"Dread Delusion" This Game had So Much Potential

    I remember when I first added this game to my Steam wishlist. It was a couple years ago before the game was even released, yet still in early access. I just wanted to keep tabs on it since it was far from being the fully fledged game you see today. After all everyone kept on drawing comparisons to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, a game from one of my favourite franchises of all time. So how couldn't I resist it. So I waited, and I waited, until eventually a summer sale came on and I decided you know what? Maybe I will buy this game. So I bit the bullet, and I found myself honestly? A little underwhelmed. Let's talk about it.

    Look look, I already know how I have a strong tendency to write these reviews, I spend a good 70% of it nitpicking the game, then spend very few words actually praising it, yet it still ends with a good rating. Even still, I truly do mean believe this when I say that the only reason I'm a bit tepid in my praise is has the bones for something truly special. Like if the team was bigger, they had more resources (I counted like maybe 50 contributors counting even like volunteer moderators in the credits), this game could truly be something special, but in it's current state, it's hard to live up to the hype and expectations. I mean I'm not the biggest Morrowind fan but this is like a 10th as grand as that game, and at some points you can really feel just how small the game is. 

    Let me get it out of the way first of all. The worldbuilding in this game is great. If this game was a book, or a tabletop RPG, I'd just clap at the writers. Like it's all so interesting, this intersection between gods and freedom, this society that's still trying to recover from an apocalypse while also somehow still being in decline. It really hits all of the right notes when trying to find that perfect balance of magic and technology, religion and society. Learning about all of the different gods, the different societies, factions and their little quirks. Really my only complaint is that there could have and maybe should have been more. Due to size constraints you really only see about "three or four" different regions. Hallowshire, the realm of the Endless, and The Clockwork Kingdom. 

    I know in-universe the union is a bit stretched out which is why you never actually see a real union stronghold in game, but I would have loved for there to be more than just basically three groups like "dead humans, steampunk humans, mushroom humans." Even the small random characters or concepts you see, like The Clockwork King, or the curse of the endless are just endlessly fascinating. I do think thematically the game is quite strong until about the very end. So basically, there are the usual random quests like "fight this mechanical spider for me." But all of the big quests in the game hinge on this simple dilemma. Do you maintain the status quo, as flawed and as doomed as it might currently seem, or do you decide to break the "wheel" perse, disrupting the flow and giving people a chance at a do-over, as chaotic as it might be. I found myself pretty much every time going with the second option, other than putting Paeguth back in power because I was too early in the game and thought they just really needed food. 

    It was really good and I did sort of like this lesser of two evils concept that you could do like it was The Witcher. I'm not calling these games as good as The Witcher series but it had hints. Sadly, how much of it really matters with the ending? Simply put, the ending is like the Yes Man ending is Fallout: New Vegas. The idea is basically the player character is this unshakeable moral compass and so they have the chance to merge with some god-like being and fix everything. Including redeeming the villain, reviving all of your friends, and fixing all of the large over-arching issues that every single society in the game struggles to deal with. The game tries to make it seem like there's real risk of you merging with it, potentially causing another apocalypse-ending event. Except every time you merge with it that doesn't happen. Thus making the ending where you just "send the god-like being away" kind of moot because there's no downside to giving everyone more power and once again letting humanity try and thrive. 

    The story for the most part is fantastic but this does feel like a pretty significant misstep at an inopportune moment of the game. Even still if they ever created a game in the same world I would absolutely consider playing it without question. My only hope would be they learn what it means to make a good game. Look I've tried to hide it for as long as possible but the main issue with this game is that it can hardly be considered a game. By the end of these vast, large open-world RPG's the player usually feels like a fantasy-god anyways, but mechanically this game feels less like a bundle of love and more like slapping a shiny coat of paint onto a game. There's simply no other way to talk about/explain the bizarre choices that the developers made. 

    Combat is for all intents and purposes optional, and even then if you do choose to participate in combat it's optional. I don't know why they decided to make it this way, but the player character is simply too fast. Every enemy moves like a snail compared to the player, so the block function is rendered useless when it takes less stamina to simply dodge every attack. Every AI is extremely predictable when half of the enemies will stop what they're doing no matter what to drink a potion when they're low, and frankly the stamina bar is more of a suggestion than a limit. I found that the best way to engage in melee was to simply run in a circle, put on an accessory that lessened any stamina penalt and continue to hit enemies until they die. It's simply too rudimentary.

