Into the Emberlands

Cozy lil candles

Completionist review: Difficulty-wise for 100%, I'd rank it a 4/10 to a 6/10 with the latter ranking being more due to frustration; There's RNG involved in general, but one achievement "Shine bright!" is especially susceptible. I basically finished the game and all other achievements, only to then spend 2.5 hours just walking around hoping for the last achievement's encounter. It's an alright game with a nice vibe but I can see why some might get annoyed by the slow pace (movement speed, and lack of upgrades for it, is often criticized) and some design quirks. I also encountered a softlock with world generation that just did not spawn the necessary materials to progress; the game does feature a Regeneration feature in such an event, but you don't get resources or such back, not to mention the time wasted once you realized you're in a softlocked state since it also resets the current level's quest progress. When you level up your village, the fact that any items on the ground will disappear should have had a tooltip or warning too. Also, perhaps I missed the purpose, but there's a desert biome that has no purpose for story progression; only relevant for an achievement which I thought was quite odd. The current ending of the game suggests that there may be future content, so perhaps the items in the biome will become relevant then, but to have absolutely no useful purpose at the moment is disappointing. Worthwhile on sale but definitely not at full price.