Broken Roads

There's potential here, but it doesn't work out. Broken Roads is a game that takes place in post-apocalyptic Australia that doesn't really pull from Mad Max, which is something I find refreshing. Something it DOES do which I enjoyed is that it wears its clearly home grown Australian roots on its sleeve, not just in the obvious haha teehee drop bears and giant spiders way, but in little ways like how some of the little healing items you find are very clearly snacks that people who live in Australia would know about and have. A lot of local slang used in dialog and environment descriptions, I really like it, it always nice when people from a place make a game that takes place there and it ends up feeling that much more authentic than the alternative, which is a big AAA studio walking up with a mask going "HOW DO YOU DO FELLOW AUSTRALIANS?". The game opens as you'd might expect, after character creation and picking an origin you're a new guy in town walking in from the Outback trying to find your place and getting to know your new neighbors, checking out the immediate area around town, learning how the game controls and works. The problem with this set up is that you can probably guess what's going to happen to this starting RPG town as you're walking around meeting people. When the inevitable happens you're set loose into the wider game world and things properly begin. There's a decent framework of a game here, and some things in it that I enjoyed, but problems start to pile on. Getting the biggest and most egregious problems out of the way is that multiple quests bugged out and became unfinishable. Other things were fairly unclear, like if I should or shouldn't be able to do or bring up something, because context made it feel like I should but the opportunity never came. There's a not insignificant amount of combat, and for lack of a better way to term it, it lacks pizazz. There's only so many different types of enemies to fight and not much visual variety inside those types. The random combat encounters where you get jumped when on the overworld map are very samey and you can see the repeating spawns and eventually they just blur together. There is a combat encounter with a fairly significant character that you can get into and its disappointing how its set up as JUST a regular encounter of them and four other dudes, what should be a big story beat is a meh fight and you move on. There's dialog that isn't voiced that frankly should be, and some things that are voiced that end up feeling like a waste in the light of other way more important things not being voiced. As a setting, this hypothetical Outback years and years after the bombs has some WEIRD stuff going on that frankly isn't investigated enough. You can get some tidbits but this should be a thing where anyone seeing it for the first time and for a long time after, including your party members (and you if you so choose) should be screaming in all caps "WOW WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT", but instead its not given the weight it feels like it deserves and instead people go "huh that's odd"/"I wouldn't mess with it". Broken Roads has some good ideas, there's ideas being explored about philosophy, what it means to be a good person, and how best to build a society after everything is blown to hell post WW3. You can tickle people's brains for their opinion, there's someone to talk about about differing philosophies, and there's even a cool mechanic of the moral compass that tracks your choices and gives you bonuses depending on how you behave. You can do a thing I love in RPGs in general where if you hoard things like a packrat you can automatically do quests when you already have the stuff someone asks for. "Oh you need a huge magnet? HERE YOU GO". There's potential here, but I think the game didn't get enough time in the oven and it never reaches that potential because of it. I give Broken Roads a "Automatically knowing the answer to a question by being an alcoholic" out of "Why didn't they take my weapons away when they arrested me?", there's good and bad, and unfortunately the bad outweighs the good, I have to say give it a skip, which is disappointing.

Очень красиво нарисовано, паб в первом городе - такое загляденье, что даже заскриншотил. Тексты литературные, умные, с толикой чёрного юмора, очень ветвистые с самого начала. Настоящая нелинейная РПГ, единственная, что вышла в 2024 - постоянные скилл-чеки и проверки мировозрения. Мировозрение реализовано очень круто, это лучше раз увидеть, чем 10 раз прочитать. Музыка же напротив рушит атмосферу, потому что создаёт иллюзию "Весёлой Фермы", а не постапокалипсиса. Ну, никак не подходит к жёстким антиутопическим текстам. Включил фоном OST из Фоллаутов первых - появился нужный настрой, прям любимым Wasteland 2 запахло. Но это всё хорошо либо терпимо. А теперь к плохому: очередные "гении" не добавили в пошаговые бои ускорение анимаций! У разраба просили это неоднократно и писали про этот минус весь 2024 год. И знаете, что он сделал? Правильно, добавил ускорение анимаций в свободное исследование, а в бою ничего не изменил. В первом же нетренировочном бою за город на нашу команду нападает более 10 врагов и ты просто спишь в ожидании хода каждого из 20-ти рыл. А они ещё издеваются, ибо не бегают по полю боя, а, 6лядь, ходят! И вот так вот дальше просто постоянно, меня хватило суммарно боёв на 10. Я шедевральные Divinity OS ненавижу и не рекомендую исключительно за вот этот фактор, так я буду терпеть эту помойку? И самое примечательное, что разраб лгал, будто игру можно пройти без единой битвы, включая финального босса. С одной стороны, это могло быть похоже на правду, потому что перед любым боем можно поговорить и что-то порешать, а если уж дошло до драки, то можно убежать из неё. С другой стороны, на карте мира постоянно попадаются случайные стычки с врагами, как в Фоллаутах первых, и вот там, если "успех" не выпал на избежание боя, то воевать придётся! И надо сказать, что рэндом тут такой, что и 3 раза подряд при шансе на успех в 86% я имел провал. На самом деле, тактически бои не так плохи и, может, оно и интересно было бы, но тут ощущение, что играют мной, а не я. Выводы делайте сами, исходя из вашей терпимости и свободного времени. Лично мне игру рефандить жалко, потому что изначально зацепила и сеттингом, и текстами, и картинкой, и уникальными решениями, и ценой в 4$, но и пpocpать жизнь на бои по 50 минут, как было в Divinity:OS, желания мало, когда тебе 45 лет, а не 15. Удалил пока, но, может, в 65 ещё раз попробую...

