Ash of Gods: Redemption
Do you like story-driven turn-based tactical RPGs? Even those who have nothing to do with Japan and with fantasy in general?
Well, I was just searching for other turn-based games, and this one popped out as one of the recommended titles on Steam.
And I was not disappointed at all, as a long-time RPG player and turn-based lover.
The gameplay isn’t really innovative, but I wanted exactly the contrary - here you’ll face a classical turn-based system in which everyone will stay put until you choose which action to do (each turn is timed anyways).
– Real player with 191.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Lore-Rich Story Rich Games.
Choices. Much like the choice you’re making on whether to buy this game or not, making difficult choices is one of the key aspects of this game. It will affect how the characters react, whether they’ll live or die, how the story develops, and ultimately how it will end. A lot of that takes time and setup, and in many ways this is the kind of game that takes patience to love. It has its share of faults, but if you can get past them I think there’s an excellent strategy game just waiting to be played.
– Real player with 64.9 hrs in game
Siege of Avalon: Anthology
Really fun CRPG, as others have stated. Setting/Atmosphere is pretty on-point for representing a desperate band of defenders in an elongated siege, which only appears to be going further downhill. There are a lot of characters to speak with, most providing backstory or supplementary lore, with a few providing quests/offering to join your party after a certain point
IMO, you really have a good feel on your characters growth. Starting out as a complete amateur you have to take on what is essentially a suicide mission, which would have ended quickly had I not acquired the heal spell & prepared in advance, that sees your character fairly rapidly gain in proficiency in order to survive the coming perils. The AI companions have quirks (looking at you mage NPC that ran into a corner :P) but they do generally provide valuable assistance in engagements which would otherwise be extremely complicated, if not impossible
– Real player with 136.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Lore-Rich RPG Games.
Imagine my emotion when i found this jewel in the Steam Store. Let me tell you it was a wonderful surprise. Even if the game has some issues about the combat pathfinding, let me remember to you all that this game has been released in the early 2000’s. I recomend this game to everyone who loves long epic adventures with a lot of interesting characters, and days and hours of fun. This game can be played with three different styles to choose, either you can be a warrior mastering the combat skills, or a scout and specialize in stealth and archer skills or a magician dominating all kind of spells. You will also find companions along the story that you can also equip and provide with items and armor and weapons and all sort of gadgets, they will be valuable partners in your adventure. Im very happy that i found this game again 20 years later after trying it’s demo version in the early 2000’s. I was starting to loose hope about finding it again. But now that i found it here, remastered and reforged i just cant’t stop playing it. it’s very similar to Diablo II, but let me tell you, this game is a masterpiece of is time, More dialogues, more stories, the characters and merchants you will find in this game are so numerous and complex, with stories to tell, gossips, and stuff. It’s very rich in every aspect. Please allow yourselves to play this game. It’s a rare wander.
– Real player with 61.3 hrs in game
Crown Land
What if medieval Europe and precolonial America were swapped? Crown Land is an epic fantasy visual novel set on an alternate Earth. Meet kings in Texas, lords in California, knights in New York, Cherokees in France, and many more! Crown Land features a cast of over THIRTY fully drawn characters, medieval twists on locations from all over North America (Texas, California, New York, Canada, and more), and a dark, gripping plotline. Wishlist Crown Land now!
Hunt down the horrendous Horned Face and avenge the death of his betrothed. That was the mission, and obsession, that Ethan Primrose had walked away from. Now, he lives his life peacefully and rules the State of California as the heir of both House Primrose and the Western region of the Fifty States. There he lives with his guilt-ridden squire, Olivia, and his wide-eyed sister, Novah. But everything changes when an old friend, one also with an insatiable obsession for finding the Horned Face, vanishes under mysterious circumstances.
