This is a great Story-driven game, with a capital “S”. The characterization is deep, the story is well worth to read. It’s like a gory, dark, cruel fantasy book with all the naked realities of this gritty genre. The protagonists are all seriously damaged, thanks to war, childhood abuses, the cruelties of the street. The storyline is disturbing sometimes, it really gets under your skin and you end up grinding your teeth and wanting revenge.
The gameplay is nicely composed one: you read the pages, you make choices and those choices affect the current or some future pages. As you advance, you gather items, information, you learn how to cast spells, solve some minigames, riddles and anagrams. Combat is pen-and-paper RPG style, turn-based and depicted on a grid. I really liked it, though endless dicerolling can be irritating after a while. If you equip yourself adequately and choose the right strategy (dance away, attack, defend yourself), utilize the right Feats (little combat boosters active for a round), combat becomes a very enjoyable thing.
With the recently added offline save option even account creation can be saved, but of course if you’d like to play multiplayer game (which is fun, like play-by-mail RPG in the old days, only on your PC with chat, info exchange, joined combats) you’ll need a username and password. I’m curious about the future improvements of the game, like adding Steam Achievements and Trading Cards, as well as making the combat even more diverse with objects on the battlegrid, for example.
