An unhinged and unedited critique of the game that goes into some detail about some things, The
by Lithium Flower
You know how some games are described as "better than the sum of their parts?" Usually this applies to demakes, oldschool games, or genre trailblazers that featured gameplay systems that, while basic, synergized in a way that introduced an unexpected level of depth, creativity, and interaction to the game.
In my estimation, Dread Delusion is worse than the sum of its parts.
I hate Dread Delusion's game design with a passion. It activates whatever neurons in my brain are responsible for me pressing the little squares on my deskboard that have all the funny little symbols on them to make words and things appear on the screen ok. I have not experienced game mechanics this incoherent since Witcher 3 - and DD is even worse, because its mechanics are super fucking simple, so you'd think they would be harder to fuck up, but the dev managed.
Now, it may be in EA, but everything I've read of the dev indicates that he considers the gameplay mechanics and majority of content more or less complete, and is working on finish such things as player housing and the main questline, so I would not be surprised if every single bit of my impressions holds up when 1.0 drops.
First of all, the game is much closer to an open world King's Field than it is to any sort of Morrowind. An RPG-lite, or something of the sort, with a few elements from borrowed from here and there, and an unusual setting, hence the Morrowind comparison I guess.
A close comparison to this game would be Lunacid, another KF-inspired game with many similar elements and mechanics, and one that I believe succeeds in replicateing the "more than sum of its parts"
I will try to give you a rough expression how I experienced the game, starting with hopes and potential, and ending with the realization that the game is pointless. Hollow. Empty.
There are 4 Attributes, each of which govern 3 derived statistics:
-Might: increases Attack, Defense, and max Health
-Guile: Increases Lockpicking, Agility, and max Stamina
-Wisdom: Increases Spellcast, Lore, and max Mana
-Persona: Increases Charm, Barter, and regen rate for stamina...and maybe health and mana too idk I can't even remember if those regen on their own or not
There are boosts you can get for specific skills, but the main way to advance them is by increasing your Attributes, which you get to do once each level. That's kind of basic but its also a straightforward way to immediately engage you in building a character as opposed to fiddling with stats - wow, I can pump Guile and Might to be a quick duelist, or Wisdom and Persona and rely on spells, etc etc, I could be a thief or a loremaster or a diplomat...
Except Lockpicking, Lore, and Charm open doors. That's it. They are there to pass skill gates. Think Lore sounds cool - no, its simply a variation on the Lockpicking skill that does not require lockpicks but consumes a little bit of your mana. The other 2 are self-explanatory.
Disappointing, but perhaps I expected too much, as plenty of good games have rigid skill gates too. But there is a nuance - almost every single locked box, door, item, quest solution etc depends on exactly (1) skill requirement each. Want to solve the mystery of the corrupted castle place? Have like 75 Charm to persuade a dude to give you the quest-necessary item or fuck off. Trying to figure out if there are multiple ways to break into the target's house for the thief's guild quest? There aren't, its just a Lockpick check. You can't attack and kill uncooperative NPCs - your attacks only register against monsters and enemies. And while the way Lore and Lockpick and Charm are applied have superficial differences (lockpick is chance-based, lore requires you to pay a bit of mana) the dev, in his quest to make the game as dull as possible, even went as far as to implement automaton doormen who only grant entry on meeting a certain Charm threshold. So if you think this game requires any measure of creativity, or provides any emergent gameplay experiences - it doesn't, at least in terms of its quest and skill design.
Dread Delusion is an ennui simulator.
In summation, 3 of the game's skills are completely identical, and the other 5 are passive and explanatory - but worse, there is zero creativity with which you apply them, and nearly every single quest only has one mechanical solution.
But perhaps the lack of gameplay C&C actually enforces, if perhaps too-rigidly, character building C&C - by committing to a particular build, you have to accept the consequence of being locked out of optional items, areas, entire quest, and so on. Of course, this is complicated by the fact that the placement of skill gates (and rewards thereof) is seemingly arbitrary, so its not like you can actually plan around for getting the items and outcomes you want, but nevertheless the potential for a curated but consequential experience could be there.
