Vagrus - The Riven Realms: Prologue

First of all two point: The demo is stable and runs well on my machine. This is an extremely high praise for modern games that come with a day-1-patch, yet alone for an indie game that's still in alpha. In addition, previous reviewers talked about grammar mistakes, but I haven't seen any. Maybe my own grammar isn't that good, but it looks like the devs fixed whatever mistakes there were. Now to the game: This game has a tough job, as it wants to be an open-world, story-driven, survival RPG. Not an easy task at all, but the devs are definitely on the right track! The setting is well-written, immersive, thought-out and gripping, even if it's a bit too grimdark for me. Companion dialogues are decent, but are obviously limited because of the short demo. I have little doubt, given the overall writing, that they would be expanded greatly. There are only few voiced entries and much to read, but I don't mind that - I've only felt overwhelmed at the end of the open-world campaign where the city had about 6 different areas, each with 6 different places and multiple options in almost each one. In contrast, the The Riven Realms campaign is very good at keeping you focused, while still giving a lot of lore. The art is well done and complements the world perfectly, adding to the immersion. Sound is a bit lackluster - the music/sounds seemed mostly samey and sometimes disappear completely. I think the gloomy atmosphere could use the occasional high notes for contrast. Combat appears to be very simplistic, unforgiving and actually boring because there are so few options and the fights feel like they take longer than necessary. The survival/RPG aspect is probably the hardest to evaluate in this stage. The RPG system looks good, but it allows for a lot of trade-offs without clearly indicating what is a good option for your playing style. You have no idea how much a skill will help you with an event, or how often a skill is going to be checked, turning leveling into guesswork.

I played the tutorial and the short intro to the open-world campaign, and especially the latter holds so much promise. Playing the game reminds me a bit of the choose your adventure books of yore, which I greatly enjoyed. There is a great opportunity for role-playing here, and a lot of work has gone into the lore/world building. I do not like the combat system, but perhaps it will change if I get more practice in it - the tutorial only has a couple of fights and I didn't particularly enjoy the mechanics thereof. But the greatest reason for deciding against purchasing the full game on release comes from my personal aversion to profanity. I don't think the game needs it, as this is already a pretty dark fantasy world, but as I said, it is a matter of personal preference. Apart from that, and with how interesting the first few quests / possible quests sound in the post-tutorial game, I would have grabbed this.

I absolutely love it. A lot of effort went into the art, the writing and especially the world building, and it really shows. I can't wait for the rest of the game!

Great writing guys! congrats. i am a fan of this game already.

There's bug on click toggle medicine supply will make all controls invalid.