"Davyria: Heroes of Eternity" is a rather poorly made (and apparently abandoned Early Access) attempt to make a "Dark Souls" top down ARPG... really, it's a clunky amateur mess that failed here on Steam Direct.
What do you do in the game? Very shallow, pointless Diablo ripoff combat (really just left clicking a lot), with mediocre graphics (not sure if asset flipped). The developer didn't bother properly finishing this after nobody bought it.
Despite not being in Early Access, it's obvious this is an incomplete product. Developers have an obligation to deliver complete, not partially done products to gamers, that shouldn't be controversial. Whatever the excuses may be, it does no service to gamers for incomplete products polluting Steam like this. It makes it harder for gamers to find complete games, and it makes it harder for ethical developers who do the right thing to find their audience.
The game assets here look a lot better than the actual game they're assembled on... that doesn't mean this is necessarily an asset flip or a kitbash, because there's no proof. But what matters is that this has all the same terrible quality as asset flips, and at the end of the day that's one of the reasons people don't like asset flips, the quality is bad. That's a problem.
You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality product, this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me.
This game is fairly dated at 8 years old... and even back then it looked old and busted compared to contemporary, professionally made 3D games of the same period. It looked bad then, it looks worse now.
Now on to pricing and value for gamers.
There's no initial download price, but the developer was charging $9 USD for this.
Price barriers, especially on low quality products, can be a direct cause of failure. It seems like a nice gesture for the game to have no up-front cost anymore, but it also tells us that the game wasn't good enough to succeed as a paid product. This is also a bit of a slap in the face to anyone who showed enough questionable judgement to pay money for this... nobody got refunded.
In terms of public reception, this failed to appeal to the 130 million+ gamers on Steam. SteamDB showed the game peaked at just a dozen or so concurrent players, and now there's basically nobody playing it. Even though it's free. This is a dismal public reception, but it's easy to see why gamers rejected it.
Given that this free title won't increase your game collector count, is it worth your time to add it to your library?
This is a hard pass. There's no immediate financial commitment, but there are thousands of more compelling games on the platform that will give you a lot more enjoyment for your time.
[quote][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Response![/url][/quote]The developer has weighed in to inform everyone they didn't read the [url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/reviews]Developer Usage Rules[/url] for Steam "partners", or they deliberately ignored the part where Valve says:
[quote]Though it may be tempting, not every review needs to be responded to. A developer response will frequently draw more attention than the original statement, potentially turning a small issue into a much larger community discussion. It's also not a good idea to use this feature to refute customer opinions. Your direct attention can be seen as validation or a defensive attempt to silence your customers.[/quote]
The developer breaches Valve guidelines to supply one of the most dishonest, disgusting insults to the intellegence of gamers everywhere. Get a load of this crap: "It's not abandoned, I decided it was finished in the state it was in". Holy crap. I have to try that one with my boss. Does this guy think he's Gandalf? A wave of his wand, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, the game is now complete! Because he said so. I've never seen anyone so full of crap before.
Certainly, this is the most pathetic, dishonest attempt at an excuse I have ever seen.
The developer admits they didn't hire a team of talented staff to produce the game and tried to do the whole thing on their own, instead. This is a lot like boarding an airplane, and halfway through the flight, having the pilot come out and serve peanuts. It's going to end in disaster. It requires a team of competent people to do a complex job properly, and that's not what has happened here... another explanation for the poor quality of this game.
The developer makes it clear this was a "hobby" and not something sincerely made for gamers... a case of an amateur developer making garbage, and because he's so convinced he is The Main Character, publishes the garbage nobody wants on Steam, making gaming worse for everyone. This appalling self-centered attitude explains so much about why this was such a failure... but excuses none of it.
Nothing in the developers pointless breach of Valve guidelines changes any of the objective facts of my review. My review stands unaltered. I cannot recommend this garbage to anyone.
