Elden: Path of the Forgotten

The game has good ideas let down by poor execution. The premise is good: make an indie soulslike-type game which uses visual and environmental storytelling only, with (originally, at least) all text in a fictional language. Unfortunately, most players do not appreciate these kinds of elements, and the storytelling in the end product is incredibly basic. While the original narrative loop is closed, the very limited interactions the protagonist has with other people in the world (there are a handful of repeated run-ins with the same two people, plus the item trader) are so basic that is is unclear who they were or what the actual chain of events was. The actual gameplay has some good ideas and I found myself warming up to the combat towards the end, however the weapon variety is limited and the lifesteal rune you can find (which is an item usable on a cooldown) completely breaks the game's difficulty over its knee. Combine this with low enemy variety and poor enemy AI, and the end result is lamentable. The enemy AI is especially poor because the boss state machines can change mid action; this was probably intended to make them more difficult, however the result is that it is completely trivial to break their AI as you can lock them between state transitions pretty much indefinitely. The only boss I couldn't do this with was the third boss (there are four total), which was the only humanoid boss. Finally, this is not a good game for achievement hunters as some of the achievements are broken according to the developer in the discussions, and at least as of 2022 were not fixed. The issues I've mentioned combined with the price ($16 USD) make this a difficult sell even on sale.

Such a great game. I love how mysterious everything is, the visuals are beautiful, combat is fun, and with the huge update the dev just announced, it's going to get even better.

"Elden: Path of the Forgotten" is a console ported 2D retro pixel (sigh) twin stick brawler with a (very) mild adventure game aspect as you wander around some spooky temple ground looking to fight some bad monster. It's unclear why. This is caused by your mother (we only know it's your mother because of the sales blurb) reading a book then opening a portal then throwing herself into the portal. That's just Darwin if you ask me, but anyway, you decide the best thing to do is wander around and fight monsters as a result. The fighting and combat is average at best, feels generally lacklustre and unpolished. The chief problem, apart from the deplorably weak technical implementation which I'll get into, is just poor, sloppy and lazy game design. There's no map and very few hints, leaving you to figure out what to do on your own... which would be ok if there was a reason to want to, but the game offers no rewards for discovery or exploration. A key example of a developer just "not getting it". But the funny part is the developer themselves gave out a negative review for the game Vampyr... why? Because he didn't like that the in-game map (which this doesn't have) didn't help much in terms of finding your way around the game. I know that's besides the point, but the hypocrisy goes a long way to demonstrating why such badly made amateur games appear on Steam like this. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result. While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lacklustre 2D visuals. Because this is designed for consoles, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the inferior console gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the console-centric developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for consoles forces upon a game. Once more, console peasants have made gaming worse for everyone. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 9 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from (over 9,000 completely free titles), the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. "Elden: Path of the Forgotten" has the eye watering price of $16 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. That's right, the developer thinks this console ported pixelcrap is better than games like Dead By Daylight and Assassins Creed: Origin, and thus priced their game higher. What a joke! This is also competing with over 9,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend.

2020년 에나온게임이라는점에 한번놀라고 돈에 소중함을 일깨워준 게임

Obviously I'm just getting started, but I like this so far. Unique environment with lots of interesting areas to explore; several enemies to fight, several weapons found so far. I probably just need to "get good", but the only downside is getting slain constantly. Since I'm trying to ration my apples and there's few other way to heal, I found myself restarting several times (at the checkpoint before the trade bird). There I think I ran into a few bugs; the NPC after the first big battle only offers to draw a "heal ring" once, not again after re-spawns. I ran past all of the wraith-like creatures and found the cool trade-bird NPC, but realized I could "trade" apples for the mana-item over and over without actually losing apples. So I ended up with 15 of those, then went back to the wraiths, but died... then I couldn't ever beat them since NPC-man wouldn't heal me after that "first battle", upon re-spawn. Magic helps with the wraiths, but I'm not good at running around while aiming the missiles with my other thumb, while triggering the timed-shots simultaneously. Anyway, I'm looking forward to playing again soon! I gotta get good enough to see what else is in store :)

Good game, but Hard and it definately gets pretty frustrating, the last bosses of the game were very hard and the only way to pretty much complete the game was by cheesing them, not by fighting them the way you would think. so overall a good soulslike experience, a decent third person pixel art game but bad in terms of balancing the bosses, In my opinion I think that the only thing that this game needs is to expand the health of the player everytime he defeats a boss or have something to help him like health potions that expand on the health for a short ammount of time so that you can go in and get some hits. 7.5/10, you need to be a dark souls enjoyer to play this game without feeling a lot of stress. I would LOVE to give it a higher rating if some health buffs were to be added as I just seem to fall short on food later on.

В целом игра мне понравилась, сразу хочется сказать о плюсах, а позже о недостатках. Плюсы: - Более менее приятное окружение (это первое что меня зацепило) - Простота прохождения (в целом можно просто за ключами сбегать и к боссам, а атаки противников довольно примитивны) - Мне понравилось что птица подсвечивает предметы и благодаря этому я не долбился во все подряд, чтобы найти чтото, что я думал мог пропустить. Так сказать по привычке прохождения подобных игр. Это пожалуй лучшие достоинства К минусам (и всетаки минусы грубо, будем называть недостатками) можно отнести: - Не особо интересный финал (не повествование, а прохождение). Просто сражаешься с двумя первыми боссами, не хватало какогонибуть заключительного интересного босса. - Отсутствие какого либо повествования во время прохождения (в целом этот пункт можно не брать, но раз какаято завязка есть, то это можно и дать огласке). В начале катсцена и в конце (причем вообще что происходит мы понимаем, но почему женщина (она же мать как мы узнаем в описании стим) кудато и зачемто уходит не понятно). - Боевую систему можно в целом не трогать, поскольку она не влияет на сложность прохождения, но немного медленно происходит кувырок после удара. А что касательно разного оружия, лично мне кажется, кроме меча достоинство есть только у копья с более дальней атакой в борьбе с финальным боссом. В остальном в соотношении скорости атаки и урона мечу проигрывают все. - Неудобный инвентарь (во время битвы или замеса перелистывать весь инвентарь было крайне не удобно, мне кажется стоило их поделить на типы (возможно было бы больше путаницы, но в целом меньше :D) - Ну и напоследок немного о том как могут застрять враги в текстурах (редкость). В целом сам главный герой, если пробегаешь через локацию по какой либо причине и чтото забираешь, иногда не получается выбраться из камней и деревьев, поскольку сильно зажимают, а окружение не отпускает, так что как в темных душах не всегда получается пробегать уже пройденное.) Хоть и минусов оказалось больше, хочу сказать что игра достойна внимания. Моя оценка 8 из 10.

La verdad bastante, e insisto, BASTANTE verde. El pixel art no se entiende bien a la hora de enseñar los niveles del terreno, no sabes por donde puedes pasar y por donde no. A nivel sonidos, le faltan muchísimos, estas jugando y salvo por 2 cosas concretas, te da la sensación de que estas jugando con el juego muteado. No lo recomiendo en absoluto, no de momento.

game is a mess, controls are bad, weapons suck, no direction, no info, just a terrible game, good luck reading the text as its not in any language. total garbage don't waste your money even on sale. there's not even a story.

I quite enjoyed my time in this short but sweet game. But I got it on 70% discount, full price is too much.