Alaloth: Champions of The Four Kingdoms

I wanted to enjoy this game but its user interface is horrible. Clearly the game is designed to be cross plateform but almost everything that makes it so also makes it clunky and unpleasant to navigate on PC.

personally to me it feels like the Devs had some grand ambitions (and good ideas) but gave up half way and tied a mess of what they had together to finish the game.

After almost finishing the game I couldn't tell you anything interesting about a character, side quest or even the main plot.

Cool concept, cracking awesome combat with a substantial amount of heft and tactics to it....HOWEVER the general game flow and UI are terrible; so it is a mixed bag. Overall I recommend giving it a try as this new concept is worth supporting and having some fun with. Thanks for taking a risk to make this; fingers crossed for a refined sequel.

I am loving this game.

For one, I love isometric views, and so happy when a dev makes a current one that looks great. Environments, details, all quite nice and immersive.

I'm only 15 days (game time) into it but from what I've seen so far it's a blast to play. The game seems geared towards wanting you to explore everything, which is right up my alley. The side quests are interesting, and being able to purchase services to improve your base is a nice touch.

I admit I'm not a huge fan of moving with directional keys but the ability to "follow the the mouse" makes up for that, for me. I like the combat, which can be quite fluid once you get the hang of it (not saying it's hard, but it's a little more than just a single "click and attack").

I wish I had more to say, but too much to do and not enough hours! But I'm hooked and it's safe to say this is one of my favorite games now. Check it out and enjoy!

Sorry but this game is 100% garbage and might be the most clunky game that I have ever played. Not even worth playing it if it was free because there is way better free games out there.

Stepped into a dungeon. Skeleton swung his sword, I ran away, ended up being hit while my character was several steps away from the skeleton. The hitboxes are crazy bad. Uninstalled.

The controls and target lock system can be a little jank at times, however I am still thoroughly enjoying my time with the game. The story is solid and the world-building is well done, and I actually enjoy the combat using a controller.

I do not recommend this game.

This game reminds me of how I felt when I was looking forward to getting Ultima 8, and how I felt when I played it and realized the game was nothing like what I was hoping for. Unlike Ultima 8, the controls in this are janky, character gets stuck easily on terrain. Constant interrupting pop-up "Press (Hold) T to continue"...

I can't even give proper feedback because there are so many things that feel off that I don't even know where to begin enumerating them with proper actionable feedback. This is a game that reminds me that I should play games immediately when I buy them instead of letting them sit for a while, just so that I can refund instead of being stuck with the game.

I thought the gaming industry was doomed, but then I saw someone mention this game in a post in the Assassin's Creed: Shadows steam forum (which i had been happily trolling/award-farming on).. He listed a number of games that he said were actually good, and this was one of them. I bought it and instantly liked it.

This game has excellent artwork -- walking into the elven taverns still hasn't gotten old. The art makes getting immersed for hours at a time quite easy.

The combat is well done, which is rare for this kind of game. The enemies are challenging in their animations. It's not just endless hordes that you have to kill by being higher level -- you have to actually block and dodge their attacks.

The plot is relatively simple, but the lore around it is quite deep, in my opinion. I played as the Ballawolds who have a feud with the Willenkels. I have played for 23 hours and have gotten like maybe 10% of the lore.

Really good game.. Breath of fresh air.. Recommended!

game brings old RPG vibes I was missing

This is a very good game with a lot of depth, build variety, and rewarding skill. Alot of the negative reviews seem to miss how to properly manage your combat resources and likely prefer a more hand guided quest system, but that is not the game's goal. Very similar to Dark Souls in this regard, which I feel fits the style well. It may take an hour or two to get into the swing of things, but it is very worth it. Be prepared to die a few times, but the penalties for it are minimal and you can always try again.

My only real complaint is the isometric design and movement, which on certain maps is clunky. It can be difficult to determine if a certain ramp or pathway is where I am able to travel or if I get stuck, which can be rather frustrating during a fight, as my movement and strategy gets immediately messed up because I didn't realize that I did not hit the ramp entrance just right. Other than that though, I think it is a fantastic game with good replayability.

