Alder's Blood: Definitive Edition

Great concepts, great art, not perfectly executed. I love the many combat mechanics at play here. I like how there are many stats and ways to customize your characters, including voice, though the stats seem a bit unnecessarily bloated (for example, the 10 stamina = 1 bar, and 5=1/2 bar). The UI could use some polishing - sadly that probably won't happen now. I understand its supposed to be difficult, some of the challenge just seems like arbitrary limitation. For example, why start on the hunter you ended your turn with? This hunter has to move around the others if they are grouped, reducing their movement range, and so I have to select another one. Why are they able to use healing items at full health? And why are they able to attack thin air? I've played for only 3 hours, and already seen an invincible bat swarm (thankfully, not aggressive), which raised that question. Why does removing a charm destroy it? So many mysteries yet to discover...

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I'm truly sorry because I TRIED to like this game and I started playing it with cure and precision since I read it was an hard, unforgiving game, and it is (for the wrong reasons, but nevermind), but the problem isn't even that.

The game is not only poorly balanced, but is INFESTED with bugs, bugs of the worst kind: menus disappearing, icons becoming unclickable and top-of-all the game freezed to the point I had to hard-shut-down my PC, losing my progresses, after I had tried tabbing, alt+F4 and even ctrl alt canc without any response.

Maybe I will follow some gameplay on YouTube, the story seems amazing but that's not enough to punish myself like this.

I am truly, truly sorry, but playing this game is like seeing the screenplay of a Kubrick's movie directed by Michael Bay.

The concept's good. But do not be fooled, this game is far, very very very far from a completed project.
First 3hs or so work about alright tho.
DO NOT BUY THIS GAME

Sooooo many bugs...it's hard to tell what is supposed to work and what isn't sometimes. It seems like a good game and to a certain extant it is playable but barely. It might just be resolution issues and scaling making it hard to play but when games have hidden bugs all over the place you have to wonder what else is going wrong and how would I even know if it's working properly.

I really like this game, but unfortunately I can't recommend it because of game breaking bugs. My 7 hours with the game came to an end when I reached a fight where no matter what I did, the enemy would not act on their turn. I also encountered another game breaking bug before that where I was unable to change the weapons on my party. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like the developers are releasing updates any longer either. It’s a shame, because the stealth tactics game play is great and the art style is beautiful, and the story is well written. I got the game on sale, but I can’t even recommend it for 75% off. Chances are, you won’t be able to finish the game.

"Alders Blood" has a very interesting premise and setting: A grimdark victorian-era post-apocalypse, in which god has died and its death caused a vile corruption that seeps through the land.

You play as a bandleader of outcast hunters - hunters with supernatural abilities that help them battling the numerous beasts romaing the land but make them also susceptible to corruption itself. The gameplay revolves around the overworld travels of your misfit band, meeting the numerous factions, gathering resources, supplies and tools and pursuing quests -and the turn based top-down hex-based tactical squad missions, which are often stealth oriented: Positioning is key here, for your hunters are outnumbered most of the time.
The game has an elaborate mechanic revolving around sound and smell: You can distract foes by tossing stones around the map, but watch out for the trails of odor following the hunters. Different equippable hunting items which can impair or distract enemies further increase your chances of survival, because when the beasts are alarmed they hit and they hit hard.

Some reviewers noted, that the leveling system is rather odd, because the more you use your hunters and the more daring you use them (by exploiting their special abilities), the more corrupted they get - up to a point, where you must sacrifice them. I found this mechanic rather refreshing, because the sacrificed character will transfer some of his expertise to another hunter, allowing a fresh cycling through the band.

So why a "thumbs down"?
The aesthetics and overall tone of "Alders Blood" is very atmospheric, the artstyle alone is a big selling point.
Unfortunately, all the good ideas gameplaywise and the immersion it creates are destroyed by still numerous and offputting bugs (like you use a stealthy melee-weapon, but the hunter-sprite attacks a darn shotgun, really questioning your sanity) and a rather janky UI. The perk system of your hunters is also quite barebones.

It is not a bad game per se, but it is really sad that it often stumbles on its own ambition, by tieing it together in a rather wonky package.

