Ringborn

*** Overall, this game is good. Completely unique music choices, great scenery in most locations and overall, an excellent story The story begins out of something from a 19th Century Classical play from Goethe. You're with your father, learning how to be responsible and look after the forest and your small log cabin as just a simple peasant family. As you're wondering about, gathering logs, the soundtrack in the background is like something from Wagner. It's very nice, unique and is the cherry on top to the overall story. The dialogue is "to the point", simple and impactful to make you relate and care for each character as well. But after this, as with many indie games, the stories take a lazy turn. You're suddenly thrown into a dry climate of an ancient Roman-esque atmosphere where Gladiator combat, wearing Roman togas, and bathing in Villas is the norm. Pros: +Excellent choice of music and sound design. The music gives this game a sincere sense of authenticity to the environment and drives the story quite a bit. +Impactful characters. It's quite remarkable that even without voice actors, I could still care a lot about each character by the dialogue alone. Great job +Interesting environments and graphics. The graphics aren't Unreal Engine quality, but they're better than most indie titles that I've seen. Fresh snow, soothing water and lush mud effects show up very nicely in this game. +Decent combat upgradability. It was really fun forging new weapons, hacking away at rocks in the mines and progressing myself to unlock new weapons and armor. In many rpg games, this is boring, but in this game it really feels natural and fun to do Cons: -No loot. When you kill an enemy, you can't loot their weapons and belongings. -No map. I can understand the third person ceiling angle you're going with, but sometimes I have no idea what's in front of me or if I'm going the right way. In this way, a map would really be useful to prevent frustrations -Gladiator combat in a medieval game. I dislike it when writers get lazy with historical accuracy and just start mixing eras together. It's like saying well since most are dumb in history, I'll just put some things I like about the Ancient era in this medieval game and most won't notice, and if they notice, it just comes with the fantasy element. -Some items in your inventory vanish. No explanation, no reason, just vanish. This is especially annoying when you're mining and going through the time to collect the items needed and they vanish by the time you get back to the furnace to craft new weapons. -Running sideways. You run sideways like a drunken sailor trying to keep balance on a ship in a bad storm. Needs to be fixed. Requests from developer*** +The game needs an arena mode. It would really help in this game to practice combat and just to have fun away from the story +Could use some type of small multiplayer. In a game like this, that would really help Verdict: 7/10. Not bad, but could definitely be a bit better