Frayed Knights: The Skull of S'makh-Daon

10 scale: Graphics: 4 Music: 5 Fun: 7 Story: 7 Value: 7 Frayed Knights is a party-based first-person POV RPG. Similar to games such as WIzardry, Eye of the Beholder, etc. The story is decent, creating the desire to move ahead and figure out the mysteries of what is going on. One feature of the game is the witty banter between party members. The game focus on a being lighthearted and witty. The biggest negative is the graphics. They would be at home with games from 10-15 years ago. But the gameplay and story make up for that deficiency. Leveling up is rewarding, with many spells, abilities and bonuses to choose from. Loot was sufficient, but barely. Around 95% of loot is white junk that you sell for a bit of coin. When you do find a "legendary" item, it is a big deal, so don't expect wondrous loot to rain down from the heavens. Fights start out very slow, until you get some abilities and spells under your belt. Exploration is fun. There are some decent puzzles, but nothing that is too difficult (I'm not a puzzle-man myself, so one or two here and there is fine). One of the biggest pitfalls is load times. I have the game installed on an SSD and load time between zones is around 25-30 seconds. Fortunately, you won't be reloading or zoning very often. The game has a system where you build up stars that give great bonus abilities as long as you don't reload the game or die. Abilities like giving a character full health or resurrecting a character. Unfortunately, my party got stuck in several places, hung up on the geomtry of the game world, unable to move, so I had to reload and lose my stars a few times, but you rebuild stars pretty fast. Other than that, the game never crashed and I ran into virtually no other bugs. My final gripe is the mapping system. Auto-mapping is available, and it works great. However, if you zone, you lose the map to that zone. Not sure why the maps don't save, but once you explore a zone, you most likely won't need the map anyhow, so it's a minor annoyance. All-in-all, if you like party-based rpg games and can put up with a game that feels old-school, I think this is a pretty good game. I give it a total of 6.5 out of 10, and I feel like I got my money and time's worth out of it.

I rarely write interviews for games on Steam, but I really enjoyed this one. Know what you're getting into. The price tag reflects the quality of the graphics, music and what not. Its an indie game made by a very small team and it shows. The style is cartoony, and light hearted and that's not everyone's thing. You also have a group of premade characters, though the freeform skill system still means you can "multiclass" them with few problems. For example the thief can be effective made into a combat oriented thief or a thief/cleric type character. I made my mage into an archer/mage for example. The game is a first person/party based game and it looks a lot like Wizardry 8 and feels like it too. There are random encounters, the game has a lot of party building options, and so its not really a casual game. Its a short, fun RPG if you like these kinds of games. Its not Might and Magic 10 or Wizardry 8, but if you have enjoyed those and are looking for something similar and don't mind the shorter playing time and light hearted gameplay, than I can definately recommend Frayed Knights.

Fights are ridiculously unbalanced. Some are impossibly hard like the 4x hobgoblin officers each with TWO actions per turn including hard hitting attacks and grenades! Just 2-3 of those grenades will wipe out your casters. I reloaded and tried fighting over 30 times to no avail. Whereas some supposedly tough fights are easy especially single enemies no matter how tough they are. And why does it take so long to load each time you transit an area or load a game? These areas aren't that big. Graphics are very primitive, and the advertised humor is only so-so. Overall, far inferior to older games like Wizardry, Might & Magic, Eye of the Beholder, etc. Edit: Game crashed in the minotaur lair, causing the loss of all my stars! The game has been buggy at times but this is the first time it crashed outright.

Starting out, I was enjoying this game. It seemed interesting, gave me that excitement-of-exploration feeling, and the dialogue was sometimes enjoyable. But soon after my initial impression, playing began to feel like a chore. The bad depth of field began giving me a headache and making me nauseated. Having to press 5 different buttons just to save the game began to wear on me. The controls aren't anywhere near as smooth as they should be. Running into glitches and bugs began to happen more and more often as the game progressed, sometimes to the point where I'd have to reload - which sucks in a game where you're sort of "punished" for reloading (you lose saved up bonuses if you do so). I tried to stick it out just to finish it, but playing should never feel like a chore. [u]PROS[/u] - Funny/amusing dialogue (sometimes) - Battles hold a good amount of challenge [u]CONS[/u] - Pretty buggy - Depth of field is horrible - No quick save/load, too much of a process to actually save the game - Slow loading - Shoddy controls - Punished for reloading a previous save

I've been waiting for something like this for ages. This game has a broken and inconsistent feel like the original Dungeon Lords by DreamCatcher did. Other than that gripe, it definitely feels like the dungeon crawlers of days gone by and even brings some interesting new enhancements to the genre. To me this seems like it could be the prototype for a revival of the genre. Pros: + Very interesting genre enhancements + Skill, Stat, etc system varies slightly from most stale stock D20 copies + Main characters are fairly entertaining in a cliched self-aware way + Story doesn’t take itself too seriously and is also self-aware of that. + Nicely pokes fun at stale RPG tropes and cliches + Drama points can mix-up a stale situation and encourage side-questing + Nice tutorial dungeon + Balanced gameplay Cons: - Inconsistent art and graphics - Lack of narration - Lack of music variety - Music track doesn’t loop properly - If your going to allow free-look, why not just permanently allow it? - No multiplayer - Linear - Limited to no replayability Conclusion: Buy it on sale if you're a fan of old dungeon crawlers, roguelikes, or obscure and different RPG titles. If you're looking for your cookie-cutter modern RPG Elder Scrolls title then this probably isn’t for you. O, and don't forget to just mute the audio entirely and play your own music.

i bought this game too and it does not work i have wasted so much money on steam and half the games dont work steam needs to correct this problem

I quite enjoyed my time with this game, and I will recommend it to those who enjoy a free roaming turn based "dungeon" crawler which doesn't take itself seriously at all. - The combat mechanics are very reminiscent of DND, with feats/skills/"metamagic" - The humour isn't too much, at worst no reaction from me, at best a good chuckle. Party banter is alright too. - The stars mechanic is dope! Really encourages you not to save scum/reload and just go with it - The exhaustion mechanic is also good - that way you don't just spam rest and since walking back to the village takes some time I'd rather be more cautious in my combat encounters. This coupled with the star mechanic works great.

This is an retro 3D dungeon crawler RPG aping earlier games like Might and Magic, but with a comedy theme. To fit the comedy dialogue properly, you don't get to build your own characters. Explore the temple of the pimple god or something. The whole thing fits together in a very clunky way. Retro RPGs can be done well, Legend of Grimrock is a good example, but the implementation here falls flat. The developers seem to have retained everything that was clunky about old school RPGs, and didn't improve on any of it. If they could have kept what worked and modernised the things that didn't, this might have had a chance, but it falls short of the mark. Graphics are mediocre, controls are painful. Also, the writing is pretty bad and I cringed through the forced dialogue.

Had a lot of fun with this game, the environments are handmade and that makes everywhere fun to explore. There's a real feeling of setting off on long arduous and daring adventures with the party and seeing when it's the right time to retreat to the cozy town inn. I thought the balancing (the way I was playing) was perfect: I got almost completely wiped multiple times but just about clinched it in time. It's also quite funny. Not massively so but very workable and pleasant as entertainment. It's not perfect, as others have pointed out. The UI isn't great and I'm still hoping some day to see a part two to this game that fixes some of those faults. The travel distances being long wasn't a problem for me since I thought it was part of the "adventuring" that goes away if there isn't any long trudges.

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