I'll give the game 1 extra star for the nice artwork and sound effects, but the rest of the game is boring. There is so much backtracking your brain will go into autopilot as you mindlessly click the oilcan you saw 10 minutes ago because NOW you need it. The idea of some mysterious blue ink killing everyone may have had some promise, but the game shifts its narrative into a meta "we are in a game, and the author is trying to stop us from finding out more" which is where I decided to stop playing. The game is neither scary, suspenseful, or atmospheric... its just boring. The girl that helps you out seems to be some kind of Mary Sue that can fix electronics, test blood, create serums, and deduce plot like a professional detective. She also looks like she robbed Harley Quinn's closet and slapped on a plague doctor mask for good measure. I didn't really get what the developer was going for. Anyways, there are far too many games out there, rather than spending hours on ones where you keep asking yourself, "Why am I playing this? What's the point of this? Am I even excited when I progress?" I played this game before Bad Dream: Coma, and it was such a bore I don't even think I'll try the other game. I feel bad for being so harsh, but seriously I haven't been so bored playing a game since Barrow Hill: The Dark Path.
Knights of the Chalice is an addicting game that takes you back to the old style of gaming which reminded me of the original Final Fantasy on Nintendo in appearance and plot. With bright colours, a customized party of 4, and a fairly basic story of conquering evil and freeing an oppressed world, this game delivers and is a very fun and rewarding experience. It goes off of the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 ruleset basically, but is simplified enough for anyone to learn. Of course, there are some things (like resistances to damage and spells for example) that an experienced player will benefit from, but overall there always seemed to be a method of approaching a battle that would either make it easy, a slow grind, or miserable failure. I would have given it 5 stars, but some of the fights started you off in a very difficult and unfair situation, so multiple reloads were needed until you got past the first ambush and were able to set up your defences and counter attacks. Overall though, I very much enjoyed it and will be buying the second game to continue the adventure. This game is a must own for anyone that likes challenging encounters and that retro style that favoured adventure and combat over story and romances!
This game is a like a light mix of Icewind Dale and Realms of Arkania. You create your party of 4 based off of any combinations, then are sent on a combat heavy trek to recover an important artifact, with little bits of basic story spread throughout to keep you going. When travelling to world map locations, you need provisions and there is a descriptive panel on the left for flavour telling you what your adventurers are doing or who they bump into on the road. You also have random encounters which are fairly repetitive. Solasta is definitely NOT of the same quality as the above mentioned games, but I found the main campaign to be interesting and engaging enough, and it is nice for a change to play a game that doesn't dump paragraphs of lore onto you or modern day politics. The combat is great, giving you a real feel of tactical control over what is happening. Casting Light will damage the vampires surrounding you, Levitating your wizard will protect him from melee orcs, shoving a skeleton into a chasm is satisfying. If you have experience playing these types of games, the fights can be very rewarding. I thought at first that maybe the fights were too simple, so I went into a fight with no real tactics at all and got destroyed easily. I went back to the same fight with preparation and destroyed them easily. Planning matters, which is nice in this day and age where a lot of games you can just basic attack your way to victory. Definitely worth a play if you want a more classic experience.
While the game has an attention grabbing art style, the rest fails to deliver anything memorable. The story and characters are bland and forgettable, the puzzles are pretty easy and it is impossible to fail. It was just plain old boring to play. It is competently made but I cannot stress enough how you will literally finish it only because you already invested time into it, and will immediately forget everything about it once you're done. I don't hate the game, there just wasn't much to it.
The biggest selling point was adding a turn based mode. While this can make some fights extremely dragged out (like the last enemy casting Withdraw, or watching 12+ enemies pummel you), it is a total game changer. The addition of Berath's Blessings to be bought with achievements is great, and I felt like the majority of the writing was far less pretentious than the first game (with the narrator and some descriptions being the exception; glorified thesaurus warriors unite). Like, instead of saying the dwarf had a permanent grin, they write "the dwarf's rictus blah bleh." Overall, the voice acting was very well done. My only complaints are that the narrator was a terrible choice (she sounds like a teenage girl practicing community theater), and it boggles my mind why they incorporated her saying the "you must gather your party before venturing forth." That was annoying back in the Baldur's Gate days. Xoti was an extremely fake and annoying sounding Southern gal ("useless as a bump on a pickle" and "that dog won't hunt" 15 times a fight is ear poison), and the Rauitai bounty man who talks with a Southern accent then completely drops it for some parts was a comical blunder. Besides these 3 noticeable fails, the rest are great. There seemed to be a clear agenda that women were "better" (if not more powerful and respected) than most men, but I found it was easier to overlook than most modern games. I'd say you're safe to assume if you're going to meet the "leader" or "ruler" of somewhere, they are going to be a female. It definitely wasn't on the level of Siege of Dragonspear or Pathfinder:Kingmaker where you say to yourself, "OK, I get it! Move on," but it was prevalent enough to notice. My only other gripe was the ending was fairly abrupt and felt unfulfilling, but I can look past that because a satisfying ending is very difficult to accomplish in these types of games. In closing, I listed the flaws because the rest of the game I enjoyed and was very well done.
I played this game for a fair amount of time. I restarted a few times until I got a party composition that was enjoyable (while utilizing the multi classing system)... I even tried a few of the different starting points. I beat the first major area and quit pretty much immediately after. In a very short time, the game went from being difficult to extremely easy with boring fights. Dialogues with NPCs are repetitive as well - they bump into you with the random encounter music - and using the mind reading spell to get a keyword list was tedious. Graphically, I was loving the look but was disappointed by the strange movements of enemies and NPCs (they dance on the spot or cycle through odd poses) and within the first few hours there were numerous, extremely lazy, duplicates. For example, the Green Hand Gang is a palette swap of Mordecai, as well as being every other bandit (and don't get me started on the chant that repeats forever when fighting these guys "Ahheeeeshhhiiiohhhhh"). The dwarf who sells in town is the same drawing as the dwarven enemies you encounter shortly after. So its not often I just decide to stop playing a game, but these nagging issues and the boredom that was setting in led me to basically ask myself, why am I still playing this? Sidenote: I see the overall most helpful reviewer owns 0 games and has 1 review... so to also be helpful: Yes the game becomes very easy, boring and repetitive. I basically held ENTER every fight. The manual is definitely necessary. The game didn't need to hold my hand, its just minimalist and easy once you use the multi class system. I didn't encounter any bugs. I would disagree with doing oldschool RPG "extremely well."