Still worth checking out, if you are up to something new in the genre and can cope with the numerous letdowns.

If you dig tactical stealth games and dark, almost Lovecraftian stories & atmospheres then this is a solid title at a reasonable price - even better if you get it on a sale. The story itself is one that I find myself intrigued by. It puts you into a post-apocalyptic world where God was once a very tangible and "loving" being, but was killed - and that act has thrown the world into Darkness. Now "Hunters" (enhanced human beings that fight monsters, very similar concept to Witchers I feel) try and solve the mystery behind everything. There isn't a lot of specific character development, as you only play a nameless Chief of a band of randomly named Hunters that have 0 personality. However the overarching plot itself is interesting enough to keep me going, personally. The game mostly presents its story in storybook fashion, even down to the sound of going through dialogue screens being that of a paper page turning. I think that's what has allowed it some forgiveness for lack of some other things.

That being said, it isn't a perfect game, and there are many times where it shows clearly as an "indie" title due to either bugs or a lack of fleshing out/polishing the story and game world. It's obvious that there wasn't a huge development team or budget behind the game, and frankly I find it acceptable despite that. So if you aren't into Indie games in general or expect AAA features then I'd wager you probably won't have the most fun.

And that's it for the gist of this review. If you want to keep reading, I'm just going to detail a couple of the potentially gamebreaking bugs that I encountered that did unfortunately hinder my appreciation for the game a little. In particular there's a good (good depending on your perspective) and a bad bug. Here they are:

Good Bug: I'll preface this by saying it's not really a bug per se, but more an exploit that basically breaks the game in your favor (and thus potentially ruining the fun though). At any time in the game you can go to the area called "Market" and in this area you can exchange your resources around for different types (i.e. turning Hunting Materials into Food or Silver or vice versa). The rates for such exchanges are egregiously high in the player's favor. You can literally buy Food from the Shop with Silver, then exchange that Food for more Silver than you bought it for, and rinse/repeat until you have infinite money/resources. TLDR it kinda defeats the purpose of most the game unfortunately since you don't need to scavenge EVER again.

Bad Bug: This one is certainly a bug, and it has to do with the Research Wagon. Along the course of the game you're given the ability to research new perks and crafting recipes for your crew - this acts like a branching tree where the better recipes are locked until you research the earlier ones. The bug is twofold; First, it will often times just not track your progress and force you to restart a research project all over which is silly. The second, which is worse, will have the game simply wipe ALL your research progress and put you back at research square one, with everything else locked in the tree again. You maintain what you'd already learned, but you have to go through the entire research tree again (repeating things you'd already researched) in order to get back to where you were. That one kinda sucks.

All that being said though? Still recommended! Bugs can be fixed eventually (hopefully), and it's got that low Indie price.

a good example of a bad indie game. It just feels so.. unfinished.
Throws a ton of mechanics on you without even trying to engage you into WHY you are interested in spending 20 hrs doing so.
Graphics are... meh. The art style is good but it is all so bare bones its painful to look at.

Overall it feels like someone read Lovecraft, played Darkest Dungeon, Bloodborne and XCOM and decided to make game. Lacking the skill and the resources to build something meaningful on the combination of these ideas.

Honestly, the amount of bugs in this drove me to leave a review, which I don't normally do - yes, it seems I am one of those. It's not great I know, and yet for a Definitive Edition.. why does this game run like a beta test?

Why does inflicting Maimed and preventing melee attacks cause enemies to freeze on their turn as they presumably freak out at being unable to engage in melee? You can just sit by and watch it be there turn endlessly because it's not like the game has seized. The AI simply won't take the turn.

Why do completed events need a game restart every 1/1.5 hrs to progress or you end up staring at the same mission screen as if it was never completed?

Why do you end your turn only to have enemies take theirs, to then get to yours again but find it automatically passes once more for good measure?

Why are the ability pics white boxes with no art, with a correct title, and PLACEHOLDER text? Take Hip-Fire for example on Repeater Pisol. It's a white box with no image, and it's tooltip and instructive text is: "asdasd" .. is this a joke? This can also be seen on the greatsword's Counter-Slash.