Would be nice to see just a little bit more item diversity though, perhaps some one handed weapons with unique effects. Or even just weapons have have really cool unique effects like procs or triggers, but I do not know if that is a direction the developers would want to go with their goals. I do recomment this game, afterall the price tag, especially on sale, is worth it IMO.

skip skip skip please let me play already

Buen juego

Scratches that old school itch and its fun

Cool idea, almost completely ruined by absolutely garbage hitboxes (2-3 times larger than the actual attack at times) and janky controls that often lock you into an animation, sometimes for something you didn't even do.

Like, I'm not joking, the actual idea behind the game is solid and I enjoy it for the most part, it's just not fun going through all my resources in a single fight because the enemies completely miss me by a mile but still hit anyway. Like, imagine if you were playing Dark Souls 2 with -20 ADP. That's how utterly garbage it is.

Believe it or not, but when the only mistake I feel that I made was playing this game, I have no desire to come back.

Absolutely CRAZY, as I expected it would be. TONS of great lore, very magical and very 'wow'-ness, loving how it has a sort of Lord of the Rings type of vibe, great stuff. Gameplay is great, a bunch of very cool CRPG features, fun combat and just one heck of a total package imo, including great character creation. And just to say it again, the LORE is wild! And so much of it you unlock as you go, love it. Cheers devs, great work!!

I hesitated at first. But if you like RPG with lots of story and straightforward builds. You can't pass on this game.
I enjoy this game a lots and plan on trying different kind of builds.

ถ้าหาเกมแนว เนื้อเรื่อง สร้างBuildsตัวละคร ถึงจะไม่ลึกมาก แต่เกมนี้สนุกอยู่ครับ
ระบบ อาจไม่เหมือนเกมอื่น เช่น ตอนลงดัน ต้องเตรียมตัวให้พร้อม พกPotion,Anti-Status, กิน Food Buff ก่อนลงดัน
หา mercenary มาช่วย etc. เหมือนจะมีระบบ Craft สุ่มของ Rare และ Slot ใส่เพรชเพิ่ม หรือป้องกันสถานะ ด้วย
สนุกครับ เพลินๆ

Combat is simply too clunky for me to enjoy the game.

Doesn't respect my time at all. Locked into dungeons, cannot access inventory, upon death everything is lost without a chance to recover any of it. Might be fine for streamers but I have limited time and I can't see anyway I could enjoy playing and leveling.

A Cross between diablo and Dark Souls. The combat is deep and satisfying and the lore is perfectly high fantasy. The devs have been really committed to this game for a long time. I bought in early access and waited until 1.0 to play. They just dropped a free content patch that a AAA studio would have charged full price for. These are good devs making a great game. So them some love!

The combat is fun, I have a lot of questions about some of the other design decisions but the combat is by far the most important part of a game like this and it works so it gets a recommend from me even though I can see a lot of people finding this game totally unplayable.

The start of the game is extremely difficult to get into, this is early 90s RPG level of "we're just going to drop you in game with a lore dump and you can go figure out what to do". Even after a few hours of poking around and trying different things I have no idea what's going on and I'm basically just chasing quests around the map aimlessly. If there were fewer quests and lore dumps and longer combat encounters the flow of the game would feel a lot better, maybe this clears up once you've got through the early game but it's very overwhelming at the start

Look, I can see the devs' good intentions and passion in this project. Too bad the project isn't all that good. I wanted to like the game at the start, but eventually, playing, you realize there isn't much there gameplay wise. And unfortunately, I'll give it a thumbs down.

Game is fun for sure. The competitive mode is really interesting, and adds a sense of urgency and makes you want to use your time wisely. I played it a while ago, like a year or two ago, and man has the game changed since then.

Combat is fun, you wll start to feel OP pretty quickly but then you will definitely run into some encounters that humble you, I hope there are far more challenging encounters to come because that's where the game really shines.

There are SO many sidequests and POI's to check out.
I've only been focusing on working toward beating the other race's champions in the artifact gathering, and doing the Dragonhold questline, outside of that I've only really done side content that has useful item rewards, and I still have like 2 dozen quests in my log that I just came across naturally.

