Recently
Archaelund came out in Early Access, and being the starved RPG nerd that I am, I decided to buy it with full knowledge that it won’t be completed until at least the year 2025… or was it 2026? Either way, the game is far away from being finished, but even in this early stage, it shows promise and a solid foundation for the future. I also want to point out, that this is being made by a solo developer, which is impressive by itself. Let’s get into it.
Beach party
I won’t go into too much about the story, but the gist of it is – your gang of adventurers gets shipwrecked on a mysterious ancient island after being attacked at sea by pirates. Your pal and employer wizard get kidnapped by the seadogs as well. Beyond survival, your task is also to find and rescue your friend. I have not gotten too far as I want to save the story bits for the future when the game is more complete, but what is presented is fine, and it’s fairly snappy too. The introduction is short, which means you will soon battle for domination over beasts, glorious XP, and loot on the beaches of Archaelund. This is a major plus in my book. Whilst I do like my fantasy stories, some RPGs just take way too long to get going, bombarding you with tutorials and cutscenes for hours on end. Not here though. It’s: Ship destroyed – wake up naked on beach – time to kill.
However, before the slaughtering can begin, you will have to create your little posse of heroes. The creation aspect is pretty extensive, letting you experiment with lots of different races, careers (classes), traits, and skills. What I especially like here, is that the different races come with bonuses, which makes the races stand out from each other. For example, you have the Minotaur race, big strong dudes, but what they gain in strength they lack in intelligence. Yet, there is nothing to restrict you from making a Minotaur apprentice (mage) as a challenge or just having a big cow that can zap foes with his left hand, while bashing them with his right. There are some restrictions, however, but they all seem to play into the world lore. Humans can’t be barbarians, and from what I gather, they are just too civilized for that, so if you want to play a barbarian you will have to go for a less civilized race.
There are a lot of interesting skills to pick too, everything from maps & charts to ancient lore. I recommend picking at least one adventurer with pick-locking and spot secrets for that extra loot. Nothing more frustrating than leaving an unlocked chest behind, but you can bash the chests open as well – if you ever feel you want to be less delicate. All in all, there seem to be many interesting kinds of roles to create here, in combination with the classes.
I do find that only having four companionsin your initial party is way too low, which forces my brain to make the more standard classes – rogue, priest, tank, and mage – to cover the basics. I wish it would be six because then it would let me experiment a bit, and the more, the merrier. I guess I still can experiment a bit, but I’m just too set in my ways, and discovering fifty hours into the game that your basket-weaving specialist is not working out kinda sucks. You get to pick up two hirelings though, so those can fill the more unconventional roles, but it’s not ideal. Come on RPG makers, give me six slots, dammit!
Slaying creatures
What is interesting about the general gameplay, is that exploration is gridless first person. You walk around like in any normal FPS, and I have to say, the environment looks pretty good and does easily invite exploration. It has surprisingly good lighting and design overall. When you encounter a group of enemies that needs to be removed from this world permanently, the game switches to a grid-based top-down turn-based view, right on the spot, where you meet the gnarly bad guys. It’s pretty seamless and fast. The fighting is your standard turn-based fare, and I don’t say that to be negative. It works well, looks good, and is easy to understand when coming from other games. No archaic knowledge of old needed to get into the brutal skirmishing. You need action points to move, and to attack, and depending on skill and weapon, the action point requirements vary. Heavy weapons require more AP than daggers for example. Trying to run away from an enemy gives them a free attack, and the same goes for you. There are also flanking rules that I have not fully grasped yet (I might have skipped that tutorial by accident). It’s very tactical and very deadly, and that makes it a joy to slaughter creatures.
Willpower like health will be an important aspect to maintain and understand. You see, every kind of special action will drain willpower, from magic to melee, and it will not come back until you have rested. And you will be resting a lot! However, you can’t rest wherever you want, only at certain set destinations. These spots seem to be fairly spaced out though, but if you don’t find a spot, you can always hump your ass back to an old resting area. If you rest without using supplies, you don’t gain full willpower and health replenishment. It will only ever reach 50% of what you have, but there are ways around this if you have a healer. When you have rested just heal by using spells to recover beyond the 50% limit, and then take a quick nap again. Health shouldn’t be much of an issue in general to recover. But then you have the willpower problem. Only having 50% of the willpower available in a fight, can and will cripple any mage. Yet, you can let RNG boost your willpower by taking the meditation skill. Every time your party rests, the ones with mediation will mediate, and have an increased chance of getting some willpower back that way. It’s a skill that I think will become a go-to for certain classes, even if it’s a good addition for almost everyone.
There seem to be no penalties for resting, except that time goes by quickly when doing so. I had one quest fail because I took a little too long meandering about in a cave, sniffing on the flowers and such, so resting doesn’t come without dangers it seems. Whilst there are no direct penalties to taking extended naps constantly, I’m sure the designer of the game got more nasty surprises for those that spam the rest button (me included), as noted here. If you have yummy supplies in your pack, you will gain 100% of your health and willpower back. It’s of the utmost importance to remember to stock up on those in town. I like this system since it adds a little preparedness and extra adventuring flair to the whole deal, but it doesn’t demolish your playthrough if you run out of supplies on a big dungeon-diving expedition.
Funky arms
One thing that drags down
Archaelund is the poor animations and models of humans and creatures. They are passable, but compared to how the game looks and feels otherwise, it is a disappointing thing. I know it’s a one-man developer show and all, but it does reduce the quality, and it makes the human fighters look very silly. Their combat stance looks absolutely ridiculous, having them waving their shield and clubs around like they have severe Aspergers. Hopefully, it’s something that will be improved in the future. The portraits, art, and exploration graphics look wonderful otherwise, it’s just the models and animations that drag it down a bit.
Another issue I was having, is that there are no quick slots for changing weapons. However, I got a response from the dev that he will add this option in the future. So, that’s great to hear!
Archaelund has a long way to go. This means that the game is from being finished, and won’t be for a good while. While I enjoy the game, it’s hard to recommend anyone to buy into unfinished games, regardless of reason, especially at this early stage. Yet, if you feel like supporting this one-man dev team to create a good party-based RPG for the future – go ahead! Just don’t expect it to be finished anytime soon. Once again, what is there is good in the gameplay department, and it shows great potential for the future.
Thanks for reading.