Play this buggy mess on Ironman and you'd not feel punished by the difficulty, you'd feel punished by the train-wreck of it's programming. It sucks to say as Alder's Blood had a really cool theme, art, and idea plus ample time to sort out what are fundamental basics, but it's been let down once again. I've requested a refund - I may get it - I may not but either way this was an utter disappointment.

There isn't enough a point getting into the complete lack of QoL - no objectives page, no clear indicator of Darkness strength, missing tooltips in the codex.. it's just awful.

This is a funky game, the art and style are top notch, but there is no substance. The missions are really lame and basically require you walk from grass patch to grass patch without being smelled. The game constantly punishes you for killing enemies, as such they are basically used like walking obstacles. doesn't work as a turn based rpg, and doesn't work as a resource management game. If you like turn based rpgs, nab Underrail or the og fallouts, if you like management, Darkest dungeon is better.

Really not much to this game. After a couple of hours playing I realized there really is no depth, and every stealth mission can be cheesed in the same fashion.

The art style is amazing but I wouldn't say it's worth picking up over.

An insanely beautiful tactical game with a heavy Bloodborne vibe but even better art direction, colorful yet horrifying — what's not to like?

The clunky and shallow combat, apparently. Or maybe it's the encounter design, as the systems do seem to be in place: you can fight, hide, avoid being tracked, attack in ranged in melee, use consumables... yet somehow none of the first encounters felt engaging at all. And when I saw the crafting treadmill as the game's meta, I decided not to bother further. The lackluster writing didn't draw mw in either.

Shame, as the art is gorgeous.

Okay so let's start with what I love about this game:

-The Art style: Amazing, really sets up the atmosphere for this game. There is very little if not nothing I would change about the way this game looks.

-The Bounty Hunter Concept: Honestly, I love games that have this "Hunter" concept with the player characters. When done right it's amazing. That being paired with this world exploration idea makes things interesting, however the exploration is not something I like about this game and I'll explain why later.

-The Combat: Combat in this game is really fun; You go in with 3 or 4 hunters (can't remember which right now, brain bad) sneaking around and picking off monsters while trying to not be noticed by other enemies. If a hunter dies they're dead forever, so there's always a pretty high risk in missions. At times it really FEELS like a hunt which is extremely important in a game like this, but this is only sometimes.

Now let's talk about what really ruins this game for me:

-Everything outside of combat: By god this game is boring as hell when you're not in combat, which is the vast majority of the time. I have about 4 hours in this game at the time of this review and I guarantee you about 2.5 of those hours are spent clicking around the menus.

The exploration is just terrible. Right off the bat you're able to go pretty much everywhere, no having to travel in order to discover locations or having any sort of obstacle blocking your way. Now this is fine when your game is an open world title, but the exploration of this game is just: Click location, watch the same 3 second cutscene, your icon moved to that location. Now the further you travel the more food it costs to reach your destination, but resource gathering is a joke. You assign people to gather in an assignment board and click a button for a day to pass, then you have resources. Nothing is stopping you from just staying in the same place collecting resources over and over again other than sheer boredom. Every once in a while your camp will be attacked but it's pretty easy to defend and it happens very rarely, especially if you have someone on watch. On top of that, you have a very mediocre crafting system that's just gathering resources and clicking craft. Dialogue can be interesting but it goes on for a long time, and it can be really shotty at times. Usually I don't care about dialogue being sub-par, but when I'm already bored to death from the constant clicking around the menus I tend to notice it a lot more.

There's also an insane lack of variety when it comes to weapons and hunters. There's like 2-3 different looks your hunters can have while in combat, each having 2-3 color variations. That and the weapons aren't that interesting either; it's either gun or melee, both working about the same as you'd expect. The combat is still fun with the weapons we have, but I would have liked something like hunter/weapon classes that make each hunter have some sort of unique role in combat like heavy or support. You can do this to an extent but really each hunter serves the same purpose despite their stats.

