GRAVEN

It does remind me of what it aims to be (Heretic/Hexen clone), so that's nice. The respawn is behaving strangely and the balance is slightly off, but the game is "in development" so that's fine, too. The real problem is that the developers know about certain issues and while they say they are working on them, after months they didn't repair them. The worst one is saving system. Today, I lost about 4 hours of progress. Last time, I lost 2 hours. I am a completionist and just kill and smash everything in this kind of game, going through all secrets, etc. If you are like me, this game is seriously not for you. It punishes this style hard. When you are no longer entertained, lose focus or just don't want to waste any more hours, you exit and your quest progress is lost. Completely. While you retain the inventory, that's near useless as inventory means weapons, not quest items. The game *does* tell you that at the start but the fact the quests are pretty long and there are not many puzzles or mazes, just annoying amount of chores to repeat, means the whole "die and reset" idea falls flat, on me at least even though in principle, it does merge traditional hard core gaming with modern games. The thing is, in modern games, the reset helps you, does not work against you. I love challenge, not torture. I am finished with this game unless I see in reviews the devs repaired it. Already I have invested too much time in this.

Hexen didn't have many fans back in the day but I was one of them, People back in '94 complained that is was too open world, if you can imagine such a thing today. But it was "open world" in a very realistic way to me. The key you needed might simply be lying in the woods somewhere and you have to go get it. Or you just have to try every switch to leave a dungeon. This feels like the direction the devs are going and I appreciate it. I assume there will be one hub world that has several items or keys required to unlock compartments of it. For those complaining this isn't an "immersive sim," go immerse your head in the toilet. Sometimes you have to create your own immersaion while the game simply provides a convincing atmosphere. I love what the devs have created so far in terms of the town and the cartoony gloom and the general ambience. I have a feeling this game will be received in a similar way to Hexen which is a shame. Try to accept the somewhat slow pace of discovery and get into the crickety/spidery/foggyness of it all.

The mood is spot on and there seems to be something here, but in it's current state, I keep getting bored. The weapons are cool, the movement feels OK, and the inventory/journal system/map all work well. So, let's get to the rest. The early enemies are just not terribly fun to fight. The hordes of zombies mostly just get in the way, the skeletons are easy, and the other creatures don't seem to be lethal enough to build any tension. They are at least somewhat fun to fight (unlike the zombies). This is not an RPG. This is an old-school FPS with a journal, quests, and an inventory. It's more like Strife than Dark Messiah of Might and Magic or Deus Ex. I do like how the city is the hub where you get quests and move to new areas that feel like old FPS levels. You don't enter "E1M2" or whatever, so that is at least cool. The puzzles are the boring, "match 3 rune symbols" nonsense that I am completely sick of. Every game does them... they aren't fun... and they don't require any real problem solving. The graphic style is retro pixel... but somehow still bright and stylized. It almost looks like they used stylized assets and ran the materials or textures through an algorithm that pixelated them. It's a weird mix of dark, retro, but still cartoony in a way. It's kinda cool, but I think I would have preferred darker. I was streaming this and a viewer said, "what a sausage fest." I didn't see any living women in my 3 hours of play. Maybe they show up later... but all the townsfolk I saw were men. The zombies were men... etc. I could hear women crying behind walls... and there were dead women in the streets. The story starts with a dead woman and her daughter... you're the gruff male who adopts the girl (I am also getting over this boring trope of a hero dad figure and a dead mom). Anyway, it seems you're looking for her, but I didn't care much about the plot. Anyway, it's average and I wish I liked it more. At least you can pet the dog. At least you can pet the dog.

I got Graven back in early access when I first saw it announced on Realms Deep, and back then it was cool. The game is really good looking and absolutely nails the aesthetic and atmosphere it's going for. Combat was pretty unbalanced but I figured it was early access and they had plenty of time to work on that. They did not, in fact, work on that. In fact I feel like they doubled down on it, making it worse. I get that it's a dark fantasy setting and the world is supposed to feel dangerous, but there's a way to do that while still making the game fun and this just is not fun to play. They also removed the map from early access, making navigation an absolutely frustrating experience. Whoever was responsible for that decision sucks. I've heard reports of frequent crashes and soft locks, and while I haven't experienced any of those (yet) I have encountered some absolutely bizarre graphical bugs, mostly enemies just clipping through walls and floors. I want to like Graven. But I just don't. It sucks. Don't buy it.