They get points for trying, but it doesn't really come together.
Lycah is trying to be a really grounded, dark RPGmaker game, and, from what I saw, achieves that tone pretty damn well. Its opening sections establish a setting of Pagan peoples amidst conquest and forced conversion by a force of Christian-esque Crusaders that's clearly inspired by real historical events in Eastern Europe, with a layer of creepy folklore-esque supernatural elements on top of the historical ones that also looked pretty interesting. Really, those elements of setting and tone really seem to be the strongest thing the game has going for it, with a setting that's more bleak than dark, and seemed well-handled, not really trying to phone in the darkness of the setting, which is nice.
What the game certainly doesn't have going for it is an engaging combat system, or, much more annoyingly, any ♥♥♥♥♥ to give if you know what the hell the game actually wants from you or not. In the process of getting to the first town (Where I stopped playing), I went through three areas: The "Prologue" of sorts, a Crusader fortress full of NPCs, and a forest path, and managed to find myself lost and struggling to figure out where the hell my mission objective was in the latter two, and in the first I only found my objective by accident in the first place.
In addition, the actual narrative crossed the line pretty quickly from Vague with promises of explanations to just annoyingly vague. The game opens with dialogue that clearly sets up questions about who your character is and about their backstory... and then in less than 5 minutes, not only never tries to answer the first question (Which is allowed to be on a slow burn, perfectly fair), but then quickly raises a lot more that don't seem to share an answer. On multiple fronts, Lycah is unconcerned with bothering to explain itself, and as a result, fails pretty thoroughly to engage right from the start. And I never really found any dialogue to particularly grip me. Nothing really put me off overly, it was passable, but not good enough to be an attraction. Hard for the writing to be an attraction when you know basically nothing about what the hell is going on.
Now- I did not get very far in, so the "It gets better" arguement may be true here, and I certainly hope so, there's potential here, but I gave up on it anyways: I have a lot of games sitting in my library that I haven't gotten to, and I just don't care enough to slog further along and see if this one's any good. Considering this is Steam we're talking about, you probably have bettering things to do with your time as well. If you're up for a dull combat system compared to other rpgmaker titles, and feel like exploring every knook and cranny twice over trying to find your freaking objective isn't going to bother you too terribly, then go on ahead. I'm refunding it.
