Lawless Lands

I could tell just from the character creation that this game is incredible. Most of the time I'm disgusted at the inclusion of DLC and add-ons, but a game like this is one of the extremely rare times where it actually feels worth it to pay for them. Looking forward to playing everything from Corrosive Studios.

I liked the vast amount of available skills the most. The story and atmosphere were believeable. The dev is friendly :)

The game is excellent, plenty of side quests, rich gameplay experience, and I've included almost all the DLC, but the keyboard settings are a bit strange, and it would be nice to be able to disable the mouse.

GEM!

This game has amazing atmosphere and depth. I love it! I especially love the sounds of bells in the menu, it creates a wonderful medieval atmosphere. Such a cool touch. I love how this game takes what is basically a jrp engine style and adorns it with new and interesting details. The sound effects are also awesome. give this a try if you like getting lost in an old school rpg feeling. Just remember to save by opening the personal journal!

Played this long enough to love it! I played a lot more DISGRACED by the same developer, Corrosive, though steam doesn't show me as having played as many hours as LL for some incomprehensible reason. Lawless lands is as awesome as DISGRACED, and has a similar highly customizable and super fleshed out experience. Whatever you like in a JRPG, you can get it out of this highly custom JRPG experience. Beware the gallows humor. 10/10

Good game, but lag of performances

I've almost quit numerous times in the first few hours because the game poorly explains it's mechanics and caused me a great amount of frustration. Once you get past the early difficulties this is a great a game. The atmosphere and music are amazing and exploring a plague-ridden low-fantasy world is a lot of fun. Some early tips: -For your followers to actually follow you need to use an item named Character Records in the plot section of your inventory and upgrade leadership -You can get torches at every campfire, you don't need to buy them -The commoner-veteran background seems to be the most well rounded for early combat -If you don't have a dedicated caster it's still worth it to learn magic just for the cleanse spell so you don't have to constantly worry about catching the plague -Buy a prayerbook at Vulkold general store so you can save everywhere, but inns are still worth it for the well rested xp bonus

I purchased Lawless Lands because I enjoy turn-based, old-school CRPGs. This is a niche game for lovers of these types of games, and with that out of the way: The style is very much RPGMaker which you're probably familiar with if you are reading this. The worldbuilding and lore in Lawless Lands was quite good in my opinion, so much so that I decided to support this indie developer by grabbing all the DLC for the game as well as their other two turn-based CRPGs in this style, 'Wastewalkers" and "Disgraced" ... Obviously, I enjoy the work put out by this developer and want to support them. I only wish I knew about these games earlier, because I totally missed these gems! On to the nitty-gritty of top-down, RPGMaker style games. What makes this one so special? Well, the character generation is very involved, fun, and offers for many different customization options. The difficulty level is harsh but not unfair, which is important. When and if you die you don't feel like you died to the game being unfairly punishing, you feel like you died to making avoidable mistakes and can do better next time. This is such an important part of game design and Lawless Lands nails it pretty well. The game offers a lot of interesting little quirks and items that can make gameplay quite different depending on the choices you make and what you do. Alignment systems of "good" and "evil" are very much in play here where there are solid advantages for almost any playstyle. Be a jerk, get access to the black market. Be a holy Paladin type dude and the townsfolk start to anticipate your arrival and offer you free room and board at the local inn. That kind of thing. Parts of the game's overall focus on morality, societal breakdown during a plague situation (how timely) - these are really nifty and a bit deeper than most other RPGs in this genre go. Parting notes, I have more time played on this than is showing for Steam syncing reasons. I have not yet finished the game, but have gotten a good way through a lot of content and am looking forward to experiencing more and then trying the other two games I picked up. Great example of an indie developer committed to a vision making a great game.

This game is a gem. The world map is full of the dark and gritty locations you'd expect from a dark fantasy game, and the game strikes a good balance between giving you hints on how to solve quests and holding your hand; there were times I needed to look closer and explore more in order to figure out what to do, but I never felt lost. Combat is fun, too. It's tough at first, up until you understand the system and have a few levels under your (or, more importantly, your healer's) belt, and there's generally a nice variety of enemies to fight. The developer is also both very responsive and cool. I brought up firearms in the forum and how they don't have any skills (called Techniques) to go along with them, and by the time I'd gotten up the next morning, he'd released a patch that added some in. Overall, I was very pleased with my experience with Lawless Lands. That said, I do have a few criticisms, and I'll lay them out here more in the interest of giving the developer feedback as a long-time RPG fan than anything that might turn a potential buyer away. The game is definitely still worth it. -Build Variety: This is probably my biggest critique of the game. There are a ton of skills, both passive and active, to choose from as you level up, but once you get to the mid-to-late game, it sort of feels like everyone is becoming the same build, just in a different order. Yes, my archer character focused on things like critical hit chance and accuracy at first, but once she had all of those skills, there was no reason for her not to start taking the same HP-boosting skills the tanks are taking. Eventually, with a couple of exceptions, all the characters in my party sorta felt like they were all the same character but with different equipment (while the main character can equip any item, characters you meet along the way have their own weapon and armor proficiencies). There are also Target/Hide skills, which let you build some characters to take aggro and some to avoid it, but they never quite felt like enough. In a future project (because I know the dev is working on a new one now), I'd really like to see more variation in party roles. Really lock me out of stuff on different characters so I have to think strategically about how I'm going to build them to fit into my party. -Stronghold: I am an absolute sucker for a good stronghold, and I was really pleased to find that this game has one. And it's not a bad one, either, so don't get me wrong here - it wasn't a disappointment. But by the time I actually received the stronghold, I had almost enough resources stockpiled to fully upgrade it from the moment I stepped foot inside. It would be really cool for future strongholds to have more practical utility as well as more options to them. Make me choose between buildings so I can build it to fit my play style of that run. The stronghold in Lawless Lands essentially serves as a place where you can sleep (though I basically stopped sleeping by mid-game), sell all the junk you've collected in your last outing, and repair your gear. It's convenient because you can teleport to it and because it has all of those services in the same spot, but apart from the convenience of it, there isn't much there for you. You can find all of those services elsewhere, just maybe not so centralized. -Character Interaction: Lawless Lands does a really good job introducing you to some super interesting people who can join your party. They have motivations and (initial) personality aplenty, but after that first interaction where you go, "Oh man, this character is cool," there aren't really any interactions to be had with them. You can talk to them at your stronghold, but they each really only have two or three lines. I'd be okay with fewer party members in a game if it meant I got to interact with them more deeply. Other than that, it's really just minor things here and there (please, PLEASE give me a "Repair All" button at the blacksmith and let me repair my gear without unequipping it), and they're all vastly overshadowed by this grim but full world that's just dripping with atmosphere. I'll definitely be giving this developer's future projects a go, too.