Indeed, perhaps that would have been the case - if it were not for the fact that, by the end of EA content which constitutes like 75% of the game apparently, you will max out 3/4 attributes and get the last attribute halfway to the finish line. So not only is usage of skills braindead and uninteresting with no synergy or interaction, but you will max them all out anyway.
Id say that Dread Delusion devolves its entire character building system from "what kind of character do you want to play?" to "what kind of doors do you want to open first?" but that would not be fair. Indeed, that is far too generous, as given the aforementioned fact that the various items and quests are locked behind seemingly arbitrary skills, the game's core RPG component degenerate further into "how do you want to open doors?"
And this is what I mean by "worse than the sum of its parts." Any of these individual elements - straightforward attributes; rigid requirements for quests and optional rewards; a pauper-to-god power progression, - could have worked in another sort of game. But in Dread Delusion, they are mushed together in a combination to cause confusion, pain, and annihilation to both its gameplay systems and the player. Its like nuclear fusion.
Dread Delusion is the Chernobyl of computer roleplaying games.
But Lithium, you may say, why the fuck are you rambling about doors and gates and shit? Aren't there other things to do in an Ar-Pee-Gee lite action adventure thingy? The game's inspirations are decent after all: King's Field is supposed to have good exploration, Lunacid has a surprisingly varied combat and level design, and Morrowind had a fantastic spellcrafting system, is there anything like that here?
No, hypothetical reader, there is nothing of the sort in this hollow fucking game. The skill thresholds is literally the only time the game demands of you the completion of a challenge that you may actually fail, and its most rigorous gameplay mechanic, for there is nothing else.
I don't even know how to describe things that *aren't there,* most notable the non-experience of sheer, tiresome *nothingness* that this game has - or, uh, has... not? - but I will try my best by sharing someremarks and anecdotes:
-This is one of easiest games I have ever played, and in the most thoughtless, boring way possible besides.
-My Might attribute, and thus Attack skill, were at the minimum for most of the game. Going to the first and only weapon's shop within the first 15 minutes of the game allowed me to buy - or craft, holy shit, the gameplay variety!!!1! - a "fine sword" that killed every single enemy in the game in a few hits. Which is good, because there are like 4 melee weapons (all swords, all function almost identically) in the entire game and enemies do nothing interesting in combat whatsoever, nor is there any reason to fight them as they only drop generic items that the game swarms you with regardless.
-Remember running around Morrowing as an end-game character with high acrobatics and all those crazy Icarus spells? You can achieve that in like 15 minutes simply by raising your Agility by a modest amount, which makes environmental traversal completely one note as you bunny-hop your way across the islands, outrunning every enemy, ignoring terrain features that in a different game may have been interesting to navigate, - and that's with sprinting alone, without using the spell that massively boosts your agility that you can also find within 15 minutes of starting the game (naturally, said spell also means that every single character, regardless of attribute investment, turns into the same sort of speed-demon.) Speaking of enemies, you can kill everything by simply sprinting around them, because everything in this game moves like 10 times slower than you.
-Speaking of spells, there are 3: agility boost, "town portal," and a weak ice spell. If it weren't for the game's unusual aesthetic, I'd be convinced that the developer is actually not capable of doing anything interesting or creative.
-There is are also a handful, like 3-4 unique trinkets, which include exciting specimen like a ring that gives spells (excuse me, the spell, you know, the one damage spell) a slight chance to do extra damage, and a mask that gives you a chance to get a small discount when shopping. I am almost convinced that the game is some sort of a psychological warfare experiment to create the most joyless and uninspired experience possible.
-The game is fucking INFESTED with resources. I can put it no other way. Anything you can pick up is either a big obvious man-sized writhing plant or a massive arcadey levitating pick up. And they are EVERYWHERE. There is a free health potion around every corner, I had an excess of 100, you can quaff every single time you get hit and you will never run out unless you intentionally hurt yourself which is not something you should do there is a suicide hotline for that sort of thing. Its like the fucking Alex jones meme about the free ducks at the park except its not about ducks in this game its about health potions do you get it. Hey, you want to find lockpicks in Dread Delusion? No, don't buy them from the thief's den you actual fucking cretin, how dare you apply your idiot expectations of dumb shit like "resource management" or "structure" or "meaning" to this game, instead try to find a LOCKED DOOR because guess what, each locked door is almost guaranteed to have a chest with eleventy-two million free lockpicks directly in front of it. Its almost insulting to how the game just actively suffocates any gameplay system that could possibly produce challenge, consideration, thought, anything.
