The Bloodline

The overworld system is a neat idea that doesn't land well.

Some of the menus are a bit cumbersome to navigate. Stuff doesn't close from the button it opens from etc.

I feel like if this game would have played like Muck, it would have been amazing.

The moment I accidentally cast an ice trap onto a wall instead of the ground and it knocked a goblin boss into another ice trap that threw him in the air where he landed on a third ice trap that flung his corpse to my feet... that was the moment I knew it was love. It's janky, greasy, sludge-love in a pit of used needles, but, really, how can love be anything else?
Single developer (probably not maidenless, I meant just one person making it). That means progress can be slow. The game may never be finished, but what's here is stupid-fun. And in my mind, that's all a guy needs to ragdoll down next to the goblin corpse and do what comes natural.

In 2 hours this game proved to be so much fun from a pure gameplay standpoint.

Melee combat is akin to Vermintide / Darktide in terms of needing to carefully aiming your attacks to make sure they hit the right areas.
Movement is cracked because you can legit wall run and wall jump as if you were playing Titanfall 2, on top of being able to climp up walls BOTW style.

The game is composed of an overworld like Mount and Blade. Random encounters and events, you can set down camps on specific spots to generate a random open area for you so Overworld is mostly a mean of traversal to different places and POIs.

Don't even get me started on the Runescape-esque skill system.
You can level up running, jumping, RAGDOLLING???? as well as the usual stuff like mining, fishing, cooking, weapon proficiency, magic proficiency, etc.

You get the point.

Game's a bunch of cool ideas and concepts that are proven to be fun by other games but everything blends cohesively in a genuniely fun experience.
Oh yeah, you can run your own village so if you like making buildings and decorating you can do that too and depending of how you build your village you get different types of visitors (ex.: graves and tombs may attract necromancers, for example).

In short, in just two hours the game showed how deep it is and the amount of potential available to you. From the variety of weapons, school of magic and the different life skills you can level, there is A LOT to do in this game at face value.

It's just fun!

I recommend this game. Some features are still not in the game and it has a good number of bugs, but once the bugs are ironed out and the features that are planned are fully implemented, I believe this will be a really fun game. I enjoyed the bit of time I spent in it, but felt it was a too buggy and the missing features made me decide to wait till 1.0 to try again.

1. Cities or areas with lots going on were always laggy on a 4070ti
2. The mouse speed seemed to almost change on it's own in different areas
3. Once, I went into a menu and tried to go back out, but the menu would not go away and I could only look left or right

Just a few of the bugs I found, but there were many more. Also, Necro has many abilities/spells, but no other class is fleshed out even near as well. One class has three abilities. Hopefully this changes by the full release.

I see this game as a really exciting Open World RPG-Sandbox. It has some moments where I just stop and think to myself - "woah, there is not another game in a world where I could pull THIS off!!"
For me personally it's all about combat system in the games of this genre. In this game combat sometimes feels unbelievably good, sometimes, however, it feels tad lacking. And a lot of that has to do with the fact how skill trees are not balanced at all. Some skills/masteries are quite developed, some appear to be just placeholders for the stuff to come in the future - thats the case in v0.9, at least.
Everything else is amazing, though! I enjoy the size of an open world, the freedom to do quests in whatever order, even grinding and resource collecting feels decent. Locations are quite lovely, crafting system is okay. And - arguably - the best part about this game is that it's still in development by a very friendly developer who engages in community and listens to the feedback of players. I'm glad I supported this project and am really looking forward to see what comes out of it in the end.

Peak game. Never remove the flying bunnies w/ grappling hook. Good open world experience +rep.

I joined the early acces and tried it the first time about a year ago. It has a realy solid foundation. I love the crafting, gathering, spell, skill and combat system. It is so good that I wish the developer would work faster or with a larger team. There are still a lot of empty houses and villages where you feel "here will be something interessting". But it is not there yet. Despite having the first kindgom not finished thw work on jindom 3 (?) has already started. I wish he would have concentrated on the first kindom. I am sooo willing to pay for further kindoms in later expansions... I realy am.

