inexpensive and fairly engaging game that seems to have a certain charm to it. The graphics really aren't bad at all for the genre, certainly better than Diablo's or Diablo II's. It's not really the Diablo-alike that it first appears, having almost more in common with classic paper-and-dice RPGs, but without going to the over-the-top slavish mimicry of every tiny aspect of the paper-and-dice RPG metaphor exemplified by, say, Dungeons and Dragons Online. (Hey, DDO guys, I hate to say this, but if Gary Gygax saw what modern computers can do, and then saw how blindly and unthinkingly you have mimicked the mechanics he came up with because he didn't have modern computers, he would probably slap you upside the heads and call you a bunch of idiots. It's like you found a +6 Holy Avenger and decided to use it as a shovel.) Getting back to pros and cons, this more RPG-like mechanic shows up again in the way combat works. Combat is very simple, and you really don't have a lot of control over combat except which target which of your party members is fighting at any given time. This can be bad in that you really can't take much of an active hand in winning a fight, it is really very much down to your character vs. the enemy rather than you vs. the enemy. On the other hand, the upside of this very limited combat is that you won't have to mouse-spam or keyboard-fandango your way through a fight. You really aren't taking part in combat, you're just directing it. Whether this is a good or a bad thing probably depends on your tastes. Myself, I prefer to be a little more directly involved, but hey, your mileage may vary. So, overall ... yeah, it's limited, but it's cheap and has its own kind of charm. Give it a try. It's probably worth the money, especially when on sale. But don't expect Skyrim or even Diablo III levels of engagement from it.

Sadly, there are graphical error (like boxed text or the characters show up only as grey silhouettes). I tried to run the game on 3 different computers: 1.) one with Intel Core i5-6600 and AMD Radeon RX 550 2.) Intel Core i5-12600 (Intel UHD 770) 3.) and one with AMD Ryzen 5700G with (Radeon Vega 8 Integrated), ... but neither worked. Operating system: Windows 10 22H2 and the tho other had/has Windows 11 22H2 (build 22621.963) I don't have any more ideas. The music/sound ambient is great through.