Chronicon
Amazing game. It has:
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very malleable yet fairly easy enchanting system
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interesting skill trees and crazy equipment powers that combined can produce builds almost breaking the game at extremes
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awesome endgame mode that offers tons of fun
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sweet qol features like very configurable radial loot pickup
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otherwise has familiar structure like acts, elites, bosses, gems etc.
What’s a bit missing:
- given the possible complexity and interconnections of builds, I’d absolutely love a proper build benchmark, like a minute recording of the actual damage you make that’s reported to you with some details.
– Real player with 186.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action RPG Pixel Graphics Games.
One of the reasons I like the Steam platform so much is that it offers opportunity for development teams to release early access versions of their games.
Of course some games never get out of early access for many reasons or the dev teams take little notice of the player base that are effectively ‘testing’ EA/Alpha/beta versions and the player base walk away.
Chronicon is a perfect example of Early Access done well.
I believe the earliest version was 5 years ago.
I picked the game up back in November 2017 and looking at my Steam logs played it for just a couple of weeks.
– Real player with 159.2 hrs in game
Storms 2
Scratch the surface and you will find a pretty decent Action RPG.
Struggled at first, and the title looked fairly barebones but slowly found that this title has all the ARPG components. You have the normal merchant, potion seller, healer, stash etc. Upgrade paths are particularly impressive as is the variation in the enemies that you will find.
Graphics might be fairly basic, but the game-play is there.A good value for money title!
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action RPG Top-Down Games.
A work in progress at launch here, but a project of passion from this new indie developer on Steam. He’s already fixed several little bugs and taken a few of my suggestions to make this game better to heart and made the suggestions I advised in videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOLQr2IWd_Y
I like this, and I LOVE the value here at just $5 USD. The skill tree and inventory system are beyond impressive and well worth the price alone.
More to come to this review as I play this game more but great job to this admirable indie developer!
– Real player with 2.0 hrs in game
Unending Dusk
Unending Dusk is a decent beat’em up if you enjoy grinding stats and finding rare attack mods. As you can see I dropped over 80 hours just to max out 2 of the 4 characters. I guess you could say that it has some roguelite elements, although there is no perma-death. The stages are randomly generated so you can run into a secret shop or a hidden area, and that is not counting the stat grind which is usually associated with the genre. For me the game managed to capture the nostalgia that I have for classic beat' em ups, despite having all those new features. In my opinion the combat, aesthetic and the controls are faithfully implemented. I play Streets of Rage (2) very often, by comparison the execution of attacks is essentially the same. Unfortunately, it has no grappling which is perhaps my biggest problem. There are definitely some modern features added to the formula such as character levels and different damage types, but overall it truly feels like a game that could be on Genesis - mainly due to aesthetic.
– Real player with 104.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action RPG Beat 'em up Games.
Unending Dusk is an old-school beat-em-up with ARPG mechanics and a pretty decent, darksynth-esque soundtrack that was admittedly rough around the edges in its early days, but regular updates have smoothed a lot of those edges and made for a compelling cooperative experience whenever I can rope friends into playing it. The developer even does double XP events on occasion. It has up to four-player online coop but regrettably no local option, an odd choice for the genre.
The time and place, a dark cyberpunk future in the last city on Earth. The titular twilight spells impending doom for the city given its reliance on solar power. A brilliant engineer has taken it upon himself to gather a band of the deadliest mercenaries, bounty hunters, soldiers and even religious fanatics he can get to find the source of the unnatural darkness and combat the strange, almost demonic invaders it brought with it.
– Real player with 101.2 hrs in game
Grim Dawn
This is one of the best Action RPGs ever made.
You will not regret buying this, especially on discount which occurs pretty often.
The developer, Crate entertainment, supports this game even now, even when everyone thought the game reached its pinnacle of updates and polishing, there was a patch with tons of pages of fixes & changes for the better recently.
No microtransactions, no stealthy practices, this developer is simply what every other developer should be. And every expansion is massive and adds tons of content for the price.
– Real player with 660.2 hrs in game
To me the most atmosphereic of the ARPG games. I am weird but I just was never into D2 very much and I had the disk version and got the missing DLL bug after about 6 months..
But back to GD. Of course there is a grind. And I use that word properley because you are gonna have to do the same areas more than once to handle other areas. not too bad though. The sound is great, I LOVE the music but some dont. The effects are top notch imo. The graphics are gorgeous imo. But I dont own any next gen games so…
– Real player with 364.1 hrs in game
Terra Ventura
SELECT PLAY STYLE
Select your character with distinct characteristics and abilities from four different characters, each with inherent advantages - Archer, Musketeer, Explorer or Fighter.