And I know I said I like the combat, but the missions themselves are bland as hell. Never have I gotten a single bounty type mission in this game where I have to go kill a specific target, and only once or twice did I get a mission where I had to clear an area of monsters. It's all "Reach this point," "Inspect this," "Rescue this guy," "Reach this other point," and "Reach extraction." This is incredibly disappointing considering the entire theme of this game is that you're HUNTERS, not some sort of militia. Most of the time the game even discourages you from killing monsters and wants you to just sneak around them to reach a checkpoint. I get that this is stealth based, but I'm here to kill monsters not just walk around them.

Overall I really like the idea that this game has and I was incredibly excited for its release after playing the prologue, but after playing this game for a while I'm extremely disappointed that it is nowhere near where I hoped it would be.

This review might be out of date, the developers replied to my critique in a kind and helpful fashion. I am going to replay this game again. So, this might not be representative with the release of the "Definite Edition"

With much delight, I bought Alder's Blood on release. Initially, I very much aware that this might be a game that needs more time in the oven but it looked pretty promising due to the gameplay and amazing art style. I had some very intense and long gameplay sessions which left me hooked, immersing myself into this world. With hopes of improving the game, I joined the discord, posted a bunch of bug/fixes and suggestions. Anyway, I liked this game so much that I wanted to get more involved.

Unfortunately, this game cannot be recommended and I feel like the devs have already abandoned it after release. That aside, the game is really lacking a bit of content and variety. Additionally the game is very formulaic and feels quite tedious after a while.

You assume the role of the party of hunters which hunt beasts around the world, the campaign lets you travel through a world map while collecting resources and following the main plot. Many side quests are available that improve your favor with various factions, which gives you benefits like different crafting recipes or more trading options. The story is mostly told through portraits and text delivery with very limited voice acting. Overall, I think the art really elevates this game and made this quite enjoyable to play, despite the somewhat mundane delivery. The style is very reminiscent of Bloodborne combined with a Western aesthetic and sprinkled with some Lovecraft. The universe itself is very intriguing and dark, really one of the stronger points of the game. There is some lore to be found which hints towards a greater world, following the main story is also addictive at the start.

The biggest twist is that you play missions in a turn-based X-com style of map but with a major focus on stealth. As a player you try to navigate around the map in order to set up ambushes or just get past enemies to reach your goal. Open combat is ill advised considering that your hunters are very squishy and the enemy can overcome you really fast.

In order to suceed in missions, there are plethora of items and gadgets at your disposal which allow you to manipulate the beasts that you encounter. It is vital to use those in order to avoid an open confrontation. This style of combat is actually quite refreshing and has not yet been done in a such a style. Additionally, the weather affects your hunters and blow their smell towards various directions, this can be an additional challenge because the monsters are sharp. It just creates a very tense atmosphere and the soundtrack is quite fitting.

Now, this all seems very enticing but the game has some major flaws and the devs made no visible attempts to fix this. To further cement my belief that the game is almost abandoned at this point, I'd like to go back to my previous points of joining the discord and posting suggestions and issues. Usually, smaller devs are very active and communicative which is a great asset. The devs here do not really acknowledge the issues nor did they reply much in the discord, this sentiment was manifested by others as well.

The biggest gripes of this game is its repetition, there are a variety of missions which are all very nice initially. The maps feel like puzzles but at some point you will be going over the same motions again and again. Furthermore the maps all look very similiar and there is a distinct lack of enemy variety.

The game has some minor rpg elements but developing your hunters and their skills is very mundane. You just increase some passive world map skills. Besides this, the entire world map resource gathering is absolutely redundant. There is no time limit nor any pressure to the player. You can simply camp in resource rich regions and gather a ridiculous amount of resources, then crafting all the things you need. The entire mechanics seems nice on paper but it has almost no depth to it.

As previously mentioned, there are actually many items and weapons available but most of them seem kind of redundant. The variety seems great but you seldom use them because they all kind of have the same effects. The most used mechanic which is available and free from the start is the "pebble throw". This skill makes lots of items useless in my opinion. The weapon variety is pretty neat but you will always rely on the same ones.

The game is also very vague on the darkness mechanic, there is a presence which corrupts hunters and the world. I reckon that it's perhaps an intentional design to keep this mechanic obtuse due to the lovecraftian nature of the game but it's not really explained at all. After some experimentation, you realize that hunters actually get more corrupted and eventually die if they keep fighting enemies all the time or if they are constantly deployed. The devs kind of changed the mechanic a bit but it's not well realized at this point.

