Vambrace: Cold Soul

I like Darkest Dungeon, and this feels like basically the same game in a new, fresh setting. Great! Unfortunately, the game design is very harsh and unforgiving. While the first few hours are easy enough that it doesn't matter, the game later becomes more difficult, and the unforgiving mechanics just ruin the fun. The game has two difficulty settings: normal and a special super hard mode. It desperately needs an easier baby mode that will cut you a break and just let you enjoy the story without perfect mastery of the game's systems.

I wanted to like this game, and I do, but the no-save mid run just killed it for me. No saves during expeditions are just too much of a grind and a block of time I don't always have. That's not 'git-gud' difficulty, because this ame is not complex or hardcore, just poor quality of life planning.

This game is really worth its price in my eyes. It has gorgeous artwork, challenging dungeon exploration and combat, interesting story and Universe, and even pretty solid music score. Great atmosphere too. I had a really good time with playing this game. What disappointed me the most was the annoying saving system and the unimportance of your party members. They're just generic characters, and the cool ones, well you can't recruit them. The ending I got felt incoherent with how I played, but it was fine. However the replayability/new game + mode is very weird. La traduction française laisse à désirer malheurement, elle contient pas mal de fautes. It's a very good, simple game, especially for a small studio. They put love in their characters and Universe, and you'll feel it too if you're into a small RPG with great looks, atmosphere and world.

Gameplay is a more approachable twist on darkest dungeon. Fun and entertaining. The way the maps generate themself could be better. Like when 2 camping rooms spawn one next to another. The story is generic and the way your choices affect the story are really hard to understand. Game doens't really tell you when is the best time to do sidequests and then it's too late. I bought it cheaply and I don't regret playing it but I do think that the experience could be much more fullfilling if only served with just a little more clarity. I think that story blended badly with overall gameplay and made it more confusing than it needed to be. Sound desing was meh af.

Good: Superb art, soundtrack, story, characters. Bad: Sadistic gameplay and mechanics. The lack of features, no informations and some bugs makes the game even harder. You must have a lot of patience, because the game is superb. It needs to do a lot of research on internet to learn, to beat the game and to have all the trophies. Advice: An Easy mode will make the gameplay superb, for all the gamers. His Normal mode is Hard. Tips: Play the game by occupying the three slots for each ending: Evil, Neutral and Good. To have all the suits, you must play New game+ in the other slots. Just start a new game in the new slot and there you'll find shortcuts in story. Don't delete the finished game from his slot. The suits will automatically transfer to the other slots, but the book's sheets are not transferable. The game seems to remember what gameplay was in that slot, because later you can jump in chapters as New Game+. Some trophies appear after you enter in the game. If the desired trophy does not appear at all, do the same action in gameplay for that trophy in another slot. You will spoil the ending for that slot, but you will have trophies. This game is indie. Let's not ask to much from it, like at the AAA games. I hope for Vambrace 2, with more beautiful and sexy drawings. Do not listen the politics to make them ugly!!