It's clear that for a fair chunk of its appeal this game leans on its nonprofessional illustration style, and what that implies about the rest of the game. The look is calling back to a day when D&D was simultaneously so popular that it could support a Saturday morning cartoon but still so insurgent that the trademark didn't necessarily imply much in terms of quality. You could look at official, published material, compare it with the doodles in the margins of your algebra homework, and feel like there was space for someone who was winging it. Likewise, this game has an extremely clunky interface that calls back keyboard-driven DOS games and console Wizardry ports. The sound design is very weird, and there's no way to adjust the volume. The dialogue is riddled with typos. The storyline is rudimentary. Basically, before I'd actually played this, if you'd told me this thing had been put together by a cynical publisher that had focus-tested to include elements to evoke the maximum nostalgia for a period where it really felt like anyone could throw something together and shoot the moon, I'd have believe you. Do not be fooled. Mechanically, this is an incredibly tight product that knows exactly what it's doing and is drawing on decades of game design insight. I know it was put together by a tiny team and the extant mistakes are earnest. But those mistakes are basically confined to interface design and spelling. The combat in this thing is absolutely wonderful, extremely challenging but rewarding for a variety of party builds, with a few grindy escape valves if you really mess up. On a fight-to-fight basis, this on par with the best of the current dungeon crawling revival. Once you start playing it as a game, all of the nostalgic elements only serve to heighten what an incredible piece of contemporary design it actually is. If you're used to games crying "realism" or "immersion" as an excuse for shoddy design, welcome to the cure.