Also, some of the level design can be brutal in which the maps is so massively populated by enemies that it's almost impossible to navigate. At times it feels like you actively try to break the game or cheese every enemy to get your hunters pass the enemies. Once you're spotted all the enemies are alerted in the area and go through a lengthy and slow alert animation, this is not an issue with one or two enemies but once you got a lot, it just never ends. Due to the tedious nature of the game, this only gets excerabated.

To conclude, I think there is a lot of potential with this game but it lacks some content and polish. The art and universe is amazing, it sets a good atmosphere. The stealth combat feels unique but needs a bit more tweaking. Additionally, some of the rpg elements should be reworked and the entire camping section of the game is worthless. I was looking forward to see if the devs could patch this game and make it great but at this point there is not much hope. The devs have not posted much recently and some of the promised content update is still not out. It's a shame.

This game gets a lot of crap in reviews (here and on other sites), and I feel like a lot of it is not deserved. The important thing to keep in mind when playing Alder's Blood is that it is a tactical STEALTH game. Your objective is not to mow down every enemy you see. Doing so will only make things harder for you over time. That being said, I've seen multiple reviews that suggest that given the mechanics of the game, that you "cycle through characters" and all your characters are "doomed", so let me clear that rumor now: I had the three characters I started the game with, I hired three more. Those six were the only ones I used, and I never lost a single one of them. Not only that, but none of the six ever got to even remotely critical levels of corruption. So if you have read reviews that say otherwise, and it turned you off, you can ignore those.

All that being said, Alder's Blood is an Indie title. Don't pick it up expecting a super polished title. It does have some slight bugs, and there's even a point in the story where you can choose between multiple paths, and the story text will only make sense if you do them in a particular order, but the game does not guide you to follow that order. The only major glitch I encountered was towards the end of the game, where the mission required me to do something three times, and part of the game thought I was done after two, but the objective wouldn't update. Not a big deal, except it also caused my characters to just stop regaining stamina altogether. Reloaded a previous save and the bug cleared itself.

All in all, Alder's Blood has an amazing aesthetic (very reminiscent of Deadlands), and it does almost everything right. It's a rather unique take on tactical games that I really enjoyed. If you like stealth games, it's definitely worth checking out. If you like tactical games, but aren't sure about the stealth, try the demo (I think they have it on Steam, I know I've seen it on GOG.) If you want a game where you run in and murder everything and keep going...You theoretically CAN do that, but it will make the game SO much harder, and it probably isn't worth it.

I may revisit this at a later time if some of the game balance is flushed out, and will come back after further updates.

The good:
- Artwork
- Scent/sound mechanic
- Camping system. The food system seems like just a pacing mechanic, and probably isn't that necessary. The rest is good offering you options to make gear, heal, or gather items. It adds the risk of being jumped and options to counter it. Good idea.
The bad:
- Monster spawns make no sense. If the quest narrative gave you any clues about what to prepare to bring to battle, it might feel more a tad more intuitive. This would help you understand how to manage your hunter stable, what weapons, and gear to bring. The monsters are just puzzle types, that you have to play trial and error with? It's hard to gauge. The lack of variety and usage thereof makes little sense aside from a moving forward roadblock in the mission map.
- The odd voice acting. It just sounds weird with the single word.
- Stamina feels incredibly arbitrary as to its consumption
- Questing system also feels odd. I don't get any obvious sense of priority or reason to do the quest.

Quick:

2/5. Great artwork and a great story-line are tainted with absent-minded and randomized game-play mechanics, and unbalanced tactics style combat. This is a game that I wanted to give a perfect score. However, at every turn, the combat's non-intuitive and broken mechanics stop that from happening. There is so much to love about this game. However... there is just as much to make you say out-loud... "Why would you put that in the game?". More is less when it comes to Alder's Blood. For me to give this game a perfect score, I only need certain features removed from the game. Features that make no sense, and make me wonder what the developers were going for, are everywhere. It feels pretentious, and lame. If you have played X-Com, and hated the randomness of missing point-blank shots..., then I suggest you do not play this game. Missing shots doesn't happen in this game but that will be of no comfort to you if randomized nonsense boils your blood. It is everything that X-Com does wrong, but multiplied and repeated constantly in other areas of game-play.

