Grave Knight

Deixou Baldur's Gate 3 no chinelo.

Original review: Play the demo first! I didn't and will refund if I don't hear back from the devs I have heard back from the dev, its a one person outfit and he was not aware that there were questions to answer in the forum. Some of the complaints have been handled, although the game is still not exactly intuitive at the moment and I still cannot see a menu. However the games saves as you shut down, regardless of how you do it. I'm not sure yet how you would access any of those previous saves, but that could be my ignorance. I'm fence-sitting at the moment and have tried playing on and am happy to give the dev the benefit of the doubt as this has the potential to be an interesting game. There are certainly plenty of choices to make even if I have no idea what difference they make further into the game. Read the discussion questions and answers and see how you feel about it. I would still advise playing the demo first but you may find it could be well worth investing a bit of time and money into it even in its current state!

Sadly while there is the core of an experience that's value for money I can't recommend it due to it's issues. Good news is they shouldn't be to hard to fix by the developer. Bad news is considering when this game was released I can't see that happening. I will update this review appropriately if it does The is a text based story with static images to set the scene. Lets start with the Major issues The telling of the story (See forum post for more details). - In the merchant road section text panels are missing or it uses incorrect panels which is confusing, what is going on. At one point I got a game over, but what I just read did not indicate why. - At the climax of the game when playing in English all the choices are in Portuguese. So you have to use google translate typing each pair of choices. - At the climax depending on how you got there you can be offered a choice and it uses the wrong characters name which completely changes what you think the choice is and what might happen by selecting it. Graphics - if you try to jump the river I hope you liked the artwork of Donothan in the river, as you will be seeing that image a lot from that point onwards instead of what is intended to be shown. Shame as the artwork is decent and used well. Gameplay - The game auto saves at certain points, but it doesn't communicate that to the player. All you see is pressing escape tells you that all progress since your last save will be lost. Since you can't manually save this gives the impression that you must complete the game in one sitting as stopping means you restart. Or you find out after a game over where is resumes from. - There is no back button to go to previous text, so if you accidently skip text, it's gone unless you start over. - The up and down triangles for scrolling text have precise touch area mapping, that isn't a problem on it’s own. What is a problem is if you don't click on them it skips to the next dialogue and there is no back button or key commands. I recommend you use the up and down arrows for text and the space bar to proceed. - There is a soft lock when you finish the outer castle section. Fortunately you can exit to the main menu continue and it starts at the next section instead of the one you just finished - When you complete the game it might soft lock. You just left on a full screen image. You can't do anything and no keys work except escape to return to main menu. If this is the end of the game then it needs a panel saying "The end" and a button saying main menu. Medium issues General - The 2 sounds on startup aren't controlled by the game volume setting, so you need to adjust your PCs global volume to stop being blasted by loud sounds when launching the game. Who wants to adjust your PCs’ volume before and after playing a game - You can't bring up the menu to adjust the sound volume in game. You have to exit to main menu. Which means losing all your progress since last save. Which since the game doesn't tell you when it saves to the player means starting over. - Could do with a story level/freeplay option with infinite re-rolls. Restarting a section and skipping as fast as you can to get back to a game over point isn't fun and feels like your time is being wasted. At one place I spent an hour to pas one check restarting after I failed just to find out what would happen with a pass Text - Besides the climax of the game sometimes the full choice is in Portuguese. Minor issues Text - Occasionally a word will be in Portuguese instead of English - I'm guessing English isn't the developers first language as sometimes you need to think what the text panel wanted to communicate. e.g. at one point it says mouth but I think it meant axe - The female Elf can be referred to as him instead of her which is confusing as the other NPC is male - Little things to spoil immersion like in the castle entrance section striking someone with a pistol butt, shouldn't that have been sword hilt? It's the only point a firearm is mentioned. Or the text talks about a dagger but the artwork shows a spear. - At one point I'm offered an item and gold, selected it and didn't get it. Either this is bugged or it was meant to be offered for sale. Either way there was no text response after selecting the choice to communicate anything. Gameplay - Menu should have a show keyboard commands option - In the swap you are asked 3 riddles, the first and second are meaningless. whether you live or die depends on the 3rd. From a story point of view this is jarring as if you get 2 right then 3rd wrong a witch complains but that’s it. If you get 2 wrong then 3rd right a fight breaks out the rules aren't being followed. Would have been better to have only 1 riddle if 2 are meaningless. - I never had a single dice roll that felt right, sometimes it was a nudge, other times too hard a stop, or a flick instead of a roll. Considering this is the main way you impact the game, I'd have preferred an option that did a good roll for me or just rotated the dice in place for presentation. - My reward from one path was a ring that increased wisdom. I didn’t have a wisdom check past that point. On my previous completed playthrough I can’t remember a wisdom choice past that point when I got another ending. If you like this kind of game I would suggest a fair comparison is the fighting fantasy classics for both the experience and cost.