Stoneshard ?

This and Fort Triumph are my underdogs of the year. This has a lot of granularity. The level of synergy to most of the mechanics is appreciable. What doesn't work for me is the game right now is 75% me backtracking to save, and then finding the area has already respawned while my poor glass cannon sorceress had to retreat. Almost killed it for me. Almost. Then they wiped my save.

The diegetic save thing is not bad, it's the lack of save points, the lack of ability to backtrack, the lack of save on exit--or even recall scrolls to return you to the last bed you slept at, with a certain number of turns during which your character is disabled while you recite it--that would turn this from an flawed diamond into a radiant gem.

But there are plenty of redeeming qualities.

I think--no, I know--this one's a winner.

You've got to be willing to treat the backtracking like you would approach a semi-roguelike--with sheer attrition, to get to the meat of the gameplay loop.

This checks so many of my boxes but that lack of a "real" save feature is holding me back for now. I don't know why the developer is so resistant to the most requested change, isn't this part of why you have Early Access?

This is such a great game. Its much more an RPG than a roguelike. The combat, the graphics, the animations, the atmosphere, all of it is superb. This is the first authentic Dark Fantasy rpg I have played in 27 years of playing cRPGs, it checks off so many boxes.

Only way this game could be better would be if it was party based rather than controlling a single PC.

For cRPG Fans, it would be downright criminal not to buy this. The only question you need to ask is do you get it in Early Access or do you wait until the full version is out. However you should really play the Free Demo which is self contained and has a cool, dark storyline. It also serves as the Prologue to the main game.

@Mosaic; regarding save functions, once you get the hang of how the game handles saving (resting in a camp or an inn) you won't miss the save function near as much as you think; trust me. Save quit should have been an option, but its still nowhere near as bad as some make it out to be.

Also the main reason they don't incorporate save at will is they can't, the game engine does not allow save at will and it is too late to go back and fix it.

I agree it's a fun game, but QoL stuff like the save system is really what keeps me from investing more time in it.

Andhaira said:

Also the main reason they don't incorporate save at will is they can't, the game engine does not allow save at will and it is too late to go back and fix it.

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They say that, and they are surely not lying. They may still be wrong. I'd bet alot on this being a case of not seeing the wood for the trees.

Here's their own words from one of the updates:

Unfortunately, due to a combination of multiple factors – procedural world generation, huge number of objects in every location, as well as parameters which require saving, this task is impossible to perform from the technical standpoint.

The reason is not GMS2, as it could be misunderstood from the message about “engine limitations”, the reason is our procedural generation engine. The saves currently used by the game technically differ from saving in any part of the game world – they save the seed of visited locations, regenerating the world on each loading, they don’t save the state of the world, as it was left by the player. Otherwise, the saves would end up weighting a few gigabytes and take minutes to load. That’s why the saving is done in designated locations which don’t contain objects requiring their state to be saved – tavern rooms, the archive in the Prologue, the location with Archon etc.

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I just don't buy it.