Forgotten Blood

Absolute junk. The nicest thing I can say about it is that it seems like maybe a kid asked an AI to "make a game kinda like King's Field" and just uploaded the first draft to Steam. And that's not because of any of the art assets, it's because it seems like it was made by someone who's never played a video game before. Bizarrely bad opening with overly loud and very bad voice acting, followed by a weird "choice" that seems to have no purpose, okay, sure. Then you're dropped into the world, with the only real sound effect being your character going "HUP" when they jump and the sound of your piddly weapon. Hope you weren't expecting music or ambient sounds of the environment. Then the real horrors begin: inventory. Well, actually, everything related to interacting with the UI is a nightmare. If you're unlucky enough to play this game with a controller, and unfortunate enough to have an item drop, the simple act of placing it from the game world into your inventory is an absolute travesty of design. You have to look at the item, which is represented by a floating, glowing orb/star in the world. No, buddy, don't just kind of point at it! LOOK DIRECTLY AT IT. You'll know you're looking at it when the words instructing you which button to press in order to access your inventory appear on-screen. Okay, that's step one, now press that button, the item will be at the very bottom of the inventory, under "LOOT", now navigate your cursor down there to select the item. Now either press the button to quick equip/use it, or press A to pick it up and then agonizingly drag it into a free slot, but placing it in that slot? Not so simple, I can't even remember what button it was, but I guarantee it's the opposite of intuitive. The gamepad cursor doesn't align properly, the mouse cursor pops up in every menu even on controller, you can drop items off-center in slots to where it looks broken, leaving you with a row of non-aligned items that are in fact the same item, there's so many button presses to just collect a dropped item that it's better to just walk by them. Doing this laborious task for every single item in the game (I got like 6 item drops in 15 minutes of play) sounds like a nightmare. I assumed that perhaps the game was designed with keyboard and mouse in mind, which would be strange for a game citing King's Field inspiration. So I hit escape to go to the options and check the keyboard and mouse controls. I notice an option, which read something like "Return at the Crystall" with like a weird bit of extra writing, like a loose apostrophe that's just way above the letters, looks like absolute junk, words make no sense, but I choose the option and it indeed returns me to a crystal I had just visited. Weird. Weird name, weird option, weird words. Whatever. I go back into the options, see a "dot filter" option and decide to click it. It flashes, but nothing happens. I pick up my controller and press A. Again, the option flashes but nothing happens. Nothing in the options actually changes no matter what I do. At some point the keyboard controls pop up and take up half the screen, blocking all the options. I close and open the options multiple times but it won't go away, and I can't figure out how to get rid of it. I close the game, and write this review, and then request a refund. Despite decades of QoL and modern controls, this person or "person" has made a game far more clunky and less intuitive than anything From Software has ever put out. In its own way, that's impressive. That it could utterly disappoint and disgust me in only 15 minutes even moreso, as I think I'm fairly patient. But nobody should play this. It's not even funny bad, it's just sad. Like a sandpaper sybian, this is just too much friction for me.

I'm confused by most the negative reviews on this game. Its almost like they bought an indie King's Field-like and were blindsided by it being an indie King's Field-like. The controls and combat are rough, nothing is explained, and it is inherently difficult in many ways. But that's what I expected when going in. I was also greeted with creative creature design, a provocative latent story, and eerie environments. However, I can understand how the janky UI and controls, lack of direction, and enemies attacking through walls can be super frustrating, I don't think it warrants a negative review, though it does dampen my motivation at times. I think the dev still needs to push out a few updates streamlining the UI, fixing collision, having better direction. However, there's a beautiful world with a lot of content for the price if you go into it knowing you're in for a battle. And I hate to see what I consider a pretty good game that needs a little work get review bombed like this. It is exactly what is says it is, and for the people that it's for, it's pretty good.

The amount of hating on this game is insane. This is a really fun game if you are fine with figuring almost everything out yourself with no hand holding. I do think the stamina regen sucks and you should probably just not consume stamina outside of combat. There are also a few bugs, I went into a cave and got softlocked which sucks. Hoping I am able to finish the game sometime in the future if this gets fixed. Other than those issues its a really solid game.

