Vambrace: Cold Soul

It hasn't been a bad game so far. Slow progress at first? Yes, the prologue/tutorial is way too slow. It bloody hell takes at least half an hour for the game to start. After that there is at least 4-7 hours of grinding and trying (and trying, and trying) to get past the second chapter of the game. Sheesh. Almost gave up on the game at that point. But after that, on chapter 3 the game opens up a bit and gives you optional quests you can follow. And the first perk point you can use. At that point you've also learned the game mechanics and you can FINALLY start to play the game properly. Took me 8 hours to get to that. Talk about a slow start. On a random note, one of the 10 classes you can hire as a companion is absolutely useless. The (only) healer. The damage done by enemies is way, way higher than the amount you can recover with her. It's A LOT more efficient to hire a DPS character instead to limit the damage done to you. All in all, quite a bit of potential. Great art, interesting design choices, The story has been engaging at least up to chapter 3. But the gameplay absolutely needs patching and QOL improvements. At least make healers great again.

I must say this game is a disappointment. The graphics and sounds are excellent. However, that's about it. I am a big fan of Darkest Dungeon and that game took quite a few patches to get good too, BUT, the mechanics are there already and just need polish. This game don't even seem to have the mechanics in place or require some drastic rewiring to get it. Let's start with the polish part. You cannot access your inventory or menus in town map. Yup, you have to enter an area before you can open your inventory or look at your character sheets. Also, when hiring you cannot look up the details of the hires. So if a brand new character show up, only way you can look into the character's skills and statistics is to dismiss an existing character in your part, who is gone forever then, and hire the new one. But what really kills my enthusiasm for the game is lack of character progression. Both the MC and hires only have 1 normal attack and 1 limit breakish skills. That is it, the other 2 slots are defend and pass. Seriously, instead of adding a second skill, the game wasted a slot to have BOTH defend and pass. Also, only the MC level up, everyone else stays the same. So yeah, really regret buying this game.

I will confess I did not finish the game, although I gave it more than a fair try. I had to restart the game after I accidentally went too far south in the town map (available right away) and went into an area that bugged me into a chapter 3 ahead of where I was, skipping major plot points. This could not be undone and the game auto-saved withe the false progress. The game was engaging enough I restarted and went all the way past that point (legitimately). I figured out a team that took me comfortably through the game until I got to a boss (Cyndaria) who was essentially impossible to beat with my team. I looked online and found the solution: my team would never be able to beat her. Suggestions were for a specific type of team composition. So I quit. If the game demands that I only play a specific playstyle, but doesn't tell me that at the get-go, it's just not worth another minute of my time. 2/5 stars: Broken, frustrating, and sad... but it gave me a few hours of engagement at least...

Vambrace: Cold Soul takes an interesting approach, trying to meld a few gaem genres in different ways. There is exploration, some tactical combat ala JRPGs, and some basic storytelling and quest-filling, along with crafting and looting. Each of these elements if pretty light however, so players looking for a deep, gamer's RPG may be disappointed. It's also fairly hard, and fairly random. The lack of depth is a problem mostly in the combat. What many people miss initially is how the core of combat is not really character attacks and abilities, but turn character position and sequence. Unfortunately, that's not quite enough to hang a whole combat system on, and there just aren't enough decision to make. Each character has on attack and one special ability, and items can't be used in combat. It's just a little too simple. Beyond that, the game is also fairly hard, largely due to randomness -- hend the "rogue-like" designation. Some patches have eased up on this, but you may still need to retreat regularly, and restart a quest from scratch multiple times before getting through it. At least you don't have to frustratingly restart the game each time, as in some games (I'm looking at you, FTL!). Those are the downsides. The good in this game comes largely from its beautiful art, and the atmosphere and charm this creates -- the world feels fun to explore, and reading about the lore is compelling to me. It's certainly not taking itself too seriously thugh. It plays around with stock fantasy elements, blended with a pretty modern-seeming culture. There's a certain amount of cheese-cake in its art, which I have mixed feelings about: a lot of cleavage and high-heels, and even school-girl uniforms on the cat-like race. If you can forgive that, it's a great game to look at. There's also something of a story to get through, which is more than a lot of rogue-like's can boast. Those two plusses have kept me going so far, despite the random number gods' hating me.