Original review:

After In 30 min of gameplay, the game crashed 3 times.
I notify the developer via their support form.
I will come back to this game later and update this review after a few updates but it is un-playable for me as of today.

Update:

After testing many settings, I found a stable configuration using Window mode instead of full screen (and many other settings change, I have no idea what solved it)

The game is now playable and didn't crash so much since a few hours, it still crash a few times though.

If you are not ready for a LOT of jank, do not buy this yet. However, it has a lot of potential if the dev ever fix all of this.

There are a handful of games in this mortal world that love the player, want them to be there and cherish their existence, enriching it with fun and a warm blanket of solid balanced gameplay. THIS is one of them. Buy and play this, no matter the cost.

Underrated. Highly recommended. The gameplay feels like Skyrim meets World of Warcraft (So, ESO, maybe?). But it's worth playing!

I hadn't played this game in a long while, so I figured I'd check it out again and see how much it has improved. This is what I encountered...

The tutorial instructions got stuck on my screen after the second one. This seems to happen if you do anything other than what it says to do, when it says to do it.

I also managed to break the functionality of the grapple feature multiple times before even leaving the bedroom you spawn in--just by using it. I decided to move on.

I walked down the stairs to the library on the next floor to *try* and learn Cryomancy and Pyromancy. I emphasize the word "try" here because when the books weren't glitched and I could actually let go of them, they would often fly across the room as if some poltergeist was playing a cruel joke on me. No, I wasn't throwing them. The physics in general seem to be having a seizure at all times. Basic functions like sitting in a chair caused my character to vibrate uncontrollably and random objects would fly around the room or fall from the sky, especially when loading the game. I kid you not, something flies out of the castle and falls from the sky during the intro. sequence after starting a new game, every single time.

Because of all of these bugs, I quickly reacquainted myself with the saved game system. It was then that I once again realized that there is an autosave feature that can't be disabled. Some people may find this helpful, but when a game is this buggy, you need to be able to trust the integrity of your saved game files. If you don't want the autosave constantly overwriting your saved game with all of the buggy things that are bound to happen, then the workaround is that you have to save twice in a row. Neat, huh? They should separate autosaves from manual saves, like in other games, or allow us to disable the autosave feature entirely.

I'm no stranger to indie games or small, even one-person development teams, but for a game that has received so many positive Steam reviews, this one is in really rough shape. Not just quirky rough, but unplayable rough. I honestly feel like this game was in a more playable state last year. The last time I played, I progressed pretty far before I decided it needed to cook longer. This time, I barely made it out of the room you spawn in before I uninstalled. Maybe it will be in a better place next year? I certainly hope so!

game kinda sucks. people compare it to skyrim and its not even close....

Honestly wasn't expecting to much from this but it gets really addicting really fast. Has a bit of a tricky so start by talking to everyone in the castle for some good quest to get you into the mechanics of the game, just wish there was either a faster was to gather resources or just more abundance of different type's in the zone and closer to gather in like stacks or groups hate checking a whole zone for a single resource i need other than i really love this game witch broom mount dragon you can fly (a bit wonky but still fun) crazy secrets and dope spell and weapon ability's rare weapons grapple hook this is your world play how u want 9/10

I've been following this game's creation for like 5 years now on Twitter and I'm just so hyped to be able to actually play it. It is insanely impressive how much work one developer has put into this game and to see how far it's come and how much they still have planned to go. This game is great not just because of its small team though, it's just a legit fun game.

Mechanics feel great, but the game is not truly open-world. Watching the trailer makes you believe you can just go across the map, but nah, you pick an area to camp from an "overworld" map (which admittedly is cooler for fast travel, but other open-world RPGs already do a similar thing AND have free-roaming), it loads, and some elements on it change. I wish I could just hop on my donkey and ride straight for the steps, but no, you have to open a menu, loading screen, click on the map, wait, click camp, loading screen, and then you're given a decent-sized chunk to explore. This loading in the middle is entirely immersion breaking for me and why I cannot recommend it if you just want a Skyrim-style power fantasy. You can get powerful from what I can see, and it's a shame about this worse-than-Morrowind loading, because the combat is genuinely fun. I love the throwing hatchet. I also like the movement, climbing and wall running is a huge plus. I just wish I could go from one side of the map to the other without a single loading screen.

