Abermore

I really wanted to enjoy Abermore. I was hyped for it before launch atfer reading an article about how it was basically rogue-lite thief. A roguelite immersive sim? Sign me up! Sadly, though, you never get far enough before the problems of the game rear their ugly head. Missing texture render walls invisible. Enemies with so hugely restrictive sight cones that stealth requires no actual work. Clunky menu design and overdesigned stamina system that has mechanics to it but never actually utilizes them at all. Not to mention the dirth of graphics options and the fact that the keybindings were patched in day one as an afterthought. I really wanted and in some respects still want to like Abermore, but I refunded it before 2 hours were up. The game, more than anything is a test of your paitence, constantly wearing at your ability to put up with bugs until you finally crack.

I am enjoying the pieces of what Abermore could have been, but that takes patience, imagination, and a whole lot of forgiveness. This game is much too broken to be released to paying audiences like this. It starts with bad framerates and slows down over the course of a mission to an unplayable slideshow of 5fps. Level geometry is missing walls and ceilings. Clipping out of the level is commonplace. Lights dont work. AIs fail at pathfinding. I had the Y axis of my mouselook go wild and then eventually lock up. The UI is plagued with constant full screen flashes of broken polygons. I havent had a single session that wasnt deeply broken. But in among all that, and despite the stealth systems being rudimentary to the point of bad, there is something at the core of this game. I am enjoying the light touch weird worldbuilding in the quests and npcs, and in the moments between the game's brokenness I find myself liking what they were going for. Not what they actually produced, mind you, just what I can see in it.

Lots of promise, but unfortunately should have been an early access game. Just too many issues for release.

This game had so much potential but its nothing like it really said it was. The level design is broken and can softlock you The story constantly lore dumps and you cant skip unless you wanna spam spacebar and lastly the bugs are game breaking. The worst part is the group that made the game has split into different products so chances are there isn't much left hope wise for this game.

The real master thieves are the poeple who actually charged money for this unfinished mess of a game... You can soft-lock the game at several points, some mechanics straight up doesn't work, the game is generally lacking in content and the story... well it could almost create a new term: "AberLore". If you play the game just to see how much you are able to break it then it might be a bit amusing, however I could not even attempt this as everytime i was finished with a dialogue in the game everything just froze and i had to Alt F4, meaning i could literally not even play it at all which was nice as it spared my time from wasting it on this atrocious game. The game kept throwing achivements at me everytime i closed it (which i had not earned btw), as in a desperate attempt at making me come back to it. 1/10

a technical mess with a lot of promise would need a ton of work, but it doesn't seem like its getting that 21:9 support is missing, menus are all messed up when its not in 16:9 you constantly see through walls and can often fall through them or get stuck inside them, performance is also abysmal and appears to be capped at 60fps regardless of vsync I really like the art style, atmosphere, story and characters the movement feels pretty good and stealth mechanics work well would love to recommend this game, but sadly cant.

Unfinished trash, avoid.

As loathe as I am to submit this (because there's a great game here!), I can't recommend this based on bugs alone. - The inventory system barely works; items keep covering up other items in the inventory, then dragging them around causes all sorts of weirdness. - Every level I played had massive gaping holes in the geometry, specifically around stairs with not a single set of them appearing without an issue. - I was bumped out of the level geometry while crawling through a vent. I was able to get back inside in that case though. - I finished a quest but the person refused to acknowledge that I'd finished the quest so I couldn't progress their mission, because the level wasn't selectable again (as I'd already finished it!). - A dude pushed me out of the level geometry and into a cupboard, leaving me to be stuck while they sounded an alarm and I could do nothing but sit there waiting for the timer to go down. With all the above problems, it really does pain me to say "don't buy it just yet". It's so much fun and would be brilliant if it weren't so broken. I was willing to push through all the bugs and weirdness because I was having a great time stealing stuff, knocking people out, sneaking about and selling my ill-gotten goods, but one thing after another wore me down. The playground here is fun, the abilities are a nice twist, the moment-to-moment gameplay is satisfying, but it's just so broken. I will happily amend this review to a positive if some fixes come out, but until then I can't recommend it.

I was actually hoping this game would be great fun with lots of repeatability with the randomly generated worlds you must thieve in. It began with my first run, i quickly got the hang of the game and ran through the tutorial with no issues. The next mission went by quickly too, it was an easy stealth run. The next run was where it began. I started in an underground area, it looks like the minecart track you ride off on. Its easy to find the room with several lockers but with no markers i got stuck and was unable to progress (turns out theres little vent holes in the walls you can use! the tutorial didn't really cover these.) I learned quickly. I started using those vents and tunnels to get around NPCs and get behind cameras. THEN, it happened. I was crawling through and then poof! I'm now above the map. It allowed me to see through walls and simply walking backwards pushed me back into the world. Easy fix. However, after this mission my game would crash and I would lose the save file. My second run was much more successful. I had ran through all the missions. I have completed relationships with everyone in the guild. But according to the game I have 2 days until the final mission, where you rob the castle, and no missions left. You must be thinking "great! He can go on to the finale and finish the game!" Wrong. Even if you fill all the slots and reduce the risk of the mission to low, you are unable to start it because the game says theres 2 days left until you can run it. I guess you aren't supposed to complete all the missions with such speed. TLDR: Game good, some bugs occur but 99% are easy to fix and don't break the game (the crash issue was fixed in the day 1 patch). Don't try to finish all the tasks too quickly or it'll bug and you wont be able to progress.

I've been really enjoying Abermore so far. I've completed the tutorial mission then two of the main missions, without experiencing any of the bugs that other reviews have mentioned (I presume the Day 1 patch has ironed out some kinks). There's some really neat ideas and gameplay mechanics, such as creative places to hide unconscious guards in Abermore, and I'm sure this game has more tricks up it's sleeve. I really like the fact that the procedural-generation of maps makes each mission personal. If you get stuck you need to solve it yourself, you're not going to find a solution from somebody else. This also made me more determined to get everything right first time! I'm looking forward to getting further into the game, and seeing what challenges the later missions have in store.