This game requires a lot more work for it to be in a playable / enjoyable state; the intro with super loud questionable voice acting then you're unceremoniously dropped in some dungeon with no music or any ambience whatsoever only your obnoxiously loud footsteps and the same grunts sound your character plays whenever you jump and then you realize just how bad the visuals are, I'm all in for unique and cool art styles but this is just ugly there's no other way to put it. The simplest action of grabbing an item is made tedious here you have to open the inventory next to a flying orb which is the item and then move around it until it eventually appears to be picked up if it doesn't get bugged. Then you're faced by the combat which is just atrocious; the game sometimes does not register you clicked to attack and then does so several times in a row in an instant which I don't think is intended and the enemies either awkwardly stand still looking at you or they spam the same animation over and over it goes without saying that the hitboxes are abysmal as well I don't know man I saw this game a while ago and thought it looked promising but unfortunately right now it's a nothing burger I honestly can't recommend it

I feel like this game might have something going for it. However, in its current state the game is essentially unplayable. The controls feel awful which makes it unplayable for me. I do think the game might be fun, but it needs lots of QoL improvements before I can play so for me it's getting a refund.

This game IS for you if: - You feel nostalgic for that old King's Field classic experience. - You're ok with a bit of clunkyness. - You don't have any of the below problems. This game IS NOT for you if: - You have no patience. - You expect a triple A production from a single indie dev, on his first game release. - You expect a "modern" game, when it is clearly meant (and heavily inspired by) to emulate games of old. - You're looking for "the perfect" experience - it's not, but the dev will keep working on it (the first update post launch is already out). There was no EA for this game, give it time, it's cheap and won't take you 200 hours to complete.

During the early 90s, I had a hand-me-down C64. The C64 had one of the most absurdly vast libraries out there for the home micros. Sometimes, I would get a multiplack cassette that would have 4 to 8 games on it. Most of these games were given by family members who had no interest in them any more. They usually featured an iconic title as the main pull, like the original Dizzy, and then there was one interesting other title, and then some weird, incoherent nonsense that you loaded once, tried to play it for about 30 minutes and then stopped because you had little clue as to what was going on. They seldom even had the presentation worth noting as they rarely had music, just had the character’s footsteps and a jumping sound, and the graphics were usually jumbled nonsense. Forgotten Blood feels like that kind of incoherent game you got at the end of the multipack. Don’t get me wrong, the appeal of a lot of these seemingly ultra hard, old school first person RPGs that has been usually based on how obtuse and confusing they are. Some are almost entirely centered on how absurd their logic is where some events only happen once in a blue moon, but at their core there is a good game to ride on. Forgotten Blood is not only obscure, it feels like it is barely held together. Everything feels so very specific, like the designer knows how it works, but figuring out how to align yourself to its very set logic will likely require so much out of you that it is unlikely to be worth it. Heck, it is hard to tell if it is working as intended or is simply too messy and bug ridden to funcion. Take combat for example. Initially I treated it as a Kingslike as it seems to tick the same boxes with the stamina and speed; walk up, hit enemy, back away from counter attack, then repeat. I then noticed that your weapon could be swung as fast as you can click the mouse. With that, I walked up to one of the opening floating eyes, spammed the attack and it instantly died. With this, half the challenge was gone, so I just wandered aimlessly for a while, killing eyes. Shortly after I noticed that the weapon range was not only very short, but not where I was aiming. The character, when attacking, does a weird swipe at the side of the screen, which makes it very hard to aim blows. Indeed, half the time it seemed like my attacks were wiffing off enemies, walls or anything I was trying to attack. Is this some inbuilt accuracy system, but it was very bad at feeding back to me I was doing something wrong? No clue. Eventually I ended up fighting some skeletons outside, but by then the combat was clearly a crapshoot. I upgraded to a stronger sword, but since the weapon swing was a mess and hitting was inconsistent it became a war of attrition where I would run up to things, hammer the attack and hope something contacted before I took damage. While all this is going on I’m constantly getting stuck on the scenery, slipping down cliffsides and misjudging jumps due to the character not feeling like they entirely exist in the game world. I keep trying to hit pots, but miss. Then I break them and have to reposition myself to the exact correct angle to pick up the sparkly thing that dropped. I walk towards a skeleton who is in an animation to show that they are drawing a bow to shoot, but nothing is in the bow, only for them to suddenly pull an arrow out and fire it, but I take damage mid string draw. I walk past some skeletons that seem to have agroed, but are still walking their patrol route (I think?). Eventually I got to a room that matched the crystal dagger that was in my inventory as a key. I am told it is resonating. I then spent about 5 minutes trying desperately to figure out what I was supposed to do in that room as half the time the inventory is not clear what you are supposed to do to activate keys and whatnot. At this point I just threw in the towel. “F**k it. This game aint worth it.” I turned it off and I’m not sure I’ll launch it again. Forgotten Blood became that weird game at the end of a Codemasters tape from the late 80s. I played it for about 30 minutes, got confused, stopped playing and will likely never play it again. The fine line is those tapes cost about £2.99 for 4 to 8 games. Forgotten Blood cost about £8 (I think? I’m in Japan these days) with no other cool game to draw you in. Maybe this will be good one day (it really should have been Early Access). Maybe it will be updated to the point where it will be worth playing in a decade. I doubt I’ll ever know.