More:

This is a tactics style game, that doesn't want you engaging in combat. There are melee weapons, ranged weapons, traps, throw-able weapons, and magic spells / potions. But the game doesn't want you to use them. At every turn, you're incentivized to sneak past enemies, and lure them away from your teammates while completing objectives stealthily. You are even told, during the loading screen via text, that the more enemies you kill the stronger "The Darkness" becomes. With the increasing "Darkness", more enemies just randomly spawn on the map, or gain newfound power during the match, or transform into stronger enemies. Sometimes the winds change with the increasing "Darkness", which can alert enemies to your position. The enemies are also generally much stronger than your characters. This game is difficult for the sake of being difficult. If someone passed you a twenty sided die and told you to roll a 20, in 3 rolls, to progress during every match... you would be playing Alder's Blood the board game. This "darkness" should be removed from the game. The game would instantly be better without it.

You would think that this is a stealth game, with combat in it. But you would be wrong. This is a stealth game that doesn't want you to engage in stealth. You can be punished for just about every decision that you make in this game. There is never a correct way to do anything, because the combat is so random. It is random beyond belief. Essentially, winning boils down to whether or not RNG God has smiled upon you. For example... there are enemies that can randomly spawn on the map while you're playing. Sometimes, they literally spawn right next to one of or more of your characters. You could have stealthily moved around a group of enemies, cleverly avoiding their detection and lured them away from your position, only to have an enemy spawn on top of you, and alert every other enemy within earshot to your position. Which in turn, will cause a wave of enemies to descend upon your player(s), and within one turn completely ruin your chances at winning the match. The game would be better if adding in enemies mid-match was removed entirely.

There are too many enemies on the map. You can go into battle with 3 hunters for each match. There are way more enemies than that usually. Each of them in the latter part of the game can be much stronger than any one of your characters. Because... leveling up your character doesn't do anything to raise their combat effectiveness. It only changes attributes that they use when out of combat... which is baffling to me. Their ability to scavenge food can be increased, their ability to craft new weapons can be increased, but they do not have any attributes like strength or movement that are increased by leveling up the character (at least none that I have seen yet... and I am about 11 hours into the game). If the developers just completely removed the leveling feature from the game, and it's associated out-of-combat tasks, it would instantly be better.

You can be debuffed, though... you'd better believe it. Your characters inevitably suffer losses to their stats such as movement, vision, smell range, etc..., almost every-time you go into battle, banish an enemy, or get randomly attacked while you spend the night at camp. Your characters constantly grow weaker, while your enemies only get stronger. This forces you to replace your hunters constantly, by sacrificing old hunters to bolster the new hunters. But what is the point in doing this? The only attributes that are increased are attributes that don't get used while in combat. You can increase some stats with charms that you add to your player, but those stats will inevitably be lowered as the player endures more "corruption"... so what's the point? This is bad design. I do not need a hunter to be able to scavenge food more effectively if I am stuck trying to complete a mission. The food only serves as a consumable resource that is there to hinder your progress. You need it to travel the main map, to sacrifice hunters, and to guard your base camp at night... and to stop your hunters from starving to death while transiting between map locations. The food 'mechanic' in its' entirety should be removed. It does nothing to make the game better.

Why does reloading my weapon take more stamina points than slashing an enemy with a sword, or stabbing them with a small blade? What is that? Those types of decisions, on part of the developers, are what make me think that this game was made difficult for the sake of difficulty. It is silly, and it makes no sense. When your character runs out of stamina points, they are down for an entire turn. Why? So... if you fire your weapon, and then reload that weapon in the same turn, chances are that you're going to be completely out of stamina points, and then your character will fall to their knees, and you have to sit out the entire next turn while enemies pour down on you and attack you. The game would be instantly better if my character didn't have to sit out a turn because they ran out of stamina.