I have played this game for awhile now, and I have to tell you this off the bat. I absolutely love the skills in this game. I think this dev is very innovative with the skill set you get. You aren't "ANY" cookie cutter class. You have skill points, and you can use these in ANY skill tree. If you decide you don't like a skill you picked? Unselect that skill. That's right, you don't need to respec, you don't need to do anything complicated. Summoning? Got it in spades. Melee, Ranged, got lots of that too. And if you like spells, you'll drown in them.

Hows the gameplay? It's easy to pickup, has multiple toolbars, and you can learn combat very easily. I love the exploring, as well. You click on where you want to go on an overhead map. And then it takes you to an area you can camp at, and explore. Speaking of exploring, there are hidden weapons all over the place in this game. It rewards the curious.

You begin with a castle, pretty nifty. But you also get the town outside of it to build, upgrade, and use for your own restocking as well.

Look, you can see my reviews. I rarely leave them, so when I do trust me. Get this game if you want something different, fun, and creative.

The game is simple, but very in depth. I am having more fun with this than I did Valheim or Enshrouded which felt like having a second job rather than a game. I am able to use cool magical powers within 30 minutes of starting the game. There is an overworld map like Mount and Blade and you can interact with hotspots around the area. It is worth the purchase if you want a non-sweaty action RPG game.

I regret listening to people who endorsed this game on reddit or steam reviews. When I look at the subreddit, the top 100 posts are all from the dev. Advertising and selling an unfinished product. I probably read some grassroot advertising from those "game recommendations like Skyrim" posts.

The game is full of promises. It tries to be like Morrowind or Skyrim, but it feels more like a Lego Starwars grind. Lots of little grindy quests, grindy resources, and item bloat. My quick consumables menu has potions at the very bottom, after scrolling two pages. My game gets a memory overflow if I smelt ~100 iron all at once. Every new area is exciting until you realize that the dev can't even finish a single questline. The quest for the tomb of the betrayer just ends. The dev doesn't know how to make a boss so it just cuts you off at 4/5 quest complete. The quest makes you question if you checked everywhere but it just stopped getting worked on at that point. The crag and Eldgrin woods are the most feature complete areas. The starting area's map encounters are the most diverse, and exploring further does not get you any new encounters. The skill trees are not trees. Just get to level 5 in the skill and you can unlock 80% of the spells. There are almost no passive skills other than '15% more damage for 1/2 of the spell school's attacks.' I thought the hog riders were a cool encounter until they decided to run off the map.

The game has a heavy coat of makeup & spectacle, and the dev will likely continue making more spectacles before finishing any of them. I would feel better if I heard that a proper team was working on it for a year at least.

Wooo what an interesting mash up of games from my past!

Surprising finds... the movement is sick

Phenomenal game with great bones, but I can't recommend buying the game if you are sensitive to sensitivity issues.

The game seems to tie sensitivity to frame rate, so you get wild swings in camera sensitivity depending on the area of the game you are in. This makes doing any kind of precision gameplay nearly impossible, such as reliably aiming ranged weapons or flicking your grappling hook target from building to building (which is a HUGE shame because this is the best Spiderman game I've ever played LOL).

I've spoken to the dev who can't seem to isolate this issue, so I don't see a fix coming any time soon.

I really hope this developer continues along this path as it is VERY impressive for one persons work - if he does it will turn out to be a success like Subnautica was

Amazing little adventure with a tonne of content as is and he seems to be working on it diligently

Keep up the good work!!!

I honestly WISH I could love this game, I try to every single time, but after a year of owning it and being on the Discord server, I feel like our developer cares more about the praise of the creative direction and the potential of the game than the game itself.