On the surface, Broken Roads is a game I should love: a post-apocalyptic CRPG with a heavy philosophical flair, exploring the nature of humanity while surviving the wasteland. I gave it several hours to sink in, desperately wanting to give it the benefit of the doubt. To its credit, the foundation is okay. The art style and voice acting are genuinely good and establish a solid vibe, and you can see the faint outlines of what the characters were supposed to be. Unfortunately, that’s where my purely positive impressions end. Gameplay & Exploration Mechanically, the game feels like it's missing a core ingredient: the fun. Combat: At best, it's uninteresting; at worst, a total slog. There is no real incentive to build variance into your party members beyond your main character. Exploration: A frustrating mixed bag. It’s slow, involves tedious backtracking, and relies heavily on spamming the Tab key to find interactable objects. Quest Progression: Doing or saying the wrong thing can violently jerk your character forward in the narrative with zero context. At one point, I said "no" to an NPC, and suddenly I was in a warehouse being threatened. Later, I was abruptly in a new town because of a "raid"—but when did it happen? How? Why did I get no chance to fight back? Pacing & Story The pacing is wild. It's weirdly slow and hesitant where it should be accelerating, yet it leaps forward right when it needs to be grounded. I understand branching paths complicate things, but instead of feeling like my character was being swept up in a grand narrative, it felt like reading a book where someone had torn out random pages. I was just bumbling forward in the dark. Characters While I can see the spark of a good idea in a few companions, they all ultimately feel flat. There is no natural dialogue build-up. Early on, a bunch of characters died and I think I was supposed to care—but because of the rushed pacing, I could barely remember who they were. Most of my interactions amounted to a single dialogue tree where they dumped their backstory before we moved on. Polish Bug-wise, I didn’t encounter anything game-breaking myself, though the community clearly has. I will note that the "speed up" button didn't seem to actually do anything, which made the slow pacing even more noticeable. Final Verdict If the story were compelling, I’d suffer through mechanical jank. If the mechanics were fun, I’d overlook a two-dimensional story. If the characters were deeply engaging, I might tolerate both. But when every pillar falls flat simultaneously? The game just collapses under its own ambition. It's a shame, because the concept is neat, but I wouldn't waste your time.

Really enjoyed this one, you don’t see many cool isometric post-apocalyptic RPGs these days. The moral system is actually really smart and makes your choices feel meaningful. You can tell it’s made by a team that really cares. Worth checking out if you like story-driven games.

Literally unplayable with tons of bugs. The writing is childish and super simplistic, and voice overs performances are not doing it for me at least. A good attempt but imo there are better options out there. The animations, art style, graphics and level design is good, although the maps are very simple and super small as well.

Really wanted to complete this game, liked the strory line, graphics are ok, even lived with the clunky navigation and combat mechanics which slowly grown on you. But when most of my quest log ends up being bugged out quests that don't seem completelable, I need to abandon the game. I saw in forums the developer was very active fixing stuff a year or two ago, but apparently never finished (not even close). It's a buggy mess :(

It's interesting. Very much a passion project, almost art. Setting is cool and story is interesting enough. Slow at points due to some bugs or poor instructions. A few quests I could never finish because I clicked the wrong button at the wrong time (there's a fellow still stood on top of a grain silo to this day waiting for me to talk to him with no further instruction.) Received as part of a games bundle. I'd say it's worth playing for the story and setting, but wouldn't drop £30 (or full price equivalent) on it.