izigame.me

This game is just wow.... It is absolutely incredible.
This is everything I've wanted out of a single-player ARPG. I've played so many of them and none of them quite hit the mark. Either the gameplay loop feels weird, or it's frustratingly difficult, or it just doesn't grab my attention for a number of reasons. This game is quite the opposite of all of those. In just 3 days of it being out, I've put in nearly 28 hours, which is.... absurd. Let's get into why I love the game:
The Gameplay
This is something that is probably the most important piece for action-rpgs. Particularly because the word action is in the name of the genre. You want something that plays well, feels smooth, and is fulfilling for hours on end. Drova hits all of those and knocks them out of the park.
Combat is defined by mainly two things: your weapons and your abilities. Your weapon determines the way you generate focus (which is your spender for abilities, more on that in a moment), attack speed, range, and overall combat flow. There are five types of weapon sets. You have the daggers, the spear and sling, the sword and shield, the bow, and the axe. You could also go with your fists, either full fists or leaving an off-hand empty for spear/sword, but I don't know the mechanics of that (I heard it's good). After that, you have abilities. Most weapons share the same abilities but some weapons, like bows, can have unique ones. These abilities range from dashing, inflicting dots like bleed/poison, kicking, buffing yourself, etc. From what I've seen, there are around 10 (?) basic ones and each weapon has unique ones associated with them that you get from talenting into the weapons, and they flow with the weapons incredibly well. What this whole mashup turns into is a fantastic set of builders and spenders. Your basic attacks build up your focus and you use that to either use heavy attacks on your weapons or use some of the abilities. At a later point of the game, you unlock magic abilities which use a lot of focus but are incredibly powerful and they really change the dynamic a lot.
Combat feels buttery smooth, only issue is you can get stuck on terrain and then you're pretty much screwed. I've had that happen a lot and it made me glad I wasn't playing on Iron Mode. The rest of the game itself is incredible. You have the world, which you get into almost immediately and get a map of quickly, and it's basically your oyster. There are a few things that are locked out by story progression but overall you can go and explore whatever you like. What they did, which I love, is they implemented soft barriers such as strong enemies to advise you to come back later. Don't feel up for the challenge? Go somewhere else, get stronger, come back. But you do get incredibly rewarded for exploring. I decided to go down a cave that was way above my level, I fought tooth and nail to get through the difficult enemies and I discovered weapons that were FAR above the weapons that I was normally using. Not only that, but I discovered other items like talismans and side-quest items that really enhanced my experience and made me feel good about getting off the beaten path. This whole game is basically a reward of exploration and the side-quests encourage you to do so.
The leveling system is also very interesting. It's incredibly simple but still gives you power to tailor your character to you. Basically, when you level up you get "learner points" which lets you to either spend them on flat attributes like Strength, Dexterity, or Mind, or you can spend in sets of 2, 3, or 4 to gain an ability either for a specific weapon or a generalized one like crafting. Almost everything gives you exp from killing enemies to completing individual objectives for quests. I personally like it and I think it's a great move to shift away the complex talent trees that many games like this try to do.
ALSO, YOU CAN PET LIKE EVERY FRIENDLY ANIMAL IN THE GAME
Story/Atmosphere
This part is a bit tricky. I play on the English localization and have heard that the translation removes some of the grittiness that the original language places into the game. I think the atmosphere tries to be gritty but it falls a little flat. There are moments in the story where you can see there is some dark writing and it really makes you feel bad about what's going on, but I think the translation might be taking away from that a little too much. I don't think the localization is bad, I honestly wouldn't have known that it should've been different, but just understand that it might be more lighthearted than the devs intended if you don't play on their base language.
Now for the writing itself. I think the writing is amazing. I'm a huge fan of worldbuilding. I love when games, or stories, put a lot of thought into the history of the world that the story takes place in. This game does exactly that. There are notes and letters littered throughout, as well as an entire quest chain designed to look for them, that tell a whole lot about the world this game takes place in. Not only that, but it's actually good. I can't really go into a lot of detail without spoiling but I do recommend reading the letters you find as well as the dialogue, they actually have a lot of interesting pieces and give a lot of clues as to very fun twists along the way. I won't talk about the main story too much but I think it's pretty good.
The atmosphere and design of the world is incredible. The sound and color design gives you amazing tonal shifts as you move between areas and you can tell something is dangerous because of purely the sound alone. They do a very good job painting the picture of what vibe is supposed to be there purely from art and sound alone.
What I didn't like
I will admit, I'm probably in a bit of a honeymoon phase right now. There are only a few things that I didn't like. This game is almost perfect for the genre that it is, I'm actually shocked by how good it is. I expected it to be like most indie games where it's got a good core but rough around the edges but no, this is just amazing all around. There are a few things, though, and I'll listed them out for posterity's sake.
- I did not like how your food buff got removed upon sleeping. (The devs have since fixed this, very quick on that)
- There are many points in the game where you pick the type of armor you want. Armor is significant and all you get is a short description, leaving you to have to potentially save-scum to see what the options all are. Additionally, as far as I know you can't get the other armors after you pick so you're stuck with your choice. It wasn't so bad most of the game but there's a few significant armors that I had to think about really hard on what I picked because I was afraid to regret it.
- Way later in the game when you've explored most of the map, traveling can be a hassal. Luckily they give you food and sleep buffs that grant movement speed but it's not enough. Even with shortcuts, rune magic, and buffs, I find myself annoyed having to travel from one side of the map to the other. It's not that bad but it can be annoying.
- It doesn't seem like you can respec your talent points (I could be wrong, please correct me). I personally don't regret my picks but it basically locks you into a certain weapon type if you talent into it. Which sort of sucks because what if you find an amazing weapon during exploration and you want to try it but you're not talented into it. Happened to me, I just didn't use it.
That's about it that I can think of. Honestly not too much and I think some of them are fixable. I highly, highly, highly recommend this game if you're a fan of similar games. I don't think you'll regret it. I tried to make this review concise, I hope it was helpful to anyone reading.