Why are enemies able to interrupt my movements, and attack / alert other enemies when I still have enough stamina points that I could close the gap and attack them, possibly killing them before they could do that anyway? I'm assuming it's to make the game more difficult, and stop me from killing the enemies so... "easily". Why am I rushed to exit a match, by moving my players to an extraction point, if there are enemies that are hidden on the map? If I take my time exiting the map, then "The Darkness" will spread, and pour down enemies on top of me randomly. If I rush to the exit, without slowly peeling away the 'Fog-Of-War', then an enemy that is undetectable will just pop up near the exit, and get the drop on me, ending my run.
This game's mechanics are layered one on top of the other, as band-aids to attempt to solve a bigger problem (seemingly). The bigger problem being that the core game-play loop is bad. Mechanics are added, and kept in (seemingly), to justify other mechanics. It's almost as if this game was written, and completed first... then the designers decided it was too easy, and then they went back to the drawing board, and added a bunch of extra nonsense into the game to make it harder to progress. It is frustrating. It is completely unfair. The player is given little to no agency. The player is not rewarded for careful planning. It is, at its' core, randomized nonsense.

The story and artwork are fantastic.

I tried the game, came across a game breaking bug, I asked for help and got ignored. Now I am requesting a refund.

Even though the premise is good, I do not recommend this game as of today. It's full with bugs and glitches.
Yes, people might say that it's new and the devs are working on it (e.g. a patch is incoming) but some of those bugs could have been avoided if people played the actual finished problem aka playtested it for at least 10 hours.
4 hours in and I wasted two of those working around a bug. This is not how it's supposed to go. I shouldn't be responsible to make a product work except maybe for older games not running on high end PCs.

But the biggest problem that I consider in this regard is the lack of communication.
I mostly don't care if games are buggy or glitch me out of a map. I have put up with Bethesda games enough times to see monstrous anomalies that were not intentionally programmed into the game and still played them to my hearts content.
But reporting a savefile breaking bug which effects now my whole playthrough and not receiving an answer in return is in my eyes a bad business decision.

Maybe if that game receives more patches it might be playable in the future until then I will wait and see.

Immersive setting? Check. Enjoyable stealthy combat? Check. Beautiful visuals? Check. Enemies that can smell your unwashed socks? Check. Sacrificing your worn out, collapsing heroes? Check.

I'm having a good time here.

What is Alder's Blood?
It's an amalgamation of the following:

• Bloodborne-style violent-and-posey victorianesque aesthetics.
  
• Banner Saga-style grandiose character-driven story.
  
• Invisible, Inc.-style stealth-tactics gameplay.
  
• Darkest Dungeon-style character rotation.
  
[*]Expeditions series-style camping + global economy.

In other words, it's its own bloody thing!

The user reviews I've seen dwell so much on the similarities with particular games those users know, they completely fail to acknowledge how coherent the overall experience is. You play as a hunter, and you indeed DO hunt. Let me explain.

The most upped review so far claims that the game feels stagnant because you just keep fighting same enemies again and again in the same fashion. Leaving out of the equation both the question how such judgement can be passed based on a 3-hour experience for a 10-40 hour game as well as this issue being intrinsic to basically any game reminiscent of new X-Com (how many enemy types are there in Invisible, Inc., exactly?), I can only explicitly say the game feels far from stagnant. At the moment of writing, I'm 7 hours in, and only now is the game beginning to throw both properly though challenges as well as rule-bending tools to defeat them. So if you're getting the impression this game is shallow - don't, because it clearly is anything but.

Now, previously I said that it does feel like you actually hunt. What does it mean? Constant hiding. Setting snares. Keeping downwind from the beasts. Dashing out of the shrubbery to unload a double-barrel into your prey's side and then vanishing in the undergrowth again.

Alder's Blood keeps a fine balance between the hunters and the beasts. Hunters are very vulnerable, they reek of man, so beasts will investigate should they smell you, and the monsters do truly monstrous damage, not to mention that if they actually see a hunter, they will immediately react and dash to rend him apart. This interruption thing is so good, yet so innovative that people seem to have a hard time grasping it. However, it's untrue that the developers don't teach the player how this reaction mechanic works, so I'm thinking they're not to blame - it's just really new in turn-based games. Think of it as an attack of opportunity - only not upon walking next to an enemy so much as upon enemy seeing you.

