Wow, `Drova - Forsaken Kin` best game I've played in a very long time. Pixel art RPG, fascinating and full world filled with interesting characters, quests, puzzles, and it's filled with branching stories. The world evolves and adapts as you progress.
Lost in a new realm, two factions at war, you choose who to follow and ultimately what happens to the lands of Drova.
Drova The Forssken Kin really took me by surprise! I had read the great reviews beforehand but seriously did not expect that great of a game!
The gameplay is actually pretty good and the combat is a lot deeper that it seems at first. The story, while not the most original, was great, as was the writing! Also the sound direction is top notch! The ambience might be a bit repetetive but not at all annoying or exhausting!
If i had one negative to say, it might be that there was a lot of walking between areas, especially later in the game. It could benefit a bit more from a better fast travel system, although the map is not that big, so the down time was not that bad.
Great game, deserving all the praises it got!
Just like in Gothic, you mainly advance your armor as you advance the story, but the world is otherwise almost fully open, and allows you to fight enemies of every strength as early on as you'd like. Better yet, carcasses remain on the ground indefinitely, slowly decaying as the chapters progress, allowing you to loot them as you gain looting skills.
The story is well written, with a clear environmental bend, though it does have a few questionable turns, and leaves quite a few questions unanswered. The biggest downside for me were the pixel graphics - I couldn't recognise characters from a distant, and no character was as memorable to me as the ones from the Gothic series.
The action itself is very well done, extremely dynamic, with lots of equippable abilities and special moves depending on chosen primary and secondary weapon. The game offers any challenge level, from Expedition Mode that allows you to set damage received and dished out as low or high as you want, to the Insane difficulty which are suited only for the most of action-oriented of veteran players.
This is a RPG that has a tight world that expects you to take the time to explore it, and I felt like it was deep / rich enough to justify the effort. I also enjoyed that any monsters you kill stay dead, and the world and characters in it felt more responsive than I expected them to be. The combat is has weight -- nothing that stood out, but it did the job -- and I loved the art. The writing didn't engage me too much at first, but there is a turning point in the game where it finally grabbed me and made me care. Overall, I felt it was a tight game that did exactly what it intended to do, and I hope the studio gets a chance to make another game in this style!
This game is rightly compared to gothic because of amazing atmosphere, a somewhat mature story which is actually earnest as opposed to majority of modern games where a joke has to be inserted every couple of minutes and the fact that it does not hold your hand with features like the minimap, quest trackers, hints etc...
I am excited to see where the developers take this world in the future.