Skald: Againt the Black Priora Review

Before playing Skald: Against the Black PriorI liked the idea of ​​this game in playing roles, but I wasn’t sure if it was for me. I love senior school RPG, but before 1997 too For me, Old School and the main source of visual inspiration of Skald is the era of RPG DOS and Commodore, which I have respect, but not much attachment. Great inspired VGA Pixel art inspired by VGA scared me as much as she encouraged me.

Finally, diving in the game, I found something much more contemporary: the Skald is crunchy and tight, threading the needle with an elegant, contemporary sensitivity of design, which does not grind the complexity and depth, which I want in my RPGs. It is effortless to find arms, but also arduous and surprising all the way. The biggest shock was writing: Skald is one of the most effective, disturbing cosmic horror movies I saw in the game, and some of it comes from all the effort he puts in the development of her world fantasy and characters before she torn it all down.

Tick ​​the initiative

Picture 1 With 5

When I play RPG with my own rules on order (that is, not based on something known as D&D or special), I always feel that I jump faith. Is the one in which dialog skills are fun and useful? Which armor weapons and entities are actually served by the loot of the game? Are the rogues just suck for some reason? For every divinity: original sin or discos that knocked him out of the park, there is such a thing as broken roads or dishonest trader who makes me frustrated, thinking about the empty sheet of character full of statistics, skills, jargon and the effects of dubious usability .

Blessed Skald falls into a former camp. It is very iterative on D&D, but with a unique system of progression and controls based on 2D6 cubes than D20. Each class can be powerful and find a niche in a group of six, and you are only afraid of skills and attributes when creating character. During the game, you can escalate these results thanks to the equipment and passive feat bonuses that you will choose at the level. For example, Ranger Feats will escalate your dexterity and survival, as well as give you up-to-date attacks.

The struggle Skald’s is similarly uncomplicated and elegant. The battles are based on Turn and on the net, while the classes seem very different for command. Latvian is positioning, butt, hiding and initial fighting with favorable rounds of ambush. Armmasters is your classic warrior who wants to charge and everything. Gildia Magos (wizard) and Battle-Magos have a variety of Baldur spells, which can be taught both at the level and rewinds that you will find in the world (but the swarm at level 1 is a beast that can go through most of the game), while Rangers are tower from machine guns that can cut enemies from anywhere on the screen.

Most Skald’s tasks end in a fight, but there are many non-bomb games, comparable to Baldur’s Gate 3 or obsidian joints, such as Fallout: New Vegas and Pillars of Eternity. Not only do you utilize diplomacy to move fights: knowledge can unlock a lot of tips, background and context in tasks and conversations, while athletics can open alternative paths through the environment through climbed walls and arduous jumps. Lockpicking is extremely useful, you can rob blind shops and I absolutely love that every candle, a torch and a fireplace in the game can be spent to aid in the back of enemies next to enemies or lit to facilitate seeing hidden objects. Each skill control is represented by a roll of cubes in the game, with pixel pixelated skold’s cute retro echo of the iconic digital d20 lariana.

The early distinctive task is to infiltrate the city, which consisted of crazy barbaric cultists, and some of the genetic memory of the islanders about the worship of Eldritch Fish Peopo led them to the orgy of violence. The city itself is dense and entertaining to discover, while your fight against three fractions of cultists can play in many ways. I managed to force them to destroy, attaching the theft of the Saint Idol to the strongest faction, and then convincing the other two to unite against them. It seemed that the open relationship of the second battle in Nowy Vegas about Tami Hoover, but in miniature.

During the game, some of her fights began to seem a bit effortless and thrown to the central “normal” difficulty ⁠ – Skald recommends that the beginner begins with “easy” – but his battles with great history always seemed properly compelling and significant. SKALD offers a bit of flexibility in creating an event, with a well -balanced complement to preliminary characters that can be attached during history, as well as empty “mercenaries” that you can find, buy and adapt, as you can see fit.

Psychedelia

Picture 1 With 5

But you will want to stick to Premade Guys, at least during the first game. They are not an affair companions of the BioWare loyalty mission, but the Canon crew is diverse, compelling and will regularly speak about the story and side events of Quests. Classico Fighter-Tank Roland, a reliable sales concentration haunted by past crimes, is my favorite, and the addition to the event with spoils in the game adds a lot of cosmic context of the horror of history. Skald’s comrades are sketched with a featherlight hand, but they give the impression of a depth and stories that will never be fully disclosed. They left me that I wanted to learn more about them, instead of turning me too much story.

The scald scene is a well -known Western fantasy, but with a predominance and a sense of history that I always want. Emperors doubtfully moral policy in the world are living demigods, and when they die, their bodies remain radioactive with magic, they must be absorbed in some invaders of the lost vault of deep arch after death. All magic comes from the ozone layer of Eldritch, which can be a feeling planet, is probably not kind, and yet it seems that it protects the world of a scald from looking at something really scary in the murky.

It is in itself the whole whole rand in the world, which makes the involvement of High North programmer to completely destroy him with the Horror Lagoon is so impressive. During the exploration of external islands, it is a feeling that you are going down into a really vile, underground, alternative world separate from all human or kind. Having this initial context of the curious fantasy world, nice figures and drawing in human drama is sharpened by the contrast with what will happen later: you have a reference to exactly how far everything has collapsed.

As things become more bizarre, one of the biggest pleasant surprises of Skald is the very quality of the prose of the main programmer Anders Lauridsen. I am talking about vast pieces of text straight from Planescape: anguish or discos, with the same suggestive, poetic quality that always sent chills in these games. Skald is definitely low, but the perfection of pixel art and the soundtrack really brings home with its unique atmosphere: fantasy CRPG nostalgia cut with something deeply sinister.

After the knockout in the last level of the case, they fall into a strange and insane, which made it without a word, and the game will finally return to the air with a entertaining, intentionally anti -climate slog of the epilogue, which made me laugh. Skald was one of the absolutely best RPG last year, a nice surprise like nothing else, and the first trip with High North Studios, which delighted me for what would happen next.