Caves of Lore

Played all the way through and really enjoyed this game. I probably won't replay but would highly recommend.

Score: 3/5 A poorly executed fantasy adventure focused on world building, humor, and JRPG combat in an evocative setting that lacks polish in many areas leading to frustration and boredom. Outside of the humor, as both the following are pretty self-serious, this reminds me of my very negative experiences with both Underrail and Outward. I’d rather player Final Fantasy Tactics or Darkest Dungeon for the strategy side, and there are a lot of choices for better stories in fantasy/apocalyptic settings, inside and outside the video game space. [b]The Good[/b] 1. Excellent setting. a. Seems to be strongly inspired by some tabletop RPGs, like the setting from The Forbidden Lands and a lot of the mechanics/design direction from Dungeons and Dragons, especially early editions. But the settings is clearly unique, a great combination of many of the things I love from both fantasy and apocalyptic settings. But also reminds me some of the parts of the Metro series, and Underrail, and LotR. 2. Good stylized old school art style/direction and animations. 3. Good to great music/audio/sfx [b]The Bad[/b] 1. Combat and JRPG Style a. The grid-based, turn-based combat is not good, but also not terrible. But it is the core of the game, going with the grindy JRPG style I hate. And it’s significantly outclassed by the quarter-century old Final Fantasy Tactics: b. Less precision for both movement and actions. No “undo” feature for misclicking. c. Less interesting options for combat actions and combat-related character progression. d. Some environmental visuals are disconnected from the mechanics. You can move through and stand inside walls/objects that should have collisions or blocked movement / impassable flags. Sometimes these structures/objects will prevent you from being able to attack when inside/beside them, but it is not clear how it works, and I’ve never seen an enemy unable to attack when near them. e. About the same overall quality and variety of movement actions in combat. It’s worse in some ways (FFT has mounts and verticality, CoL doesn’t let teammates move past each other) and better in others (vaulting, abilities/skills to attempt to move past enemies for flanking or getting to protected key targets). f. A bit better gearing, with significantly more gear slots with about the diversity of options for each gear slot. 2. Humor and Immersion a. Humor doesn’t land. Some immersion-breaking pop-culture references. Moderate amount of immersion breaking situations, technology, mechanics, and gameplay. 3. Questionable Design Choices, Especially Character Progression a. Agility stat is connected to mental resistance. b. No attribute points granted for leveling up. c. Small amount of skill points granted on level up, but most skill points also earned by using the skill in game, which leads to The Elder Scrolls issue of optimizing the fun out of the game. This implementation is janky/unpolished, but not an inherently bad idea. d. Magic has an excessive amount of mechanics/related skills/flags, making progression grindy and tedious. Many different magic schools with limited amount of useful spells each. Perks/Talents generally only affect one or two schools. Each spell is leveled independently of all other spells and magic stats. 4. Tutorial(ization) a. If you choose Tutorial, you start a new permanent game, but with opt-out tutorialization. b. If you choose New Game, you start a permanent new game, but with pop-ups for opt-in tutorialization. 5. Bugs a. Arcane Undertow skill has an inaccurate/bugged description. b. If a character leaves the party temporarily to do a task/training, they will inexplicably appear in the next combat encounter, and rejoin the group. If the player (and their party) leaves the area where the character who left the part is doing a task/training, they will inexplicably teleport to the party and rejoin.

Loved this game, the perfect mechanics, a great history, beautiful pixel art. It was exactly what I was looking for! Finished it a couple hours ago and it was a fantastic experience.

This game is an absolute gem. I'm shocked I haven't heard of it earlier. Highly recommend to all fans of classic D&D adventures

Fun, well built old school right. Checks ALL the boxes. Story, character progression, ect.

Great CRPG. The combat is fun and there's a fair amount of build variations (some magic is a bit overtuned though, I haven't fully maxed magic missile and I still have to avoid using it to not oneshot enemies) but the game really excels in exploration. Not only are there tons of secrets, hidden mechanics, and lore to discover, you're actively rewarded for engaging with them. New spells, new enchantments and weapon sets, learning how to unlock secret rooms via learning rune meanings, learning how to use the lunar cycle to your advantage, new abilities, etc. can all be obtained from experimenting against enemies, solving puzzles, or reading lore books. Insanely fun gameplay loop because every aspect feeds back into the others. There are flaws. It starts slow, and while I felt extremely powerful by midgame I remember the early game being a bit of a struggle. The characters are surface-level interesting but it's not very character driven so you don't really get to know/care about them. There's a lot of party members and a couple of them either feel weak or redundant to me (and so many of them feel like they're built to be casters, but A) you don't need that many, B) there's an entire enemy type highly resistant to magic, and C) having lots of casters is a bit tedious with the way learning magic works). Journal is a little too vague, I took a massive break when playing this game (multiple months) and am writing this review after coming back. It's been a big struggle to remember locations/plot points/quest hints because of how vague the journal is. Difficulty is lopsided, it's almost too easy now but was tough starting out (haven't finished the game so it may increase again). Inventory management is a big mess, especially when trying to enchant/upgrade equipment. But even given those flaws it's still a very good RPG. Highly recommend.

Foda

Одно из лучший рпг, которые играл, супер просто, примерно чуть хуже Drova, но Drova шедевр 11/10. Тут 10 секреток из 10.

好玩，爱玩，一直玩

Lands of L...no, Caves of Lore is a wonderful old-school indie RPG! I just miss an old-school manual to learn more about the world, characters, and mechanics. Like back in the day. ;) Hopefully, we'll see more from this developer.