Some skill trees are 90% fleshed out, like Necromancy, with over 20 skills. Some like Aeromancy only have 3. It's not an issue that you're dropping an incomplete game, but maybe don't introduce new skills and weapons if they don't have as much depth as the ones you've fleshed out as it makes the game feel half-hearted?

The questing is fun, and the endless wandering akin to the Mount & Blade overworld leaves you with stuff to do. Monotonous goblins and bandits to kill in various cool ways. But that's it. The actual main quest is half-cooked, the town building is practically raw, and your purpose is pretty meaningless.

Give it another couple months in the oven. Don't buy it on EA.

this game has potential for sure,i do ask why some of the skill art does not really fit the weapon,but eh,games interesting maybe this game will one day have voice acting and such,that would be nice

A very pleasant surprise. Even tho the game is in early development, its very fun to play. Solid quests and good combat, a lot of ways to play the game.

It is of course buggy, which is expected from the start of the game. But still very fun.

There is potential here, a true hidden gem.

If I said "Throw Billy Mays and the aimlessness of Mount & Blade together.", would you understand what I meant by that?
Probably not, so let me do it step by step first.

...But I'm not done yet!

It'd be one thing if every feature and sub-aspect of a mechanic was ankle deep or a placeholder. It's an early sign of feature creep, and The Bloodline seems to be a bit guilty of it.

...except that they're not ankle deep, they're quite well fleshed out, even if they're not quite finished yet.
Man, where to start...

Look ma, all hands!

There's this saying I love, "No game was ever made worse for having a grappling hook."
Shieldbearer Studios said "Hold my beer." and put more than that in their game. Hell, let's make a list.

You get, out of the box, unless mentioned otherwise:

1. Grappling hook
   
2. ...Which can be used to joink down enemies if they're airborne
   
3. Wallclimbing, breath of the wild style
   
4. Infinite walljumps (stamina gated)
   
5. Wallrunning
   
6. Boosted walljump off of a wallrun
   
7. Backflips (found in the unarmed skilltree)
   
8. Crafted Boots for a charged jump
   
9. Crafted Boots to hover in the air with
   
10. Ragdoll button
    
11. Ragdolling when fall damage will be severe
    
12. Story unlocked activated cloud skill to BREAK said fall damage
    
13. Unlockable giant rabbit mount that zips across the land and jumps super high
    
14. ...from which you can Yoshi jump as well!
    
15. A placeable zipline!
    

Why is this in the game? It breaks the immersion and style of the game's atmosphere but it's so damn fun!

Eat your heart out, Fallout 4

I can't believe The Bloodline beat Bethesda to having a basebuilder in their fantasy game. What, next TES taking forever just to turn out mediocre and buggy anyway?

• Prop placement that adds to a village exp (dunno what that does yet) and it's theme, which will influence what visitors you get
  
• Placement of these in the overworld too, but won't stay permanently. Mainly for bedrolls and other emergencies.
  
• Lots for placing specific buildings that benefit your village, like a Brewery, Mage Tower, Smith and the like
  
• A resource system for all of this, requiring resources you need to find, though some buildings will generate certain common resources (like ores and random wood types) every day.
  
• No inventory weight limit, and the stack limit sits at like a thousand I think.
  

Yeah, that's right, no inventory limit! Were it not for how much crap you run into, it'd almost feel broken. But no, in this case? It'd seriously just get in the way. Who wants to inventory manage when there's so much else to experience in this game?

Eat your heart out, uhhh... Oblivion? Skyrim?

In the TES games, every school has a handful of spells that have varying grades of strength per type. Fire projectile gets stronger versions, healing spells do healing different between their versions, etc...

So, in the Bloodline? The elements and the schools each get their skill tree (more like proficiency level locked, separated in three-four tiers) with about ten-fifteen minimum each. And they're all mechanically different.
I'm just gonna try and be conscise on these, but please understand, there's a massive amount of skills just per school alone.