An indie game Inspired by King's Field as it says, this is obvious, it says so. If you aren't familiar, then King's Field RPGs were a series of first person dark fantasy games made by FromSoftware (Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, Armored Core) on PlayStation and PlayStation 2. They had bleak environments, slow movement, awkward combat. That's what this game is going for. bleak dark fantasy, awkward combat, PS2 era vibes. They really should have a screen saying this. This is best played with a controller like King's Field. The first person controller feel is a great replication of King's Field feel, and it doesn't really feel right to have a more active mouse look and WASD in exploring this kind of environment. However, the inventory is a pain, and is best managed with a mouse. I don't mind terribly taking a hand off the controller to move an item, but I do understand the inventory complaints. Apparently moving items around can be exacting, but, I just double click them and it goes to inventory, I only stack if I get annoyed. In King's Field, the main thing is exploring the environment, I do feel that there's too much inconsequential inventory here. King's Field games were where I learned to stay locked onto an enemy and strafe around with a controller, and that strategy seems to work best against the enemies here. Some common indie technical 'shortcomings' Options Menu - lack of video options, one option toggles between 3 states and gives you no indication of which is selected. Controls - lack of rebinding controls... but if you're playing with a mouse and keyboard, you're already destroying your Kingsfield nostalgia, and controller rebinds can be managed by somewhat with Steam Input Positives - I got this after playing the demo for nailing the controller feel of first person King's Field controls, and having interesting enough level design to make me want to explore and see more. Haven't gotten much past the starting area yet, but wanted to put a positive experience out there, along with some details about how I am having it, because I feel you can have much different experiences with a controller or with a mouse and keyboard. Edit: The amount of negative reviews with very little time also puzzles me... There's a demo... you can download the demo and get a very good idea of what you're signing up for... No need to get a game with an available sample and give it a bad review after walking around the opening room... It should be very clear what's on offer... and it's for the price of a fancy coffee, the interesting level and creature design alone is worth it, even with the indie jank on combat/inventory.

I had been excited about this game releasing for a few weeks now because the art style looks absolutely gorgeous in the trailer and screenshots, and it looks great in game too, but man do I wish I tried the demo before buying this. Believe the other negative reviews here, this game is barely playable. Like beyond the audio issues and typos, things just straight up don't work. Both prompts in the game and the controls menu tell me that "e" is open inventory and "q" is interact, and yet when I walk up to items that look like I can pick them up or interact with them, neither of those buttons do that. I'm pretty sure I was actually bugged out of progression in the very first room. I followed every path to dead ends, killed every enemy, and there was just nothing but a glowing crystal in the middle of the area that I could supposedly interact with yet was unable to. Was that what I needed to progress? Who knows! The four enemies I actually got to fight just glided through me with no animation and dealt damage, when I died I instantly respawned in front of them getting damaged again. If you click the "main menu" button it just takes you there instantly without a confirmation box. Mouse sensitivity is a slider with no visible values, and it resets when you reload your save, AND you cant look all the way up or down. I could go on and on with the issues I encountered in just ten minutes of gameplay. This doesn't even feel like a proof of concept or tech demo if I'm being honest, its just a bunch of art wildly scotch-taped together. I'm not even trying to be mean, I'm sure the dev put a lot of time and effort into this, but it needs a lot more time and effort before it even resembles something playable.

Unfortunately I have to give this game a negative review. The visuals and concept are interesting and enticing, but upon starting the game, I quickly realized it's very rough and unpolished. Basic features like keyboard remapping or controller look inversion are absent, the inventory interface is barely functional, and the whole thing feels hastily slapped together. Performance and stability was fine, but I wouldn't recommend this game to anyone in its current state. This should have been sold as a rough, unpolished early access release, not a 1.0 finished product.