There are some negatives, mainly for me it has to do with itemization and spells. Both systems are far improved from the first time I played, but there is still alot of room for improvement imo.

Gear gets very samey, very quickly, as you get some pretty strong stuff thrown at you in a relatively short period of time, and from there on each item is basically identical or sometimes slightly better. I think that power progression could be drawn out some more, with items having more defined strengths and weaknesses rather than all basically being the same with a few % more or less of a couple stats.

Spells are very hit or miss. Balance is not good, some spells are just absolutely useless and others demolish everything. Necromancer/Warlock dots for instance do no damage, ever. the Ice nova spell can burn through an entire dungeon full of mobs in a couple ticks. They have added alot of magic schools and seem to be focusng on it, which is great, but its a big pain point for me currently.

Amazing gem of a game. Is it perfect? no, but at the same time I was very let down to see not many playing it or giving it a chance.

The combat needs a few minutes to grow on you and then this game opens right up. Sad also to see "mixed" ratings, this game deserves better.

Note for new players - turn on the slow motion effect during combat (options menu).

i just wonder, why there is no potion station in orc stronghold? this is a bug or what? i wanna make potion with my orc hero in my stronghold

The durability of your equipment is designed to be hit with a -1 per item per fight regardless of anything. Some quests in the game due to this will cost you thousands of gold. I've been informed that this is intended. So due to awful design I have to thumbs down this one.

At the start I've had trouble getting into the game and almost decided to refund. Quit the game twice after playing for an hour, but on my third sitting I got sucked in and didn't notice where my 5 hours went. It's a very fun and engaging experience, I love it. Menus are very easy to navigate and I often found myself thinking "huh it would be convenient to have a certain feature right now", looking around and finding that exact feature.

Quests are very basic and straightforward - go somewhere, pick something up/kill something/talk to someone and that's mostly it. So you end up just walking where quest markers lead you and not thinking too much.
Once you get used to combat it's pretty fun but there is a lot of hit and run due to clunkiness.

There is also no real RPG-like freedom, more like a hack'n'slash one. You can't beat up npcs or rob their houses or something and there aren't many items to pick up.

What I dislike the most is the writing, most notably the info dumps that happen when you enter some locations. Most of the time it's 2 dudes randomly talking about something that they would never talk about IRL, like 2 mine workers suddenly start talking about how important is their job and who they are supplying. And every other sentence is agreeing with the other person, the talks go like "-our work may be hard but it's important. -indeed brother, the rich magnates who live somewhere need our ore -you are right, they are using our ore to do some stuff. -indeed, the ore can be smelted and made into weapons. -yes, weapons kill people". It's not an accurate quote but it just feels so artificial. These talks could easily be made in some more natural "show not tell" way.

EDIT: went to fight the Dragons, there are like 5 of them and they are supposed to be epic lategame bosses I think. Damn why are they just the same dragon with a different color and damage type? They have 100% same skillset except one that has a little minigame to do at the start. Like come on, give them at least 1 unique ability

I have 2 requests to the devs :)
1. Could you please show the "+x% spell cooldown" as a negative trait on equipment? Like currently when my armor has "+50% spell cooldown" and I compare it with an armor that has "+80% spell cooldown" the "+30%" difference shows in green text like it's good that this value is higher. It is confusing and I bet there are a lot of people who see green number and think it's better. I didn't know what to think until I tested it.
2. A button that transfers all crafting materials to the stash, or at least a different category for such items. It sucks to accidentially put something like alchemy set into stash while spamming the deposit button. Also a different tab for food items would be cool - I often take 3 potions and 1 food for FA and scrolling through all potions to get it (sort/filter does not work on equipment screen) is burdensome

