Waqas

Oh man, I dunno where to even begin. I'm left baffled, awed and have questions that I want the answers to. It's been years since I've played a very good game that is filled with lore riches, beautiful worldbuilding, including the dungeons and not to mention the unique music for areas. (Aside from Elden Ring, of course, but that's not the point) I just finished this game in 3 weeks time (real world), and my (in-game) total time says "48 hours". It's was a very long game! There's just so many things to do. Even the amount of NPCs and quests are a lot, but not too much to the point of getting overwhelmed, if that makes sense. If you want a game where main focus is solving lots of puzzles with cryptic clues, exploration, mystery, super rich lore then this game is for you. The lore at times will feel like it's describing the situation of what's happening around our world, it can be dark at times, there were a few instances where I felt enraged. (and trust me, solving some of those puzzles WILL require significant brain usage) You will need to pay attention to your surroundings instead of blindly walking/running around, there's a lot that you can easily miss. Also, when you reach a Marsh-like land (also known as second main area by some players), this is where the game will truly test your dedication to a) keep playing, b) your ability to solve puzzles, and c) to see if you can handle the vast world with great distances between them by traveling through these using your legs, running the distances. :P As most of you already know, the game is tagged with "souls-like" on Steam, but it's not souls-like. It's more like "Hack & Slash" kinda combat game. Aside from the similarity between the UI interface, there's nothing "souls-like" about it. If you wanted to play this game for combat then you're going to be disappointed, heck in the settings you can even set the amount of health/damage the enemy can have or deal, either make the game too easy or too hard, whatever suits your boat. You don't play this game for combat, you do it for the exploration, puzzles, worldbuilding, beautiful structures, reading through journals, diaries, secret messages, uncovering secrets like vaults, fighting **a couple or three** "bosses" in the entire game, did I mention exploring? The world is freaking BIG! There were some instances where I thought "huh, this looks like a short area, should be through it quickly.", only to end up spending my time in it longer than expected. It's also easy to get lost if you don't memorize where you came from, lol, and also, there will be plenty of going back and forth, for solving puzzles, of course. :P Easily a GOTY of 2025 for me. Truly a masterpiece in terms of artistic approach, worldbuilding and lore-wise. I don't think there'll be another game such as this, except maybe a sequel if they ever decide on that. Mark my words, in the coming years, this game will have a cult following and gain traction, right now it's majorly been overlooked, but with a bit of word of mouth, this will surely get the recognition it deserves, as Demon's Souls did back in the day. :)