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Ravenbound should be Early Access in this state!

3K View2023-04-01

RavenBound (Reviewed)

Developer: Systemic Reaction™

Publisher: Systemic Reaction™

Released: 30 March, 2023

Price: $30 USD

Ravenbound in its most basic form, is a colorful open-world sandbox with Scandinavian folklore intermingled within it with a roguelike deck-building component in place of conventional item drops. You develop and equip your character to take on the many generic foes and bosses around the world.

Despite the fact that the concept is very well thought out, the execution is nothing more than disjointed. I don't genuinely dislike the game, I'm just sad that the "final release" is being shown off rather than it being an "Early Access" version, in which the game could have been improved over time.

There isn't exactly a story that plays much of a part here. In a perilous fantasy world influenced by Scandinavian tradition, you must utilize your skill to achieve your duty as the Vessel of an ancient force, take down bosses and monsters.

A story seems to be lacking.

One Big Problem

I do not want to sign up for your website, nor do I want to be spammed by your automated system telling me about your offers for other games an your deals.

I don't know why programmers and even website designers make such definite decisions. You're telling your viewer or player that you want them to stop hiding their internet cookies so you can collect more information from them, or you're telling them that you want to force them to disable their adblocker so you can try to market to them with pop-ups. As a player and viewer, this makes me want to look elsewhere for a game or website that won't waste my precious time.

You are forced to create an account, something you will have little use for.

1 hour Gameplay Footage

Gameplay

Ultimately consists of a few things.

Flying around, killing monsters, and gaining as little hatred as possible.

After that, you must cleanse yourself against bosses to maintain deck building. Doing so will also raise the health and damage of all elite bosses and monsters, making it difficult for you to survive if you're not building a deck correctly.

Combat

The real combat itself is rather fluid. In fact, I'd argue it's too smooth and ends up appearing really hilarious because it looks so unrealistic.

You shouldn't be able to dash and avoid opponent strikes with such ferocity, especially given the gear you'll be wearing and the fact that you'll be swinging swords, axes, and other kinds of weapons you might come across in your runs.

There is no stamina bar

I mentioned in my initial review, this completely eliminates the need to back off and take a breath every now and then, but it also makes it difficult to take combat seriously.

Why play the longer, more drawn-out combat with parries, charges, and stagger strikes when you can perform all of them simultaneously in a second?

Lack of point of interests

As I stumbled onto the game's alpha footage, it appeared as though they either removed a lot of content or the game is not revealing them during a run because you cannot tell where key spots are.

You will be given a green location and a blue location upon starting a new run.

On my first run, I was given a green quest with a boring NPC and a blue quest that only contained a mana stone and a temporary hatred prevention buff.

Later, I was given (2) blue quests but nothing else after making progress through them both, so I had to figure out how to get to the bosses on my own.

In contrast, in my second try, I only received a green and a blue. This left me wondering whether the game placements are truly random and how many are available to you.

What I'm trying to say is that the alpha footage showed a ton of interesting places on the map that you could view in raven form, but the final release of this game doesn't actually show any of them, which is confusing.

Progression

Play - Die - Repeat

You will receive awards for accomplishing many of the tasks you were required to perform whenever you complete a run, whether it be through success or failure, such as accomplishing 10 critical hits or killing 500 enemies.

You will receive legacy points which you can then spend to unlock additional races, traits, or cards to personalize your experience on subsequent runs.

If you attempt to go around and investigate outside of the "build, kill, repeat" gameplay, the replay ability is quite low given how barren the landscape is.

Early Access

This is what it should be

While I personally don't like this entire method that many games use with Steam, it gives the developers an alternative way to receive funding from individuals who genuinely enjoy their game.

If this game were in Early Access, I could see my rating being closer to a (3) star or even a (4) star, with the hope that the developers would make the necessary adjustments to turn the game into a masterpiece, but it isn't here and I don't see it.

Graphics and Audio

It sounds good, and the visuals are great, but everything else outside of this visual aspect of the game needs work, badly.

There are only so many things to do, and practically no replay-ability, and if you do decide to replay, it's just the same exact location for your green quest, and a very short distance change for your quest location, perhaps 15m away from the previous one. It doesn't really scream groundbreaking or truly that roguelike.

Conclusion

You're not getting your monies worth

I'd want to state it once more. I don't despise the game. Although I think the game has a lot of potential, I don't have a lot of confidence in developers these days to go the additional mile and resolve community concerns.

Because they choose to push it as a full release rather than an early release with a roadmap of the things they would like to implement in the future, I do not think they will want to move forward with patches and updates to the game in this scenario. They would have to rebuild the combats foundation, and bring life to the world around you for it to be a thrilling experience, rather than a time waster.

This concludes my review of this game, while my opinions may be met with criticism, that's what makes gamers unique, you don't have to like the same things that others do, nor do you have to agree with them.

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- Pawkt

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