Melee

• One-handed/Two-Handed/Daggers/Staves/Spears/Halberds(coming soon)/Shields/Unarmed
  
• Skills that range from swinging styles for extra damage
  
• To fancy finishers, prayers for self buffs, immobilizing, crowd control, dashes/mobility focused.
  
• ...EACH. Unique and different from the separated schools, with special ones fitting for the school itself (Unarmed has lots of fun ones)
  

Ranged

• Flintlock pistols/rifles, Bows/Crossbows
  
• Largely WIP, but has a high variety DoTs
  
• Still has some fancy skills in there though
  

Magic

The real créme de la créme.

• Pyromancy, Electromancy, Geomancy, Necromancy, Cryomancy, Aeromancy(very WIP), Arcane, Druidism, Blood Magic, Vampirism, (Corruption & Thaumaturgy coming soon)
  
• Yes, every discipline has at least ten skills if it's not WIP, and they majorly differ between one another. From straight up damage projectiles to CC, to manipulation, to debuffing, to movement/teleportation, to... It's just so much, SO MUCH.
  

Tech + Etc.

• Gadgets are simple, from a zipline to a hip-lantern. Rather simple, for now at least.
  
[*]Lute. Yes, a lute. Usage varies between either using it to entertain NPCs, to function as a practical Hunting Horn from Monster Hunter with buffs and spells. Though you can't swing it, yet.

It cannot be understated how much variety and choice you have in all these trees. And all you need to get started is to invest a skill point in the tree, which can be reclaimed at a single mouse click, and start using the skills to unlock the skills that are gated off at higher skill levels.
Maybe use the right weapon in case of Melee/Ranged, but there's a lot cross-pollination use in the Melee category, such as mobility focused ones or throws or grapples or CC and what have you. So in theory you can level one-handed by using its skill while wielding a two-handed weapon. Not every skill lets you, but lots of them do.

I would call this feature creep, except it's already largely been developed. It's IN the game!

I know where to go, but I'm still lost

The overworld is very reminiscent of Mount & Blade's overworld, both in size and travel. However, what's impressive though is that the overworld is also broken up in area 'circles' of sorts.
If you put down your camp in one of them, you can go freely explore them. And frankly? For how vast they are, there's lots of hand placed locations and dungeon entrances within them. From broken down castles to vistas to broken down villages to... I could keep going. Not everything placed has a purpose, so far at least, but it's anything but plain.
Cities, towns and villages themselves are richly decorated, complete with building interiors, and vastly populated with merchants, normal quest givers and random NPCs, who can also hand out radiant quests if you explicitely ask them.

Due to the main quest being unfinished, you'll most likely feel aimless most of the time. Pick up a quest, go to A, fight/obtain/talk to B, turn in quest. Most of the quests don't really tie into one another, as they're handed out by different NPCs each, so you're less working towards a goal, and more keeping yourself busy as some sort of polyvalent mercenary.

I fear for the future, but I had a good time today

The threat of feature creep, the massive scope and the sheer potential (both in promise and practice) leads to a sense of fear. Fear that this may be a game that might very well never get finished. Yet, for how unfinished it is, I spent most of my seventeen hours (at time of writing) just exploring and experiencing the game. There's definitely no shortage of things to do and skills to explore. Some of them get really crazy, so just unlocking them after working its discipline is already exciting.

One valid criticism is the AI voices. In fact, their usage is odd, as most text box conversations have simlish babble voiced for them, but walking around in the city has you hear regular old English AI that are about average in quality and rather dull in what they're saying. Again, with this game's scope, I can see the 'why', but if text box convos are in banjo kazooie grunts anyway, why not commit to that?

So yeah, you might be worried you're not getting a full game if you buy this. But if you're someone who loves a huge variety of spells and skills and toys and what have you, you're going to spend at least ten hours just experiencing for yourself what this early access title has in store already. And man, I'm gonna be honest, it's pretty great.

