I love the concept, and the dialogs between the protagonists feel real and interesting. But too often the game actively stands in your way. Gliding is made needlessly cumbersome, both by the camera angle and the fact that the flow trail doesn't appear until it's very close to your character. The rules of survival are frustrating and inconsistent at times. For example, regenerating health requires to be on specific maps, and yields too little health at a time. So you have to repeat the process and going to cutscenes over and over again. Also, in a camp you can cook food but not store it, even when that food would be necessary to use a transport animal. And worst of all, I got soft-locked in the small group of four islets. I spent more than two hours running around, trying to avoid combat as my characters had less and less health, without find any way out. It's a shame. I really liked the couple and would have loved to see where they were going. The inability to store food instead of eating it in camps, when you need the food to use a transport animal. The
I just finished my first run of the game, and had a lot of fun doing it, from start to finish. When I say fun, it's both because the game is good and both it's immensely funny. This is an old-school tactical RPG: turn-based, with synergies between abilities, alterations, skill trees... You have a mostly fixed party (6 characters, plus one extra chosen among three) going through the dungeon of Naheulbeuk. The progression inside the dungeon is far from linear, and you have your fair share of optional sidequests. It must be said that the game is based on a French podcast from before they were called podcasts), a parody of a tabletop RPG session with archetypal characters falling into every trope, and tons of jokes about it. It's still going strong to this day, as novels and comics. While you can enjoy the game just fine going blind, there is additional depth to the story and the jokes if you're familiar with the source material. My only gripe is with the UI, which is a bit clunky. I started playing with keyboard and mouse, but switched to a Dualshock 4 after a few hours and didn't regret it. Also, some puzzles were not very interesting. The story is well fleshed-out, fully voiced and perfectly in the spirit of the source material (John Lang, the author, was directly involved in the game). At least in French, the dialogs are an endless well of jokes that you'll remember until the end of times. ;) The fights have a lot of variety, fun ideas and never feel stale, with many opportunities to use the terrain to your advantage (exploding beer kegs, throwing the dwarf over obstacles, and so on). Power progression felt tightly tuned, as you never lingered too long before gaining new abilities and ability points. I did my first run on the second difficulty setting (out of 4), and found it well-tuned. I had to think my way through the fights, but kept the freedom to take skills I liked or found fun without risking gimping my characters. Have fun, and lots of it!