COLLECT LOOT AND MANAGE INVENTORY
Get lucky or get unlucky. Variety of items can be obtained randomly across the maps. Loot gold and silver coins or find armor, weapons and other inventory items. Visit alchemist, smith, merchant or tailor to buy additional items, trade or repair gear.
DEVELOP SKILLS and ABILITIES
Develop your character through skill tree paths, gain powerful bonuses by collecting runes and improve basic skills. Invest into explosives path, attacking path, health path, alchemy path or materials path.
EXPLORE FANTASY WORLD
Immerse yourself in a medieval fantasy world. You will encounter a town setting, underground caves, lava lakes, winter conditions, toxic wastelands, desert dunes and much more. Approach situations with combat or use acquired skills. You will encounter 30 enemies with different abilities and strengths.
Bogatyr
“We sure can have a lot of stuff! We can even have nothing!”
~Mikhail Zhvanetsky
Letande vs. crappy Russian RPGs! Round 999! FIGHT!!! Seriously, though. When it’s about crappy Russian (also, Ukrainian) role-playing games, I’m a freakin' veteran. I’ve played and finished pretty much everything there was – from Заклятие (Spells of Gold) to Талисман (Talisman, an RPG in Slavic setting from 2003, not to be confused with German point-and-click adventure from 1995 and Nomad Games' adaptation of Game Workshop’s tabletop game). To be honest, though, I didn’t expect any new games of the kind. I mean, something like that? It was possible only during the very certain time period. A period, when majority of the Russian people didn’t have access to Internet connection and it was possible to sell pretty much any crap to them for the price of proper products. Games like Орда: Северный Ветер (Horde: Northern Wind) were possible only because there was no YouTube to show people what they’ll actually get for their money. The more accessible Internet became – the less of such games we’ve got. The lest one of the kind I’ve played was, I believe, Ukrainian Заговор Тёмной Башни (Dark Tower Conspiracy, AKA Dungeon Quest) in 2006. After that? All those wannabe developers switched to mobile games. Which are not nearly as fun to suffer through.
– Real player with 11.1 hrs in game
Well, I have no idea who made English translation , but he must be executed.
For rest of the game - world and soundtrack combined are TASTY , pleasure for my eyes and ears for this price. Blood is shameful though, combat - found it funny, but only for 3 hours not more.
7/10 for Indie like that. Trash cause of translation, but good enough for that money and I still understood the story.
– Real player with 2.9 hrs in game
Last Epoch
I am a longtime ARPG player.
I discovered Last Epoch while looking for a guide on Wolcen (yeah… i know…).
Since then I have been playing Last Epoch and I have given up on Wolcen.
Last Epoch is the best Early Access ARPG yet, and definitely one of the best ARPG, period!
The game feels incredible.
The story is great.
The itemization is solid.
There is a wide variety of builds.
Personally, I don’t do theorycraft, I usually rely on other’s build guide. But I manage to create fun skills combinations that work for me and are relatively viable or modify other’s build to my liking.
– Real player with 336.6 hrs in game
There are two major things that draw me to this ARPG. The Skills, and the Masteries. I’ll go over both here.
Skills are typical fare. You can have 5 on your hotbar at a time. Where the skills really start to shine are in the trees/webs. Picture the runes from Diablo 3, but each one is placed somewhere on a web for that skill. You take lesser, but still valuable and build enabling nodes, such as adding a DoT, reducing mana cost, increasing base damage while you work your way to major nodes, like making the physical skill Javelin a lightning skill instead. You can also change it from a piercing line attack to a batch of 3 AoE targeted spears. Even further you can make those 3 spears into 1, increasing the damage and adding a banner to it that increases your damage and defenses. Further down that branch, the banner can cast a spell, Smite, for free at enemies near it. There are a lot of skills like this.
– Real player with 267.0 hrs in game
Naxia
My review for Naxia.