To the north of the Fifty States, Premier Nyanna of the Province of Ontario has tried her best to keep the Republic out of a war with its southern neighbor. But when she learns about her brother’s unnatural circumstances, she commits herself to find the truth about her brother. Just as determined as she are her remaining brothers Sawyer and Hayes Maple— the first an arch-priest pushing for controversial reformations, the second the new and unprepared heir of House Maple.
Although separated by thousands of miles and vast landscapes, the actions of each character are concretely and profoundly felt by each and everyone else. With the entire Continent tenaciously teetering on the edge of a full-scale war, each character must understand that their actions and desires impact not just themselves, but the fate of the entire Continent.
Crown Land features a massive cast of over THIRTY drawn, original characters. The following is merely a small sample of them all.
Read More: Best Lore-Rich Anime Games.
Airship: Academy
Airship: Academy is a fantasy airship skyfaring simulation game with hyper-rich lore and narrative. Inspired by many space-sim and pirate-sim such as Star Control, Freelancer, and Sid Meier’s Pirates.
-
You are a veteran airship commander enlisted for a job in a Kingdom far from home
-
Navigate a vast open-world and explore the sky of a shattered continent
-
Engage in spectacular airship battles with insurmountable depth and complexity
-
Fight pirates, rob merchants, repel law enforcers, and challenge the military
-
Buy, build, and upgrade your airships and parts. Enlist, level up, and build relationships with your crews
-
Traverse the skyscape and learn about the history and recent events through helping and listening to people
-
Visit ports, towns, villages, and cities to collect resources and build industries
-
Over 70 ports and 150 NPCs each with unique storylines
-
Over 30 different airships with more than 150 parts to fit into them
-
More than 100 questlines to follow and unravel lore and mysteries of the world
YOU ARE THE COMMANDER
The Great Sky War has stalled, it has been almost a year since the last battle. War has been a good business. Without it, you have been resorting to freelancing to get by. An offer arrived one morning, from some big-name trade and security company. It is an honest and stable job, so you took it right away. Now you found yourself at the Segson Archipelago, unknowingly involved in something far greater than you ever wished for.
THE SHATTERED WORLD
Eons ago, the Great Cataclysm shattered Spheara into pieces. Wild magic wind engulfed the globe, lifting the grounds hanging afloat in the sky. Spheara is the world in the sky above the deadly and dark ocean. Life in such a world is difficult and perilous but humanity and civilizations found ways to prosper.
THE MAGICAL CONTINENT
The place in the center of our focus is the continental group of landmass called Europa. These landmasses above the great ocean below is classified into three belts or rings by their vastly different distance above the sea level. Different nations and cultures developed on different archipelagos, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, they struggle to define their coexistence.
THE KINGDOM IN TURMOIL
The Kingdom of Suthseg has long been the sovereignty over the Sagson Archipelago, a cluster of three major drifting landmasses with plenty of rich minor isles. The Archipelago also holds the key prominent point of interest, that is the Great Mana Coil, the largest gateway allowing airships to descend and ascend across belts.
THE CHARACTERS
Destiny has brought about two young souls and two patriarchs together. All strive towards different things in life and want a better world for themselves and those who come after them. What will be their legacies?
UPGRADE YOUR SHIPS
You can make, buy, or take ship parts from many sources and fit them into a wide variety of airship frames. The balance between speed, agility, durability, firepower, and transport efficiency are key to various strategies and tactics once entered into battle.
BATTLE ADVERSARIES
Exercise the best use of tactics and skills of the crewmen. Push the capability of an airship to its limit and seize the day to enjoy the spoil of victory.
TRAVEL ACROSS EUROPA
The continent is vast. It has many things to offer, many stories to tell, treasures to collect, and mysteries to unravel. The measurement unit and time taken during travel are measured in real-time and real units. Even though the player can accelerate time, this can infuse them with a strong sense of immersion.
TRADE WITH MERCHANTS
Many ports and merchants offer parts, ships, and all sorts of other items that would aid the player in their quests for fame and fortune. Merchants sell and buy specific things, demand and supplies are also limited to the nature of the settlement they are from.