    And to make things worse? There isn't any variety either. Magic as a form of combat in this game is legitimately terrible. The only thing you end up using magic for are spells that augment you, or for opening secrets, which to this game's credit, it does have a lot of. The reason for this? Unless you have a very late stage (and I do mean very late stage) ring magic does not regenerate naturally. Which means that powerful spell you just shot at an enemy? Yeah that'll take a 10th of your magic, and so unless you feel like spending all of your gold on potions you'll never be able to make it through this interesting part of this map, while also exploring the nifty little secrets the devs left in. Don't even get me started on summoning. I can see why the summoning achievement is rare on Steam, because the skeletons die in two seconds so there's literally no point in ever summoning a skeleton after that. 

    So, as Skyrim intended by far the easiest and best way to deal with enemies is by being a "stealth" archer. And I put stealth in quotation marks because there really isn't really a stealth system in this game at all. Did you know that you can rob stores in nighttime even with other NPC's looking at you. I mean if you want more grand delusions, which is how your character levels up you might need to. But even with the faction system it means absolutely nothing if you rob all of the shopkeepers you buy from. It doesn't even curry you favour with the outlaw "faction." Oh and alchemy? Completely useless. If you're a true explorer like myself, then you'll never, ever feel the need to buy potions. Maybe at the beginning you'll want some scytale tea to raise both your lore and charm, but other than that I had potions aplenty.

    Though, to it's credit, exploring this game is actually very fun. On one hand, the relatively small map size meant it was actually realistic/manageable to expect players to explore every nook and cranny in the game. I would enter a new region and basically spend a couple hours sweeping the area slowly but surely, making sure to leave no stone unturned. Once again though, it feels like the devs thought less about the actual game mechanics while creating this game. There's a spell that basically lets you blaze through any area as if you're the Flash, and I really do mean that. In fact, I basically limited my use of that spell so I could spend more time exploring every nook and cranny, because the map builders did really put a lot of time including all of these random buildings, and these little secrets in said buildings you had to go looking for. On a random side note, why are not all of the wizard teleportation stations not right next to their actual useful locations? Like the Endless teleportation spot is like outside the city by a decent bit, same thing with the one for Ferropolis, and the Vela's gunship teleportation spot makes you open a door and call for a lift, it's on the other side of this big castle wall for some reason. 

    Keeping with the theme of travel, another aspect I also loved but disagreed with was the airship. Simply put, the airship needed to be in the game sooner. It's a very cool feature, and the loot you get from exploring the sky islands actually made me go "huh, maybe this game has more to offer me." I mean other than the clothing, much of the rings and other accessories you find are quite useless once you find the right ones. Of course, I know why they didn't let you access the airship sooner, because the loot makes the games even easier somehow, which is an issue I felt pretty much after exploring the first town on hard mode. Not to mention, you can really feel just how small the entire map is zooming on an airship. My last note on the airships is that if the maps were larger/more spread out it'd actually be a very cool way of traveling across regions, except everything is concentrated in one small area. Oh and the handling is terrible, I had 115 handling (very high) and it still didn't feel great. Part of the issue is that even with my mouse look sensitivity turned up I couldn't change my view without like sliding my mouse across my desk multiple times.

Final Score: 65/100

    Look you get the point right? I usually don't want these reviews to be about literally every aspect of the game, just what was most memorable about it. But that's kind of the point, I'm giving all of these notes because I really wanted to like this game more. It was fine, and I didn't regret the thirty hours I had, but I never really felt immersed because everything felt secondary to the story and graphics, which I must admit are charming. This is like the epitome of  "potential: the game." The seasonings, sauces and herbs are all there in the pot to make what should be a very good soup, but if you don't have anything really meaningful to chew on and eat then the soup simply won't be very good. If the developers remembered that they were supposed to be making a game, this game could have been an indie favourite of mine that I would have revisited. But now? In it's current state it's just another game I'll check off and never touch again.