This is a fantastic single-player indie RPG that completely took me by surprise. The character customization is top-notch—with a wide range of skills and abilities, you're truly free to shape your hero however you want. Whether you prefer brute strength, stealth, magic, or a hybrid of all three, the game lets you play your way without restrictions.

It reminds me a lot of Mount & Blade, but with a much stronger fantasy vibe. The world is immersive, the progression feels rewarding, and the combat has real weight to it. You can tell a lot of care went into building this experience.

I really hope the developer keeps going with this project—it’s already amazing, and with continued updates, it could be something truly special. Highly recommend this one if you're into deep, open-ended RPGs with a personal touch.

Really good Game! Lots to do already and the vision is there! Excited to see where this goes. There are lag spikes but ive found saving, exit and reload the save works on fixing it.

I find this game to be quite amazing. The amount of things you can do and places of interest you find while exploring is mind boggling. I can spend literal hours just exploring every inch of a single map location. Random encounter areas are much smaller but I can even spend an hour or 2 after wiping out an undead horde just gathering up all the resources in the area. Or I can use an "Attract Undead" potion to fight more if I wanted to.

I find all kinds of things in unexpected places. Shrines, caves, just strange and wonderful things I cant even describe. Even random encounters can have random content inside them, though they are rare. Some are puzzles, some are just random events like a dwarven airship crashing near you and dropping crates of rare items all around.

Lots of ruins and castles and towers etc to explore and actually find unique items. You literally cannot leave any stone unturned because there might be some (Hand placed unique) epic weapon or spellbook to find, or just uncommon resources that are hard to find. I just recently came across some big magic tree deep in the woods that had some massive shiny sparkly druid weapon trapped in stone but I couldnt touch it because I wasnt a druid. Awesome cool stuff like that can be found all over the world. I climbed to the tallest roof in a castle ruin and found some hidden sparkly thing at the top. Now I have to climb to the top of every roof and tower just to see what might be up there.

You start the game in a run down castle, and the main story seems to be about restoring your family former power and glory and there is a village beside your castle that is in ruins and you can rebuild it. I think the main story ultimately is about you getting strong enough to take on some ancient enemies from another dimension or something that is tied to your "bloodline" The game only drops hints and clues of your ultimate destiny. It is in early access and the game still has much to be added. A single person is developing this game so it could be quite some time til its full release, but what the game offers now is enough to suck up all your freetime for days on end.

Its EA so yea the game has some bugs and unfinished mechanics. That might bother some people, but if it does, just wishlist and wait for release. But really this game is more stable and polished in its current state than several fully released and finished games I played before.

Ive played the game for a few days now and around 50+ hours and only barely scratched the surface. I could see myself spending a few thousand hours on just 1 playthrough.

Excellent combat, story, mechanics, and world design! I cannot wait to see the fully complete game!

Pros:
- Combat is super fun. So many skills to play around with. Super fun to come up with good combos and strats. Could just kill gobbo's for hours.
- The world is actually really cool! Especially the desert. Great vibes, impressive cities. Lots of random tombs and mini puzzles to unlock.

Meh:
- Graphics aren't really my style, personally, but they're good enough and don't ravage my 10+ yo comp.
- Story and NPC interactions are alright. Not super engaging, but enough to keep you killing gobbo hordes.

Cons:
- Not very challenging. This game's biggest strength is all the different skills and builds you could make. As much as I WANT to craft a super awesome build, there's not really a difficult enemy or horde to serve as an ultimate GOAL of said build - at least that I've found in ~20 levels/30 hours.
- Bit buggy still, but nothing gamebreaking. Just minor annoyances.

I like this game! Very smooth for a one man show running it. I like the overworld map travel idea and that you can build up the village outside your castle. I am looking forward to when this game is fully finished, bound to be a hit.

I bought this game in 2023. It now contains AI slop NPC voices that completely pull me out of the game even if AI "art" wasn't the lamest shit on Earth. Steam somehow lets it scrape by without disclosing that, but it's in there. My refund request was rejected, but I still want the stink of its pathetically-low-effort AI "voice acting" out of my ears and my steam library.