So, I've played many games like this. I love the fantasy genre. You can look at my library, it's true.
It's a decent game. It's not extremely polished, though it's polished enough. Better than most indie games.
I would advise against buying this game for a few reasons.
One, a fantasy RPG hack and slash isn't exactly a very niche game genre, and with the amount of others on the market and soon to be on the market (e.g Avowed) I would say you're probably better off spending $35.00 on something with more polish and scrutiny. I mean, I understand that this game is rather large, but that price tag is just too much for what the game is, even in its post-release state. It's too expensive, and there are other options that are better, by matter of opinion, and more affordable, by matter of fact. There's really not enough information about the game online to determine whether it's a good purchase, and it takes so long to get into that you can't decide yes or no for yourself before steam's 2-hour refund rule comes into effect.
The game does its world building well. There's a lot of effort behind it. But, it's also devoid of any true depth or character. It's just copy-paste fantasy generation type stuff, to be honest, and I don't say that lightly. I wanted to like this game and its lore very much, but it's just missing the personality and character in terms of story, and that hurts its value. There's a universal sort of blandness to the characters, the writing, even the very well-made cinematics are just... boring. It's nothing you haven't heard before. "The gods are at war with each other and fail to notice a greater threat, and now they're in big trouble" cliche is all I got from the opener, though it's a little unclear. There are a noticeable amount of basic grammar and spelling issues.
Also, for a game that's "mostly focused on physical combat"- and this is likely my harshest criticism- it does physical combat quite terribly. Maybe I've been spoiled by Elden Ring and the like, but it doesn't seem that difficult to make challenging combat without the glaring issues this game's combat has. Firstly, you can't interrupt your attacks, and if you can somehow, the game doesn't make it known how to do so. The controls are iffy, sure, but the biggest issue is the dodging, which is satisfying and cool when executed properly, but impossible to execute properly. The simple reason for this is that you can't dodge out of your own attack animations at any point. In other games, once you reach a certain point of the attack animation, you can't dodge out of it, but in this game, it's as soon as you press the button to attack. You are locked into the attack and unable to dodge, and multiple enemies are often attacking you at once. There is almost no way to engage enemies without taking damage, because the dodging system is useless if you make multiple attacks or even one heavy attack. Otherwise, you're locked into a boring cycle of dodging several attacks, attacking once, maybe taking one or several hits, backing up, dodging, attacking once, et cetera- which just sucks for the player. You can't even move while attacking. You just stand there and take whatever the enemy (enemies, more likely) is hitting you with. Not being able to move while attacking is a HUGE downside.
All of this is to say, it's a well-made game, it just lacks crucial elements needed for a game of its kind to work- mainly, working correctly.
There's a huge diversity of different enemy types, characters, lore, a huge amount of effort was poured into this game and it's clear to see, but in the end it just doesn't measure with any other alternative in the genre due to its glaring failures. You can't call a game a souls-like and not even have a working dodge mechanic. I do believe this game deserves support, and has the potential to become something great, but the developers are focused on the wrong issues. If you're curious about this game, I'd recommend to look elsewhere for now and come back at a later date.

Really hard time getting started but well worth it.

Massive payoff if you stick with it. It feels really new player unfriendly. Don't be afraid to meta game a bit and pickup a companion early. That really unlocks the fun and fleshes out the combat.

If you stick with it, once the game opens up and you start to understand the gameplay loop, its really terrific! The graphics are out of the world good as a fan of old school BG1&2 games. The flow of upgrades and the way crafting and cooking unfold to the player feel paced well. The combat is lots of fun and the more you unlock the more interesting it gets. Once you have 4ish areas unlocked and some skills the game is super addicting. I can already tell I'm going to put 100 hours into this game. Which also makes it a steal in terms of interesting and fun gameplay per hour per dollar.

Great work Devs! I am having a blast! (If they made a single companion available from the start, I really think this game would flow perfectly. I understand they have a vision and it's pretty great. Maybe think about it?)

I call this game SimSouls lol. If The Sims and Dark Souls had a baby it would totally be this game. Pretty but hard, cool design ive never quite seen before i like it and i plan on playing this one for awhile. I can see how its not for everyone but if you enjoy a challenge, huge lore and you enjoy managing your character and inventory (even repairing armour and weapons), then give it a go.

I can honestly say I've never played anything like this. There's so much soul to the game that it's worth it to try out if you're into niche RPGs, in my opinion.
On the other hand, the amount of jank is hard to ignore sometimes . . . BUT the devs seem to be working tirelessly to make it the best experience possible, so it'll only get better from here.

Tried. REALLY tried to play this game, but it's just feel, off.

It's not polished off, REALLY REALLY slow start, took me like over 30 minutes to get into a fight that lasted 5 seconds.

