Passageway of the Ancients

Just wanted to leave a quick positive review that I'll update as I progress. If you are into RPGs, old school in particular, this will appeal to you. I agree with Wizard Worm in that it appears to be a bit linear so far. I disagree (at the moment) that the Combat Options (things like aiming High to hit flying creatures or Low to hit Rats) take away from the experience. They definitely add an element as they also allow you to attack more quickly at the sacrifice of damage or more slowly to do more...it adds an interesting element that I may indeed get tired of at some point, but so far it's interesting. I do with there were a few things that had shortcuts (like applying said Combat Options to various creatures once you discover the best combo) but I hope the developers will listen and add them as we give feedback. All in all a great value for the price so far. Buy it and support the small indie developers who need it!!

So far, the game is fun and hits that nostalgic note that many newer games miss. It seems to be well crafted and different from other CRPGs to be interesting. The combat for example allows for tailoring that other games do not. Recommended.

A solid oldschool RPG with all the elements you'd expect in a party-based RPG and a classic graphical style. If you like playing the classics such as Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, or Dungeon Siege, you'll probably enjoy this game. For me, the real time with pause combat hit the right balance of tactics and action. There's a lot of room for optimizing your attacks with positioning and choosing the best attack type and AoE spells, but you can also fight fairly quickly when you want, for clearing trash mobs. You've got all the standard character archetypes (warrior, mages, healer, etc.) you'd expect in this kind of RPG and a number of interesting spells and targetable abilities you can specialize your characters with. Loot and enemy variety are up to par and there are various enchantments and potions you can use as well. I'm about 7 hours in and from the levels gained and amount of areas I haven't unlocked so far, the game definitely has plenty of content. Pros +good real time with pause combat system with auto-pause when encountering a new enemy unit +helpful tutorial videos that you can re-watch later if needed +haven't encountered any bugs or crashes so far +The runestone unlocking puzzles were a nice addition, even if you can brute-force to guess the answer Cons -pathfinding isn't great so you have to be careful your party members don't get caught on the other side of a wall or an open door -music is good, but in some areas it's very repetitive -enemies respawning - if you teleport to town in the middle of clearing a dungeon you will sometimes have to clear the same rooms again if you need to pass through them again

Lots of work left to do for the devs on this, but it's absolutely full of promise and is obviously a child of love. Very much looking forward to seeing where this goes!

TLDR: Save yourself the tedium and play a different game. So I started this game, got hit with an intro "video" consisting of a page or 2 of exposition text riddled with words of the day stacked next to each other with nothing else, then got into one of the worst character creation screens I've seen, then got into a 'tutorial' area of sorts. Halfway through I noticed the UI only partially scales with resolution leaving overhead text and right click menu unscaled and illegible so I quit, set to windowed on lower resolution and fired up lossless scaling. Tried loading my save, but due to some glitch it was unusable. Recreated my character, opted to skip the tutorial and start the game and was treated with another intro 'video' consisting of nothing but expository text, this time at least 5 pages worth of it, none of which was good and my eyes were starting to glaze over already... After that was finally done, I was in a house and some girl started talking at me with more exposition. At this point I was done, so after the second page I just skipped the rest and off I went to follow the vague quest objective (really? THIS is where you chose to save on the word count?!). I started walking around some big house and looting chests until my inventory filled up and I discovered there's no sorting option so I just dumped all the crap on the ground and started looking for the quest objectives, occasionally interrupted by a goblin or a giant rat asking to engage in what can barely be described as combat until eventually I ran into 2 rats at once and they killed me while I was discovering that the "use" button in the inventory doesn't work. All this in glorious NWN1 era 3d. And now we're here. Combat: Boring Writing: Excessively wordy and mid at best UI: Half-functional and fully inconvenient Visuals: Not bad for a game from 2002 Audio: Music was inoffensive, felt like some effects were missing Writing this is the most fun I got from this game

Это хорошая игра, но я ее НЕ рекомендую. Тк для хорошей тут слишком много нереализованного функционала, очень неровное повествование с затянутой чередой огромных пустых данжей, провисания темпа и ряд технических проблем. Но, если визуально проект вызывает интерес, то вот что получите: - Сюжет крайне неплохой. Лор подают подробно. - Удобства. Автокаст, сравнение шмота на всю пати, телепорты - куча мелких, но приятных решений. - Интерьеры в каждом подземелье разные, текстуры почти не повторяются - разнообразие потрачено впустую, но оно есть. - Рваная динамика. Череда однотипных пустых коридоров сменяется тоннами текста. 50% времени - обыск ящиков. Никаких театральных сцен, боссов или сложных энкаунтеров - только рядовые враги, которые не оказывают сопротивления. - Боевая система (в теории) - настройка стиля боя, высоты ударов, бестиарий со слабостями врагов, умный ИИ. Задумано интересно, но по факту это работает через раз: ИИ тупит, перестаёт атаковать. Клирик и маг в ближнем бою ломаются и перестают кастовать. Расходники исчезают, бафы сбрасываются при загрузке. Половину игры я проходил одним вором, пока чинил поведение пати. - Нереализованные механики. Можно превращаться в драконов, но зачем - не сказано, это забыли реализовать. Фактическая разница между быстрым и медленным кастом отсутствует. Не жалею что прошел, но как-то вот так. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYr41uPkYSPI8lkEJ1hRRzEJ5wJkUYsTN

It's a clunky game but it has a lot of passion behind it which made me overall like it. Before anything else though a word of warning, I could not finish the game cause i got stuck not finding a necessary item (Ring of Passage) and since there is not any guides to help you outside of the beginning of the game Its was hard to continue. As for the game itself, I liked the items and armour sets you could find and use. There is not any voice acting, but the music for each area has a nice tune to listen too. The combat was good enough, but it was clunky to use skills so i ended up mostly just using basic attack. Also feel there are too many battles vs. weak enemies. Lastly i feel the maps could be a bit smaller and linear, instead of a lot of empty rooms with no purpose at times.

Je revois mon évaluation car le jeu semble être mort né. Avec un maximum de 15 joueurs il ne se passe pas grand chose et les dev pour l'instant n'ont encore rien fait pour corriger les bugs qui émaillent le jeu et le rendent assez pénible à vivre. Je reverrai naturellement cette évaluation si la situation s'améliore....