It's crazy because NPCs used to make these little gibberish noises (and they sometimes still do, playing simultaneously with the AI slop, lol) that I actually found charming.

If you like passion projects that clearly have a lot of love put into every aspect of them, look elsewhere.

Updates are slow and rarely update important mechanics, content, etc. It seems every update is fluff that isnt very important in my opinion. I will come back in a year and see if anything has changed, the last two times I havent been able to tell anything is different.

"Large ocean as deep as a puddle" - The game.

There's many things introduced to game mechanics, but nothing is fleshed out and the content is very barren, but at least the maps are large.

Fuck. There is definitely something to this game, but it's just not playable yet.

It is a really fun game, there are plenty of classes and different skills you can choose from to better fit your gameplay, and a lot of movement mechanics that are fun to play with. The bad thing about this game is the amount of bugs you will encounter, most of them related to the camera and map. Also, after playing for a while I get frame drops and it gets impossible to play.

Overall an amazing game with a lot of potential but it's gonna take a while (probably more than 1 year) before it gets out of Early Access, but it is still worth giving it a try.

this game frocking slaps

- movement tech - slide cancel into a wallrun in a fantasy rpg? hell yeah alert
- less common rpg character archetypes like bard, druid, blood magic, etc
- weapons feel weighty and satisfying
- mount and blade warband meets elder scrolls type beat
- bangin soundtrack
- big map with more areas being added while the game is being developed

still a bit rough around the edges but it is early access of course

big fan

Having an absolute blast with this little gem. Despite being in EA, and having the already mentioned bugs, it's just damn fun to play. You can literally go anywhere and do anything you want. There's lots of quests to complete, reputation to gain, a story to follow (if you wish), tons of gathering, crafting, building (kinda), much more exploring than I expected from the other reviews, puzzles to solve, dungeons to delve, research to do, and mysteries to solve. The skill system is fun to level up, but is pretty shallow at this point - and the skill hotbar really needs to be expanded to 10 per page, as 5 is simply not adequate once you get above lvl 10. If you are looking to have fun on a budget I highly suggest you buy this game. Or, you can spend $60 on one of today's supposed "AAA" titles and just get pissed when they fail to deliver like most of them have in the last 12 months.

Great freedom and ability to change builds as you see fit. Can't wait for it to be finished.

Recommended with caveats:
- This game was created by a solo developer. What they've accomplished is absolutely impressive.
- The game is incredibly ambitious. The dev took all the coolest aspects of his favorite action/adventure RPGs, and found a place for them.
- It's $20 full price, $10 on sale, and in early access.
- The framework is there, but the world is incredibly empty. Huge, breathtaking cities, with enormous, empty rooms.
- Much of the game is utterly... generic. You're a chosen one hero, who is explicitly told they must save the world... whenever they get around to it. The guilds are comprised of radiant quests (kill x number of enemies of x type, mostly).
- There's a fantastic skill tree with all sorts of different magic and melee branches. Very diverse. Lots of great options.
- There is a good diversity of enemies, each with their own tactics, moves, and attacks.
- There's a decent amount of lore, and some incredibly imaginative places.

I wish the dev all the best in their efforts. But they've undertaken a massive project here, and I remain more hopeful than optimistic.

First things first, yes the game has bugs and a lot of content is incomplete. However, to be frank, if you consider that a legitimate issue when the game and store page are so open about said facts, that's kinda on you in my opinion.

Anyways, the game is good and kinda hard to describe so I'll just state some "good game" thoughts I had while playing and leave it at that. Any complaint I could have is easily explained by it's EA status and the small/solo dev team so I won't even mention them.

I think the thing I noticed most was a constant focus on fun. Moving around is fun, combat is fun and dynamic, spells can be combined in interesting ways (I combined wind magic and druid magic for quick travel. Updraft to launch me into the air and then transforming into a raven to fly over the map. Just for example.) Even resource gathering, while still tedious by nature of being resource gathering, is made fun by it being more active than just pressing a key and an animation plays. If you like getting a cup of coffee and then cutting down 300 trees in Valheim or Conan or any other resource gathering game, you'll love this.