The User Interface is TOO noisy, very hard to manage/understand.

It looks promising, and i am sure many will like the style, but as a CRPG veteran, i couldn't get myself to enjoy it, and i wouldn't recommend it.

Will revisit it after a few months to see if Dev will improve GC/UI.

Nice little game if you want a chilling experience.

Pros:

- great level design, some of the cities and fighting areas look amazing
- good role playing opportunities, as in playing as you want to play: warrior, rogue, archer, mage, etc
- some good build variety, don't be afraid to respec and try different powers - little hint for mages, aeromancer is really nice but it takes time to get into properly, don't recommend to play mage in the first 10-15 levels :)
- some enemy designs are really cool
- some of the loot is great
- great representation of the 4 main races as the 4 main areas in the game really have the atmosphere they should have as a human, elf, orc or dwarf environments

Cons:

- really needs voice acting for quests, would make a big difference
- the start is really slow but once you get some decent armor and weapons it gets a lot better
- gameplay loop gets very repetitive after a short while
- quests are also mostly boring and too many honestly, some give great loot though
- fast travel around the map is unlocked too far off into the game and you get to go on foot a lot
- not challenging, at least on the first play session, no hardcore and Solo
- not very balanced between different builds, weapons, etc, some clearly better than others

Overall, I enjoyed my time with the game and would recommend it but I'm sure it won't be for everyone :)

Was expecting more baldur's gate in the "baldur's gate and dark souls baby"

Skills are more of a utility than a style of play, bow and magic skills are good for preemptive attacks or back line enemies while you jostle with the front line.

A suggestion for the dev, remove range requirement on bow skills or give magic skills the range requirement, its inconsistent.

Just an amazing adventure of a game. This game has me immersed with how deep the lore is for the world and everything that inhabit it! Right off I could tell the devs really love their world with all its intricacies and histories. If you're an LOTR fan and are looking for an adventure game with deep, interesting lore this is definitely worth checking out. There's a ton of quests and places to visit and most of them have a back story!

Not very polished, Too big of a scope where it fails in lots of parts, combat feels dull, itemization is bad, story not interesting.

It's OK/Good.

Inspired by a few of my favourites and a cool art style. The only problem really is that the stamina system is very arbitrary and doesn't really work well as a balancing feature. It takes away from the combat if anything and makes it a little unsatisfying (especially early game). The durability system also falls into this camp too but I think it works for the style of campaign.

On the other hand the combat is generally satisfying (stamina aside) story seems cool, world maps and arenas are cool, enemy design is cool (again a downside of the stamina system here is that I don't appreciate the enemies as much because you're fighting the stamina system half the time, rather than focusing on enemies). Game runs well, isn't cluttered on MnK and seems to be receiving updates and content patches which is cool.

Hoping it gets better as I go along and I'd suggest giving it a try.

Looks to be inspired by Moonstone : A Hard Day's Knight. Combat is similar although isometric and the overworld map with AI npcs to race against seemed similar. However they look to have added quite a lot in terms of lore, content, exploration etc. Thats just my 2 cents after playing for half hour or so. Seems good, won't refund.

This game has an interesting system, it's like you're playing Baldur's Gate 1, but Dark Souls... And the world is huge.
If you love top down perspective RPGs, you'll probably like this one

This game has heart, lore and oozes adventure, but the combat is much too difficult for me to continue on with this game.
If only the combat system was more like Diablo or other similar games, this game would be right up my alley. Unfortunately with its current combat style, the sad reality is this game will go unnoticed by many gamers. 6/10.

To the Dev: Please stop berating me for my opinion. I dont use discord and dont care enough about the game to do so. Ive said my piece about the game, and I would appreciate you leaving it at that, and to stop harassing me.

I should be able to zoom in on my character more. I should also be able to equip crossbows, as well as other ranged equipment, as a standalone weapon. Other than that, the combat feels nice. The visuals are immersive. Killing enemies feels satisfying, and the game has decent physics.

