Ghost of a Tale

Kudos to the devs for ultrawide monitor support: 3440x1440 120fps played on an RTX2080Super Native support for Xbox/DualShock controllers I started this game curious about aesthetics and expecting some kind of childish action-adventure game... what I've found is deep lore and a full-fledged RPG. By the second room, I was already charmed by this world with minstrel mice and pirate frogs, that's what I call immersion! NPCs are interesting and well-written, and if you wanna go deep into lore you can just follow footnotes to your heart's content. You can always dig deep in dialogs to obtain secondary quests and interesting pieces of story, but it is possible to breeze through the main questline if you choose to do so. And if you get lost... you may want to check your map in front of a candle... ;) you owe me 2 florins.

This is a very beautiful game with great world design, lighting and use of shaders. The animations are very smooth and detailed and the character design is simply amazing - especially for a crowd founded indie game. Still, it's very visible that this isn't an AAA title. There are no movies/cut scenes or even voice overs. Also the game lacks polishing here and there. Like there are "holes" in the world, some climbing is too fiddly, the save menu is buggy etc. Game design wise it's an action adventure with some RPG elements like training a few abilities, wearing armor with certain attributes etc. Progress is made by solving quests where some of them are a bit poor (e.g. collecting mushrooms and beetles). There are no quest markers and only vague hints but you can buy maps and clues from the smith Rolo. I got stuck a bit now and then since I didn't find certain items or didn't realize a new dialog option appeared somewhere. There's a proper save system with manual, quick and auto saves but you can only save in hiding spots and manually choosing a save slot is a bit buggy. The world is not very big and you will revisit locations repeatedly. Early in the game, most doors are locked and can only be opened if you proceed in the main quest. Also, you need to run and hide a lot at first. Later on you find armor which allows you to roam freely - yet very slowly. Which is a bit annoying since it makes exploration a bit of a struggle. Only close to the end there is a chance to get an armor that lets you walk freely in the presence of guards without sacrificing speed. Fighting is not really a thing. You can only temporarily knock down guards without helmets which almost all of them wear. Which limits fighting to a few spiders and a centipede. It took me 15h to reach the end (only 8% of players did) which felt a bit rushed and the final fight was somewhat annoying. With a bit more polishing and a proper ending, I'd have given 5 stars. Still, I enjoyed it quite a lot.

I don't think i ever played a game like this before, a game with such a dense and immersive atmosphere and graphical detail, even for an action adventure/stealth game. I was especially surprised to see how well the Stealth System works without any combat. But often times it is hard to find out what i am supposed to do in order to progress the story; where to find the last item XY or knowing in which order i have to do the quests. This adds to an overall "grindy" experience, but after a bit of searching stuff on the internet it is quite comfortable to play.

--- Pros --- Beautiful graphics Charming characters Great story Good controls --- Cons --- Misleading genre Incomplete world-building Game could be named "Tilo and the Fetch Quests" with how many they are Too vague hints at times While the game has the artistic beauties of graphics and story, it lacks in other areas, starting for the misleading genre, this game is published as an Action-Adventure-RPG, and while i can clearly see the Adventure part and little bits of RPG parts, but i failed to see the Action part, i jumped into it with some expectations based on the genre that were just not met The world-building lore is fantastic, sadly it feels incomplete since you don't visit half the places noted in lore, i grown with the expectations to visit some of the places at some point with how well detailed and attractive to explore the game puts them, but it just doesn't happen The game has a lot of fetch quests in a somewhat reduced area, which despite encouraging exploring every bit of the map, can become tedious by how repetitive your routes are Some objectives are a tad vague in my opinion, like "Search for the Smuggler's Mark in the Sewers" when you don't even know what this mark looks like i would recommend this game if you are up for a bit more relaxed approach story game, since that's its big forte, more in a way i would recommend a Point & Click Adventure than an Action game

Great game, 9/10. Nice graphics, music/sound and story, sometimes funny, sometimes sad. Minor bugs and glitches, fortunately don't happen to often (didn't experienced game breaking bugs). Be warned: this game has almost no quest marks and contains a bit of backtracking. Looking forward for sequel. P.S.: In the beginning player have to sneak most of the time. At some points it's becoming exhausting. Really, don't get disturbed by that, endure, and at some point (hint: secret passages & cloth sets) game will receive it's proper tempo of gameplay. P.S.2: Main character is soo sweet <3