On the other hand, hunters are quick, deadly, posess firearms and a huge toolset to use on their prey. And also patience. That's why it feels like you hunt. You don't rush into this game, you cautiosly wait until an opening presents itself - and then you rush, keeping your head low.

Time is not on your side too, because you're in the world of supernatural apocalypse, friends, so the supernatural Darkness will do supernatural things you wouldn't belive over time - and if you kill monsters, it will get stronger.

Alder's Blood is a debut, so it's not without its hiccups. The game feels a bit raw: save system seems to be working a bit strange, user UI is not at its top possible convenience. Hotkeys - especially one for selecting the next hunter - would be greatly appreciated (update: turns out, it's TAB, but I'm not sure it's articulated). You can easily misclick on the battlefield and send your hunter to death by accident. Enemy view lines are not displayed for the entirety of a hunter's path - so sometimes you send your hunter somewhere, where it's safe, but an enemy notices you, because your hunter passed one tile in his line of sight (update: it's alleviated by seeing enemy viewcones in the 6th sense mode, but those viewcones are not always accurate). So, knowing that, you have to manually check every tile in the path on whether a monster can see it or not. The default access to save system makes the experience more banale - savescumming is possible even in battle.

But despite that - Alder's Blood is still great. Do play it!

I'll add things to this review as I go, if I have anything else to say.

PS
I also failed to mention two important mechanics.
1.Remember, I said Alder's Blood had Darkest Dungeon-style rotation? Hunters are half-human-half-beastly beings, so over time as they participate in missions and kill prey, they acquire corruption which lowers their basic stats. When this corruption ramps high enough, they go insane and turn on their fellow hunters. The purpose of this mechanic is to bar you from raising a comfortable go-to squad of overbuffed superhumans laying waste to anything they meet - this system is a bit reminiscent of Pyre. The more you use a hunter as a killing machine, the sooner it's goodbye time. So you're best off when you're not killing beasts. It's a decent balance touch which also makes you keep forging buffing charms, because you cannot unequip them from a hunter. Also, it forces you to make another decision - do you use your hunter to the moment he snaps or do you sacrifice him in a sacred ceremony in advance, thus passing his experience to another hunter?
2.Factions. There are multiple factions in the world of Alder's Blood and you can gain reputation with them thus accessing wider stock in their stores which seeing how you can bend rules with certain tools can be very helpful. It looks like you cannot go down with a faction reputation, so this system doesn't seem very dynamic so far. And I'm 99% sure you won't get to fight intelligent beings.

Update1: 11 hours in:
The Darkness which gets into play does spice things up a little: monsters are summoned, buffed and changed, so things get trickier and trickier as you go on in a combat encounter.

(here was a list of bugs and questionable design desicions, but I was running out of symbols and the developers seem to be addressing much of the stuff I mentioned, so I cleared it for another update)

Update2: Act One finished:
1.The plot thickens.
2.Enemies are in full toughness.
3.Environmental hazards suddenly became a thing - very useful if you want to thin the flock without revealing yourself and can lure an enemy into one.
4.There's a plethora of useful items, but the distraction and the slow-down\pin-down ones take the cake.
5.Health-related items and skills seem useless, at least in non-permadeath mode.
6.Kinda curious is the day timer has any gameplay significanes, because so far I never had to actually race anywhere.
7.I should also mention there are exactly 0 throwaway go-fetch side-tasks. Every single unnecessary mission is grounded in the world and supplemented with well-written dialogue.

(Posting this review at 3 hours played mark)
Came in expecting a Darkest Dungeon meets XCom type of game, but I'm sad to say I found an unfinished, buggy mess that wasn't sure what it wanted to be.
Interesting premise and great atmosphere, however the gameplay is rather stagnant as you face the same rather uninteresting types of enemies over and over again. The mechanics are unclear as well, the game doesn't do well to explain what exactly activates enemies - they will either wander pointlessly after being shot at or run straight at a hunter and attack them, ending the hunter's turn in the process.
Hopefully the developers fix the present issues because there are some interesting design choices, they just weren't executed properly.