izigame.me

This is a somewhat cautious recommended. Whilst it can be fun and more engaging than the glut of simplistic but oh so flashy indie shooters that seem to be the norm these days, it is a flawed product that can be irritating in places.
Graven is a first-person mixture of melee and ranged combat, with exploration, platforming and some mild puzzle elements. Generally all of those things are done reasonably well, though it tends to stumble in enough little ways that it lessens the experience.
Your weapons can be enjoyable, particularly when the effects are explosive, but you tend to find there isn't much difference between them. I have four weapons that are all essentially the same: something that looks like a crossbow and can be upgraded to fire explosives, an actual crossbow that...fires explosives, and...uh..a different crossbow that fires...um...explosives. Then a final non-crossbow that fires....*can you guess what?* explosives.
The same can said for a melee staff versus using a sword (though that does let you block projectiles, to be fair), or using a flail. Nothing really differentiates them when it comes to bashing a monsters face in, so even though its fun bashing a monsters face in there is still the disappointment that every "new" weapon is rarely exciting to obtain.
And whoever designed this in a way that you have to wait as animations finish when switching weapons and items needs some sense knocking into them. As it can be annoyingly slow changing between them, and even better yet there isn't a weapons wheel when using a controller, so the whole thing is sluggish and fiddly.
Most of the time it isn't too bad, but when the action gets hectic it feels like a poor choice to have made. Which is a shame, as it's quite visceral and enjoyable upto a point. Boss-battles are simplistic sh*te, though there's only three of them, and in all fairness, I can't recall the last game of this type (be it a boomer shooter, or fantasy combat like this) that wasn't utterly crap in this regard.
Its not exactly an endorsement of this title that everyone else produces dog-sh*t when it comes to these supposedly "thrilling" encounters, but as I said: there's not that many of them, so I'll let it slide.
Exploration is nice, as this isn't a linear title and it has pleasant secrets hidden about, or "cute" progression compared to something where its just switch-hunting or finding keys. Like, you know, the bazillions of simplistic boomer shooters that don't even have those two activities, never-mind anything even vaguely more sophisticated.
But then it doesn't give you a map, and any time you save out of an area you don't restart at the same place. Instead you go back to a hub area and have to make your way back. The game isn't exactly short, but the 30 hours I've clocked up so far is a lot of back-tracking, either because I missed something obscure, or because of quitting before a level was finished.
So far this sounds like I have more issues with it than positives, and it's true that you need patience to "enjoy" this, but it is still fun....mostly. Perhaps I'm just sick of dumb shooty-shooty-bang-bang, of which a blind person throwing a dart at titles on steam could hit, I dunno, a thousand of the same mind-numbingly dull DOOM Eternal wannabes with PS1 era graphics (thumbs down: not enough polygonal warbling or pop-in, and it has hi-res textures...disgusting in this day and age!!)
Something about Graven, despite its many issues, makes it more appealing than those kinds of games, but it is just "okay" and should have been better. This isn't Dishonored, Thief or Dark messiah of might and magic, but then again - what is these days? I'd really like to know of any title that comes even vaguely close to those games, because beyond the likes of them conventional shooters just bore me to tears.
This game will probably bore you to tears, or frustrate you, but it may not. I just appreciate that it has somewhat more depth than most, and there's slim pickings to be had in the genre so it will have to suffice. Maybe Avowed won't be too bad and will have fewer rough edges, but I won't hold my breath based on what I've seen of it so far (the game-play could be great, but the graphics are yucky, which is awkward..because they aren't even deliberately making it look crap and outdated)
In the meantime I wouldn't recommend this over Amid Evil (which is better than this in most ways, although the bosses are rubbish there too), or Hands of necromancy (great combat and exploration, but insipid woeful boss-battles...what a shock....), but I did find it more appealing than the likes of Elderborn.
PS: The reviews mentioning soft-locks may have been correct at the time of release, but it was very stable for me so I think that has been fixed. The level design can make it SEEM like it has screwed you over, and I thought that a couple of times, but in the end they always do provide a means for alternate access.
You maybe get to an area by pulling a switch that activates a lift, and then that lever stops working. "The game is broke" you think, but no! The lever only stops working when you have completed that bit, and some other exit has opened up. It would be easy to say its bust, and maybe it was before, but now its just on you as the player for not figuring it out.
I'm in the last area of the game (act 3), so unless there is a massive f**k-up at the end - it's working fine when people are saying they couldn't get past act 1!