-Interesting world and aesthetic? sure, I guess, its like an undercooked combination of planescape and CHIM, but that's unfortunately still more interesting than most games out there. However, does anything, like, happen? Do you interact with the world in creative ways that reflect its peculiar setting, does the game world feel alive or dynamic? To which I answer: lol, lmao. Here, here is a summary of one of the most complex and consequential quests in the game, here is how you RESTORE A GOD TO LIFE:
--Visit an obvious "can't miss it, weird shit here, look its a floating island with a big ruined tower on your path to the starting city" quest location either on your own initiative or passing a charm check to be sent there by a cultist.
--Inside is a non-hostile creature, servant of god of abundance and life at any cost and cancer and shit like that, to see the God himself you need either to bring a mushroom wine from a vendor or pass a more difficult Charm check (this is, perhaps, one of 2-3 times that there are two mechanically distinct ways of completing a quest - and completely meaningless because money is no object of this game.)
--He gives you a key and tells you to find his God at yet another completely obvious landmark.
--God gives you a mcguffin and tells you to put it in a public location in the starter city.
--You either hand the mcguffin in for a large reputation boost with the status quo faction (alternative ways of gaining rep with them: killing literally any of the hostile creatures on the island, so this is pointless) or you set the mcguffin down like God wanted you to. The consequence for tha latter choice, for bringing a god back to life and massively fucking over the main faction, is the fact that health pick ups now literally grow on trees. Except, you know, I have INFINITE HEALTH. Because I have ONE HUNDRED HEALTH POTIONS IN THE INVENTORY. Because they are fucking EVERYWHERE, can't miss them, they are THE SIZE OF A HOUSE and GLOW and FLOAT IN PLACE and did I mention that they are EVERYWHERE. There is an entire alchemy system in this game, actually a half-decent, somewhat thought out system, and there is no point to ever using it, because you have INFINITE THINGS. What should be one of the coolest quest-lines in the game consists of making 1-2 deliveries, and both possible rewards provide you a most quantity of resources you are already swimming in. What is this game? Why is this game? There is no point to it. There is no point to anything.
Dread Delusion is the death of God.
I can go on and on. There is a massive fuck-off undead dragon flying around the map and at some point he actually lands and talks to you and he gives you a quest to bring him 3 fucking mcguffins from 3 tiny dungeons absent any challenge, in exchange for no narrative payoff, and - oh god, I don't even remember what he gave me as a reward, it was so pointless and boring, maybe a bunch of money?!? Or that the most expensive thing in the game is pointless player housing which makes sense as a vanity money sink I guess except you get a fucking keep for free anyway, and the first spell you find is "town portal," so you can always go back there, and its by far the best one to upgrade, so what's the point of the others, oh jesus, or you can realize, as I did, that there is actually 0 interaction with the game world, besides running around like a lunatic and collecting resources by spamming E, and the initially promising and even occassionally striking terrain reveals itself to be nothing but a blank, empty canvass, a wasteland of nothing, with the same fixed enemy spawns you can just ignore, empty space between points of interest just as barren and pointless.
Merely consuming the dev's updates makes me feel like a schizophrenic stuck in an alternate reality from the rest of the world. One dungeon is described as the "hardest challenge yet," with "multiple routes." Ah yes, an invisible bridge that allows me to bypass goblins I can one-shot, thanks dev, you are a goddamn genius. I read the adoring comments in the steam forums, and I question my sanity. This game has fans, it has a 93% rating on steam. The average trite, banal shitboring AAA game is an experience that is miles more, like, an experience than DD, the average steam shovelware hentai game uses more of your brain that this wretched fragment of interactive inanity.
Dread Delusion is the black hole inside me.