BUILD INDUSTRIES
Producing, processing, transporting, assembling, and manufacturing goods and weapons are beats that keep Europa going. While skyfaring, freelancing, and privateering could earn a ship captain a good fortune; supporting and arming a fleet would require other kinds of ingenuity.
NORSK: Epistle
Definitely a worthy purchase if you want to experience something new, especially for the price. Solving puzzles in different dimensions is a new concept at least for me and probably the best and most entertaining thing about this game.
– Real player with 5.6 hrs in game
BE-A Walker
Be warned, im gonna include a few spoilers here and there in the review, if you dont want to see them, skip this review
I saw some gameplay from a youtuber and i was immediatly attached to this game, i played the demo and had a ton of fun, even just being 2 missions, it was still very fun (but i did have my problems with the overheating, however it has been fixed with the patch so i guess it can slide) i did have my problems with the walking since it had a QWOP feeling but i learned it after a bit and slowly started to master it and it wasnt that bad to learn.
– Real player with 19.1 hrs in game
BE-A Walker is a sidescrolling re-enactment of the plot of James Cameron’s Avatar. You pilot a bipedal mech across the surface of an alien planet blasting and stomping on the natives as you go. Except you do that exact same thing…. repeatedly. For the whole game.
This game is definitely fun for a bit, but every mission is pretty much the same, broken up occasionally with a ‘walk through the base without stepping on the blind scientists’ mission or ‘walk through a minefield’ mission, which mostly just slow the game down, without improving it much.
– Real player with 16.0 hrs in game
DARK FACETS
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
This game is, thus, just about perfect.
It feels like one of those tower defense games from a dozen years ago, or maybe one of those games from the eighties where the ideas of the writers far exceeded the capability of the gameplay and graphics (like Might and Magic: Book One), or maybe a demo that comes on the cd of a full game (fun, but it leaves you wishing for more than what the limited experience provides), or maybe that one poorly-translated foreign game with a strangely-intricate storyline you got from a garage sale twenty years ago that you wish you still had so you could explain to people why you like to pretend “funceame” is a real word.
– Real player with 13.5 hrs in game
I was expecting Dark facets to be similar to the old flash games like Age of War or Stick Wars; And it was! Only much more boring. Age of war and Stick Wars had a fairly fast play style, but dark facets is incredibly slow paced. It takes a long time for resources to gather, a long time for units to march, longer to kill enemy units, even longer for your units to chip away at an enemy building. Then they just have to move to the second building (Of five). It feels less like i’m playing a game, more like watching a series of gifs that i switch between occasionally.
– Real player with 1.3 hrs in game
AZURE DOMAIN™
_The world is dying. A shroud of heavy, toxic clouds blankets the lands, choking and killing everything underneath. In a last ditch effort to save themselves, mankind has taken to the skies. Atop floating platforms built with the latest technology, and with increased advancements in the field of air travel and transportation, humanity managed to escape its doom.
But all was not well. The once-powerful nation of Solbourne, that had united the people under the auspices of the Sun Goddess, had broken into pieces. The new nations now fight amongst each other for precious resources, and Solbourne itself has succumbed to the corrupt rule of the Solar Ecclesiarchy, almost completely usurping the mantle from the Priestess. With little hope left, the reigning Solar Priestess, Tali’dah et Sol, is secretly launching a campaign to bring the nations back into the fold. Tapping into her loyal followers, she seeks to spread a message of peace even as the world burns. But she has made little progress, and Sol, the Sun Goddess herself, is nowhere to be found.
