Steam: Save 40% on SKALD: Against the Black Priory on Steam
Premise:
Searching for your childhood friend, you embark on a journey to the Outer Isles - a remote set of islands, her last known location. On your way, you are ambushed by horrors so otherworldly that they define comprehension.
Good:
- Great story. It’s compact, takes itself seriously. I don’t want to expand upon it too much to avoid spoiling it.
- Good writing. Extension of point #1, it’s not just the story idea that’s good but also the presentation. It’s not a huge exposition, you don’t get overwhelmed by text, instead you get a good chunk of the text by interacting with your environment, characters etc. The characters are also well written, well some of them are at least (more on this later). All in all, the dialogues and the overall narrative structure is good.
- Amazingly rare theme. Lovecraftian setting done right. Most games, especially the ones with “Lovecraft” or “Chthulhu” in the title mess up the Lovecraftian theme. This one, doesn’t. It maintains the theme until the very end.
- Short and sweet. The story is compact, and the gameplay complements it. You don’t need to grind a lot. Smart resource management can allow you to finish the game quickly.
- Great RPG experience. Similar to old-school RPGs, conversations and even quest solutions get unlocked based on your passives/attributes. Which is quite cool.
- Decent class & skill system. The classes & the skill system is straightforward. You can get into it rather quickly. It has enough depth to remain interestingly relevant until the end, i.e. you’ll keep learning things until late game.
- Combat is fun. It’s a pretty basic form of turn-based combat that’s easy to figure out. But, I personally enjoyed it.
- Great art and pixel-art. The spritework that you interact w/ for most of your playthrough is amazing. But, there’ll be several occasions where actuall full fledged art will come up. Those moments are very well done.
- Great world design. It’s very fun to explore the world.
- MOD support! There’s a scenario editor that lets you build out custom campaigns. The dev is very friendly and helpful in modding discussions.
Neutral/Bad:
- The game is built on Unity. So, expect some jank.
- There’s a side-plot that kind of never goes anywhere. I can’t get into it w/o engaging in spoilers but it has something to do with a witch in the woods. There’s another to do with a farmer’s son.
- Some companions are great but others haven’t been fleshed out.
- There’s no map. The actual world is small and therefore is easy to navigate but it can occasionally get annoying to explore areas without a map.
- The combat is decent. I enjoyed it but it doesn’t have the depth of something like Knights of the Chalice 2.
My Thoughts:
Lovecraftian games are pretty rare, good ones are even rarer. So, 10/10 would recommend. Plus, it has modding support so creative minds have a nice system to play around with.