I saw Naxia here in steam, and loved the art style and the character of Ajira. I bought it for myself and also as a present to a steam friend (mousafiris). We played it both. Naxia is a very polished, diablo-styled game, with its own character, and much to anticipate. Although in early access, the chunk of the game that is playable is astounding. The character recently got a revamp (Ajira), and the model is even more detailed and beautiful than the previous one (although, to be perfectly honest, i liked so much the old one that i would like it to be added as an option in the future…even told the devs about it via a comment). Also, all the graphics got a turn upwards, getting even more beautiful, and the game less heavy for a medium pc (as my own). The animations are superbly fluid, and i loved the executions the character does. It never gets old or repetitive for me to see the heroine skillfully slash to pieces a goblin or an assasin mob… The sound is very good, although sometimes i would prefer it to be a little more intense, and i would personally love the sound to have some more oriental vibes, but that is just my own personal preference and of course, since the game is still being made, it can be done, as the devs always look into our comments. What i can truly say, is that the sound and voiceovers that are available, are of high quality and very atmospheric. You will never see something in this game that is of lower quality. Everything is top-tiered. I am much excited to see the final product. The characters look interesting, especially Ajira and the Necromancer. I would love also, another female character to be added, so we get two males and two females (maybe turn barbarian or mage into a female). But that again, is my own personal opinion, and the reason of the review is to let the devs make the game even better. The questline is promising, and i would love to see what happens next. The boss fight i played was spectacular, it had interesting game mechanics for this type of game. I loved the metamorphosis the char does later in the game, it is what separates it from other diablo styled games. I also would love to see all the armor types, and even heavier armor types for Ajira (not only leathery ones for a rogue class). Gameplay wise, the game is simple, i love the WASD controls and even more the gamepad support, which is good.And i love the games to be simple, because i want to play and feel nice, not feel encumbered with what to do, what to press etc. It is as complex as it should be. Loot pool is big, and interesting, loved the change the devs did.
– Real player with 21.0 hrs in game
Alright so I guess it’s my turn to make a review since I have time before going to work :)
I had this game on my radar a long time ago. (You need to understand this is an Early Access so they will have to change stuff before releasing.)
For now there is only the rogue class; I can’t wait to try the Mage and especially Necromancer! The other melee fighter will be my last to try, if I’m lazy, but maybe the Execute animation and Rage Form could be a game-changer!
I am not that much of a melee-type, but like FFXIV you feel forced to play Tank if you want to enter dungeon in a flash and not waiting for 30min (Yes I am talking when the game was released a long time ago “Abyss King” at your service!)
– Real player with 17.5 hrs in game
Pagan: Absent Gods
My hours on the game are only for Steam, my actual hours are somewhere in the hundreds if not close to 1000. Been playing since the first alpha phase. So let me talk about the game from there. The first 3 points of this review is formatted like “most people say X, but actually Y” so I hope you’ll read it all.
1. People complain about the WASD. Many of these complaints suggest that there is no use of the mouse. This is heavily misleading. WASD + Mouse allows for directional movement while aiming skills and dodges simultaneously. Adding click to move would mean that directional skills would have to be aimed only with the direction a character is facing, or with WASD, and you wouldn’t want that would you? Embrace the WASD + Mouse Aim! Try something new!
– Real player with 212.6 hrs in game
I don’t usually write reviews but I think I needed to take time off and post a review for this game. WALL OF TEXT incoming.
Overview
After playing this game for approximately 100hrs I believe that Steam needs to have a policy in place to refund gamers when a Game company does not make good on their promises. This game has glaring issues and bugs and should have NEVER made it out of early access/beta. The fact this game was launched is an insult to gamers who have invested their money on this.
Cooperative Game Play
– Real player with 153.9 hrs in game
Torchlight II
I got to admit, I’ve been playing this game since half a decade ago and got to enjoy playing most select characters after receiving it as a free gift. After beating the game three times or so while on different difficulty tiers, Torchlight 2 began to bore me with the same enemies starting with Estheria to the Broken Mines, and then on way to the Mapworks.
That all changed when I discovered the Steam Workshop for Torchlight 2. After finding the workshop, I went crazy and got my hands on a number of fan-made mods. This includes the Synergies mod, extra classes mod, extra gold mod and recently getting the storage mod. As a result, this breathe new life and interest into playing Torchlight 2 once more while sticking to play on the Veteran tier. In other words, it’s a great game that maintains its original storyline even while having mods installed from the workshop at the same time. I must admit, at the time I type-down this review, my record is at 661 hours of gameplay.
– Real player with 1531.4 hrs in game
After 2-3 years of not actively playing it, I gave this game another try for nostalgic purposes. These are my thoughts.
A great game for its time, but destroyed by nearly every other ARPG to follow after it. Most of my hours on this game were put before Diablo 3, Marvel Heroes, and Path of Exile made substantial improvements to their games. First couple years this was out, game was bliss. Only other viable options were Titan Quest, Diablo 2, and Torchlight 1.
The game was designed to be played in Multiplayer, apparently, but I spent most of my time solo. The multiplayer is actually very bad and scales terribly with the more players you have. Monster damage and health isn’t properly tuned and everything ends up doing too much damage and being sponges, especially the bosses. It also forces you to sign up for a Runic account because apparently this is a good idea for some reason. The network code happens to be abysmal as well, and handles lag in the weirdest way I’ve seen in a game. For the person lagging, the game creates a seperate instance, until the lag stops. Causing confusion for everyone involved (wait you already killed those monsters?).
– Real player with 431.0 hrs in game