Amidst the war and chaos of this shattered world, a new evil is brewing that threatens to erase humanity once and for all. An extermination 200 years in the making, a being known only as Ginuun is harnessing the extradimensional powers of the fabled Outsiders, entities that transcend life and death, to carry out global extinction. His targets are the floating platforms that are humanity’s lifeline, and one such platform in the far corner of the world, New Horizons, will be the first to meet that fate._
The game’s primary focus will be a single player campaign. You will follow the story of Marcus as he fights to bring together the people of the world. Along the way you will explore the world of Azure Domain freely to unlock many addition areas with side quests and stories rich with lore.
Gameplay consists mainly of dogfighting in aerial combat to defeat the enemies of humanity. Gearing up and properly fitting your aircraft for the mission at hand is crucial for your success. There are currently 6 different aircraft in the game to unlock with more planned in the future. During the pre-mission briefing you can equip your aircraft with different weapons and modules to change the tides of battle in your favor.
Once in the mission area, the player will have to think both short-term tactical and long-term strategic. A large portion of the combat will be enemy fighters that are fast and agile keeping you on your toes. While in areial combat with these fighters, you will also have to attack a variety of highly defended strategic targets, such as massive airships and overcome the defenses of heavily defended city-platforms.
As you dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge in the air, you will also have to manage your AI wingmen who are sworn to protect you. You can direct them to protect you in a defensive formation, attack a selected target, escort the player, use abilities and more; all to manage their battlefield presence. If poorly managed the player may become overwhelmed and defeated. But if managed properly your squad can become a dominating fighting force on the battlefield.
Join us on Discord!
No Place for the Dissident
While I am recommending this, I would highly suggest you wait for a sale or until the price lowers. It’s not a bad game and has some cool mechanics, but it isn’t something that’s worth $20 unless you really think It’ll scratch a niche you have. While sometimes fun, it needs more polish to be worth the price it’s asking for, at least in my opinion. Here’s a bullet point review:
The Good:
- Ideology spreads through points on the map that interact with each other instead of having each country just be a tap made up of abstract numbers. They even have different population densities. Looking at waves of orange overflow a country is somewhat neat to look at.
– Real player with 17.0 hrs in game
It’s okay. It will be better if they add more features and streamline the actions for smaller countries. Otherwise it will remain more tedious than fun.
It could be really cool if they keep updating it.
– Real player with 5.5 hrs in game
Be the Ruler: Britannia
Gameplay
In this game, it’s up to you to create your own story. Be the Ruler is an RPG in which the player takes on the role of a king and leads his dynasty through the ages. Every decision has its implications in the living world. Similar events can have dramatically different consequences. What kind of king you are determines what you can do in the world. Whether you prefer diplomacy, intrigue, conquest - it’s up to you.
Living World
To make Be the Ruler a true Choose-Your-Own-Adventure game, we built a living world where events happen regardless of your decisions. Your actions can influence them - often in unexpected ways. The elements of a living world consist of:
-
Randomly created nobles and other NPCs before the start of each game, with different attributes affecting their actions. Noblemen will marry, build their dynasties, and have their own goals. How you respond to them (or not) will determine the consequences of your actions.
-
Other kings have their own policies - conquests, alliances, state expansion.
-
You have unique relationships with each character in the game. These relationships are affected by your history, as well as how you relate to a particular group (i.e. nobility, priesthood, family).
-
If you choose to take action, the consequences will be felt in every aspect of the game - your resources, your relationships, the consequences of your decisions, the options available to you.
You, as king and as dynasty - create your own history in the medieval era.
Features
-
Start a family and create a dynasty - raise your descendants. Beware of your siblings, who are waiting to trip you up. Beware of romance.
-
Manage an early medieval kingdom based on personal relationships with your vassals. Solve their problems, judge them, punish them. Build relationships based on trust or power.
-
Create alliances, conquer provinces.
World
Welcome to the world of early medieval England. Many small kingdoms, which were formed on the ruins of the Roman Empire and the migration of the Saxons to Britain. You will be the king of one of them - Wessex. There are many castles to visit and conquer, towns which will pay you tributes. Mines that give you currency and farms that supply you with grain.