Drova
On the whole, Drova did an excellent job at engaging me, immersing me in the story and the world, and it found it memorable and enjoyable pretty much throughout. The beginning of the game is extremely tough in terms of combat, but it gets much easier after about level 8 (10 hours in). If you can persevere through that, or gain XP in other ways, there's a really interesting world to explore which rewards exploration and has a ton of quests to do. I wasn't expecting to spend 40 hours on this, but I got pulled into pretty much every set of quests and pushed each storyline as far as I could go before I had to make a game-defining decision. There's a few drawbacks, but generally really good.
Pros
- Full marks because I actually got to the end of the game and got invested in the story
- The world is immersive
- There's an investigation mode which adds more immersion - following footsteps or investigating and objects just adds a little more interest to the world
- NPCs sometimes help you cross distances at the beginning of the game to give you an ally in combat, which is really valuable
- Exploration is rewarding - there's all kinds of loot and secret rooms to find
- No inventory limit
- I enjoyed the little puzzle elements throughout, like finding the right drawings to use to open doors or playing musical notes
- There are 4 different weapon types each with their own skills
- Towards the end of the game you really unlock the ability to use magic instead of just scrolls, which adds a lot more to the combat
- The world is quite large
- In general, it works really well as a Steam Deck game. It runs well, and everything works well on a controller
- There are little shrines all over the world that reward you if you work out which item they want
- Instead of armour being scattered throughout the world, it's dolled out as major main story milestones, which makes the few pieces of armour in the game feel like major rewards
- Side quests are detailed and really quite long
- Talking to people is rewarding. I often find NPCs forgettable in games, yet I knew a lot of the names of people in the world and where to find them
- Although you can't make weapons and armour, you can make food, potions and traps
Cons
- Combat at the beginning is really not that great. "Difficult" is fine, but enemies that continually stay out of your range and snipe at you isn't fun. You also do practically no damage - a 2H axe swipe does about 2% of a health bar and it just feels really ineffectual. It's only much later that combat gets interesting
- When you level up, you get 4 skill points. 1 attribute (Strength/Dexterity/Mind) cost 1 point, and skills like lock picking or sword training cost 2-4. I didn’t like that the side skills like brewing potions made me feel like I was making combat even harder by not taking strength
- There are multiple items required for quests that the game marks as “sales” items, so you sell them and then you're screwed, and end up searching all the merchants "buy back" inventory to try and get back what you need
- Ranged weapons (bow and sling) are useless, at least on controller. Maybe it's better with a mouse
- Although I genuinely enjoyed the whole "old school no quest markers" thing, there were sections where you're given almost no guidance and I just stumbled across my objectives by mistake. That's not fun.
- I didn't like how you had to build up magical power by hitting things. It makes a magic-only build unviable. Worse, NPCs and enemies are not subject to this, and can spam special skills and magic as much as they like.
- It's difficult to describe, but there's just something "wrong" with the whole main story. I never fully grasped what they were going on about trying to capture divinities, whether they were bad or good, what the difference was between the crystals I had to charge and the captured divinities
- Unless you spend a lot of time chasing an obscure side quest (which doesn't tell you it's important), you get the "bad ending". That's going to piss a lot of people off.