Avernum 4

A Weirdly underrated RPG, plays like fallout in a medieval age, for the price and sales price I couldn't recommend it more.

People are saying that the story for this game isn't very good. I disagree. I think the story is very good. If for a moment you discount the fact that most Avernum games have the same-ish villain, I think the concept of this game's story is very well done. You start out as a nobody in a remote part of Avernum, but something big has happened out in the world and no one knows why or who. You start out at just the right time for the troubles to start but not so late as to find everything's destroyed already. (This concept first came out in the Exile series and I quite liked it. You cannot "lose" lose but the longer you wait, the harder the game is going to get). Avernum is basically a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ compared to the Empire but still if you explore hard enough you will be able to find some pretty cool gear and weapons. Some hitches though: 1. The combat system is very unforgiving, even on Normal difficulty. You don't do a ton of damage to enemies with your weapons, so don't expect 1- or 2-hit kills, but you can survive even if one of your characters does. And thankfully, you don't lose any gear if you are killed. 2. Use your skill points wisely! These you'll get by upping levels and some other techniques, but you'll find you always want to upgrade more skills than you have points. Especially because the cost goes up as you upgrade: level 2 will cost 2 points and level 3 will cost 2-3, and level 4 3-4 and so on. 3. Traits make a MASSIVE difference! Be sure to select a few traits when creating a new party. The bonuses those traits will give you (e.g. +2 Mage Spells for Natural Mage) will save you a TON of skill points in later levels. 4. Same thing goes for gold as for SP. I shouldn't be saying this as a law-abiding citizen but, you'll have to steal some stuff sometimes - gold is just too short. You have to spend gold to get weapons and gear (if you prefer to buy rather than craft or simply "acquire"), and also to learn spells and skills from sages. I'd say reserve the gold for spells, because those are expensive. All this stuff aside - this game is worth it for the story alone. If you are the kind of person who just wants to play through the story and not worry about other stuff, you can certainly switch to Easy and just breeze through the story. I promise you won't find it dull.