It also has a lot of replayability on the Role Play side. If, like me, you like to play Skyrim or Oblivion once a year and come up with a character and a backstory and explore the games that way, again this game has a lot for you. In the process of my Druid playthrough I've already planned a Necromancer and a Paladin run later (these seem to be some of the more complete builds in the game so far.)

All in all, the game has some of the best bones I've seen in a very long time for a game like this and I can't really find that many faults. Very much looking forward to where this one goes and will likely have several hundred hours in it over the next few years.

Honestly, its been an absolute blast so far. Between absolutely launching goblins in the air, getting absolutely ragdolled by your poor broom driving skills, and the way mundane tasks are engaging this game is a lot of fun. looking forward to playing it more

It's not the kind of open world you are probably thinking of.

The overworld map is a top down view hub with some random encounter system bolted on. It's slightly more in depth than selecting the disconnected instanced areas from a menu, and the absolute bare minimum to secure an "open world" tag, I guess.

The fact that this part of the game is completely omitted from the storefront here is suspicious to me. It might be an okay game in spite of it, but it's not what I was under the impression I was getting, nor was I in the market for.

Refunded.

its a good game but missing human recruits rather than training up birds and undead recruiting actual people would be good to work for your stronghold would be better but this is just my oppion, ,,

the game is good feels sorta lonely as you travel the world and you only person on the roads. it feels more like war band mixed with elder scrolls.

I actually really enjoyed my time with this game, I like the movement, How open the world is (even if most of it is empty) and the ability to level up all of my skills without much restriction. However keeping an eye on this game since I've last played it all the updates seem sporadic not in terms of cadence but content. The updates feel like they have no focus, none of them pushing the game forward just sideways, like they're just adding things that seem cool or whimsical without having a vision of how they want the game to be when its out of Early Access.

I hope they find a vision for this game because the foundation gives this game so much potential but as of now it feels like they're squandering it along with all the goodwill they've earned.

Despite of being a 1 man Dev, I'm not gonna lie it has a potential. However, This is more interesting if you can play with your friends. for now I'm just gonna wait if the Dev will add coop or lan gameplay.

very good potential. hoping to see it have original ideas and not become a cookie cutter RPG

A game that puts fun before everything else. This game has the balls modern RPGs WISH they could have.

really fun game to just kill time grind materials and just do whatever you want i think this would do great with mod support

If you like the idea of a giant sandbox for your not-so-serious open world fantasy RPG, then this will be the place to be. Eventually. Probably. The foundation of The Bloodline is solid, and the potential is massive.

The skill system is great, there are no "classes" as such, just a wide variety of skills to pick and choose whatever play-style tickles your fancy. Equipment choices are similarly unrestricted. So you can play as your favourite fantasy trope character, or mix together whatever fist-fighting, fireball-slinging, flintlock rifle-wielding, priestly vampire blood-mage bard-in-their-underwear your imagination comes up with.

Then after a brief introduction you are cast into the wide world to do whatever you wish. Go on an epic quest, help a bunch of villagers, or go on a murder spree. Mine some ores, chop some trees and build yourself an arsenal of weapons. Or build a peaceful little village of crop-farming necromancers. Or all of the above.

BUT.

It's a big but for a reason. As of writing, many of these systems are unfinished, unbalanced, missing, buggy, or all of the above. It's early access, and it shows in many areas. Parts of the map that look interesting will be empty, or labelled as work in progress when you get there. Many of the skill trees are yet to be fleshed out. Quests will break or straight up be labelled as WIP. Much of the village building aspect is still "coming soon". You might fall through the map in places, the game might crash, or brick your save (make backups!).

In spite of this, The Bloodline is a ton of fun. Even in its current state I've had a blast, and keep coming back for more. Worth the price as is, and still actively improving. Definitely recommend to support ongoing development.