Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones

... if not without its lingering flaws. That said, the vast majority of the complaints and bugs that plagued earlier players seem, in my experience, to be fixed! Now that the game is largely stable and functional, the game's potential seems realized. The archetypes and belief systems allow for some of the most original and interesting character building I've seen in a game, and perfectly suit the Lovecraftian themes and era. Likewise, the skills you've chosen are deeply integrated into dialogue choices and quest resolutions. The fluency and crispness of the writing struggle, but it remains consistently thematic and interesting, not to mention it does a great job of reinforcing how you express your character. Just don't let your computer die or crash in an area of the game where saving is disallowed. Based on my experience, that will kill your save(s) and force you to start over. It's really the only reason I haven't given this game a 5/5. But I desperately hope they make a sequel.

This is not a perfect adaptation of Lovecraft's themes into game mechanics. This is a traditional CRPG first and foremost, with an ascetic that pays a lot of attention to Lovecraft lore. There are elements that break from the original material (sanity meters that you can refill, battles you can win, quests you can complete etc.) which are necessary for the CRPG experience. If you've seen the trailer, and are reading reviews, this is probably your thing. If that's the case, I'd highly recommend. You get a mechanically solid RPG with enough exploration, item collection and adventure to fill about 30 hours or so. The writting is really interesting, the score is top notch and the overall atmosphere is as good as video games get. It's far from perfect though. There are a couple of major frustrations that stand out: Game lacks a normal save/load function (autosaves and saves on exit), but does not overwrite saves ironman-style and allows you to load any of the last dozen or so saves at any time. This system ends up serving the same function as a normal save option, but adds a trip to the main menu for every save. Combat is really, REALLY buggy. Sometimes casting a certain spell with a certain character disables that character for the rest of the engagement. Sometimes it disables the entire UI. Usually when restarting a battle, characters will begin combat with the same negative status effects that were in play before the restart. Often, restarting a battle that began with a hit to sanity will re-apply the sanity loss (doubling the effect), etc, etc. This really emphasizes how important it is to have a Quick Save option in a CRPG. Overall, great writting and atmosphere more than make up for frustrating bugs and strange design decisions, as long as you love both Lovecraft and CRPGs and have a little patience to spare.

While the game has an interesting story in the lovecraftian universe it is (right now) a pretty mess. There are a lot of great ideas, but the less than mediocre gameplay will leave you frustrated. Some oft the major problems I encountered after 20 hours of gaming: - The save function is annoying. There is an autosave option, which gets overwritten by the time. So no loading of earlier game files. - No tutorial and missing informations: Your character gets addicted to a substance? Great! What are the drawbacks gamewise? No explanation. - Your companions but can't properly use their skills beside crafting (this function was unlocked with a patch after the release, because the game was even more frustrating to start with). So if you want to investigate or break locks invest your skill points in every possible skill and build a jack of all trades at the cost of being really good in a certain field. - What would be the Mythos without insanity? Lose sanity points and develope some mania. While this influences your characters stats and dialogue options, it also starts to blur parts of your screen, and looking on this blurred screen highly annoying. Bonus points: Right now you can't get rid of this „feature“, and you can’t heal those mentally handicaps too! Just play the next 15 hours with a flickering screen. Buy every possible equipment. The game will put you in situations, where you need special equipment to solve quests and progress with the story. E.g. Bring a shovel to the „Blasted Street“ quest. Otherwise run back, lose sanity, consume your rations, rest, buy a shovel, run to the street, possible fight some cultist on the way, lose more sanity and gain Angst points (which will give you handicaps like depression and fun stuff) just to solve this quest. I hope, that the devs will put some more work (and a lot of patches) in this game, to make it enjoyable. I really like the setting and the story, and it is sad to see it all destroyed by the game mechanics.

Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones is by far one of the best Lovecraft inspired games out there: it's atmosphere is off the charts and get's the feeling of inescapable dread like few other games. It's burstsing as the seems with references and characters from Lovecraft's work and actual life and it weaves it all together in a tightly knit and coeherent narrative, even one in which madness is the end resault. The gameplay is an intresting mix of GDR and light tactical combat, which is fun but also very demanding to the point that it's often best to avoid combat when possibile, but it dosen't hinder progression as one levels up mostly thanks to non-violent means. That said the main problem of the game, not considering the rough edges that the developers have promissed to address, are th numerous bugs that hinder the experience. Up until my 17th hour in the game the bugs had been very light and just mildly annoying, but then I ran into a bug that crashes my game and I can't proceed. The good thing is that the devs are hard at working in squashing the bugs, and even with this game breaking bug I still think the game is great.

due to missing files, as someone mentioned in the forum, this game only starts the intro and the not responding main menu which can only exited with alt+F4. This problem was experienced by many users in the forum and one figured out a fix, by adding the right missing files from the windows version to the game-directory (it seems the game still breaks at some certain point though). Looks like laziness for me, which is why i wasnt even trying it out. Why should i spend my time (maybe even hours) to fix their broken and incomplete game directory, when they should do it. They sell this game as full released for quite a while now and the least thing to expect is to get an installer with the complete game. For the obvious still broken state, as well as the not working linux version = one star. I will gladly remove this review though if they fix their game at some point. Because, even for the overused topic, it looks pretty neat and unique. Maybe as an official reworked version which would be highly appreciated.