One shouldnt expect a traditional RPG experience with this game. in many way it reminds me of games like Sorcery!. You move your party over a world map while a narrator tells the story and you can make decisions. But in contrast to a gamebook this game also features real-time combat against hordes of enemies and well done cutscenes.
The graphics look great and the story is very interesting to the end.
The downside is, that the combat is rather simplisitc after you figured out how to do it. You control 4 characters that can take three abilities each into combat.
I still very much enjoyed the game as an interactive fantasy story and didnt regret that i bought it for full price.
I'm only the game greatly thus far! It really Capture the feeling of the novel fairly well, and so far there have been only a few minor changes to the events that happen in the game vs. the novel. Obviously you meet the Ireheart twins much earlier in the game, for they teach Tungdil how to fight, and if you don't meet them until later, the game wouldn't be much of a game. Many of the games cut-scenes and dialogue play out almost word for word as the novel does.. So I would recommend reading the novel before playing the game, if you have interest in reading. The combat is system, to be honest, I thought I wasn't going to enjoy. I'm not a fan of the real time strategy style rpgs like with Baldur's Gate and planescape torment, but in this game, it is really well done. Since you're fighting easily thirty to fifty orcs and other beast of Tion at once against your four comrades, and all your abilities can push, shove, and knock enemies around, giving you this really dynamic sense that the environment is a living element in how you combat your foes. You can knock them off ledges, push them into fires,and really manipulate dance of battle, but be warned because your attacks do cause friendly fire to your allies, and what you do those piggy's (OINK, OINK, COME HERE YOU GREEN SMELLY PIGGY'S!) can be done to your friends. Music is awesome and so far the voice acting is mostly top notch; there is this one orc that sounds very staticy, like he was recording his lines through a broken mic a little to far from it. This could just be an error that can be patched out. Also the game has this choose your adventure style mechanic out side of combat, where a narrator describes the scene and you get to choose from a list of things that can be done, be warned, sometimes this results in an orc slicing your throat open and ending Tungdil's adventure a little sooner than expected, Dwarves are made of stone, but a knife in the jugular will send one back to Varccus's eternal smithy.
It's a bit sad that when I speak of the most outstanding, positive aspect of the game, it's actually the work, that's already been done by the autho of the books, Markus Heitz: The story and the characters.
I don't know the Books, or especially the first book, THE DWARVES, which builds the story frame of this game. I admit, I was a backer, just out of curiosity, when I stumbled over this title on kickstarter.com. With time and kickstarter updates, I got hooked. I remember a developer comment on the facebookpage from october, 13th: "Die Zwerge" sind gerade bei Sony und Microsoft zur Abnahme und wir schauen, ob wir noch Bugs in den PC, Mac und Linux Versionen finden. Der Veröffentlichung am 1. Dezember steht nichts mehr im Wege, wie es aussieht! " It says more or less that at this point the final version of the game existed and was going through quality assurance. 6 weeks before release.
What the hell did the QA actually do??
There are so many BUGS or non-inteligent gameplay decisions in the release version, that my 15 hours playthrough was a rollercoaster from "Wow, good game" to "What the hell is it now" and back and forth.
In total: bad camera control, level glitches that kill characters, game crashes, couldn't use items, narrator tells his lines twice or 1.5 or 0.5 times, friendly fire that kills your party members in a game with too little and too unprecise controls to justify friendly fire.
These were the downsides that might be fixed with future updates.
The RPG has only fundamental skill trees, wouldn't really call it an RPG. Levels are very very small. No items or weapons worth mentioning.
BUT: It also has GREAT VOICE ACTING, COOL CHARACTERS, SURPRISING STORY TWISTS and nice VISUALS
I give it 3 out of 5 - and if they fix the bugs and the one or the other gameplay issue, it get's a 4 out of 5. Hopefully sales will be good enough to justify THE DWARVES part 2.
props to the devs for having a linux install on day one. definitely have a dedicated graphics card when playing this game, integrated intel on an i7-6700 does not cut it. however my 960m gfx on my windows 10 seems to work smoothe.
This game has a action based combat system, a narrative based over world, and node based movement in the over world. The narrative is based on a book series with a rich lore to draw from. This lore is dark, and uses that mature rating to a decent degree (violence and narrative descriptions, no spoilers).
i look forward to seeing more of the book series in this games format.
The game is way shorter than expected. They could have included more of the original story and stayed truer to it in both mainquest and sidequests. The effect of choices made is not really noticable aside from the log. The lack in length is not even compensated with replayability. A rather disappointing experience. It's average at best