Rough but something shines underneath, nothing that can't be fixed
A prologue dungeon(think DDDA) might help early combat and tool/material/potion management,some of the info boxes can be info overload early on
Agree that it feels like D&D meets Souls, combat feels smooth but can always improve the speed/response
Map travelling bit messy
Non Linear, you can go anywhere pretty much from the off, very good
Character customization could have more options
With the armor, being able to chose separate piece would be nice addition
Easy to see a lot of heart was put into this project, nice to see a D&D/BG style game with action/isometric combat rather than Turn based
6.5/10, but one to keep and eye on

For some reasons, this game doesn't invite me.

First of all, it is clearly done for console, and is not convenient on PC. Interacting with anything looks just weird on PC.

Second, the way you move in the world feels disconnected ; there are roads, but it is clumsy to stay on them, and in any case, they seem only to serve as decoration. As does most of the map (at least what I've seen). You just move straigth from one place to the other, regardeless of rivers, forests or whatever : obviously, this is bad for imersion in the game.

Third, you start with a depersonalized character (ok, you choose the sex, appearance -always ugly-, and fighting style -sword & shield, polearm...-) ; this just starts like I'm going to hack/slash around. Not my style ; this feeling is reinforced by the tutorial which insists on combat movements -dodge, parry, starike- but has little else to offer.

Then the whole story doesn't catch my imagination ; I'm tired of stories of battles between gods, especially when mortals are supposed to solve them. It feels so childish I just cannot connect.

So no, I wouldn't recommend the game.

It tries to be challenging. It only ends up buggy and confusing.

I like the idea of the game but I don't like the game.

Combat is really floaty, I don't feel much like I'm really interacting with the enemies. They did try to put in a compelling combat system but it makes no sense when the enemy AI is so basic. The enemies literally just swarm you and swing the same attack as soon as they can. It feels like a game from 30 years ago in that regard.

The KB + M controls are horrendous.

Cities are dull and lifeless.

The game is purposefully archaic which sucks what little fun there was away.

Great game, I'm loving every minute playing it.

Pros:
- Engaging combat mechanics: weak and strong attacks, dodge, parry/block and up to six special abilities and/or spells. More than enough to keep it interesting
- Big world to explore with every location being unique and handrafted
- Lots of different and unique loot
- Locations have perfect size. You can usually complete any dungeon (Fighting Area) in 5-10 mins and then decide to go to another one or to play with your kids.

Con:
- Early game is hard. You need gear, more levels and possibly companions to comfortably clear dungeons. Later it gets easier.

"Beautiful but Flawed non Co-op: A D&D-Inspired Journey"

Alaloth boasts stunning visuals with incredibly detailed and animated models, truly capturing the essence of a classic tabletop RPG. The combat system is engaging and rewarding, and the developers consistently deliver updates and new content, showing a commendable level of passion.

However, the map travel can feel somewhat tedious, although it's consistent with the genre. My biggest disappointment lies in the "Shared/Split Screen Co-op" tagged. Instead of cooperative play, it's a PvP mode, which is significantly different from what was initially implied or suggested. This is a major letdown for those who were expecting a cooperative experience.

Overall: Alaloth has a lot to offer with its captivating visuals and engaging combat. However, the misleading information regarding the "co-op" mode, which is actually a PvP mode, significantly detracts from the overall experience, especially for those who were drawn to the game specifically for that feature.

Pros:

Stunning visuals and detailed character models
Engaging combat system
Dedicated developers with regular updates
Strong D&D-inspired atmosphere
Cons:

Tedious map travel
"Co-op" mode is actually a PvP mode, not cooperative play
Misleading advertising regarding "co-op" as a feature

Recommendation:

If you're looking for a visually impressive and combat-focused RPG with a strong D&D vibe, Alaloth might still be worth a look. However, be aware that the "co-op" mode is actually PvP, and proceed with caution if you were expecting a cooperative rpg experience.

Terrible game design, so many unituitive elements like ui navigation, map travel, quests, cooking, loot... Near everything I do in this game has some annoying component to it or lacks basic QOL. Trash design basically.

It really scratches that RPG itch. From the enchanting music to the beautifully rendered high fantasy world and deep lore. I am really enjoying my time with this game. The build variety is varied and allows for a number of play styles. Loved that they added companions, but limiting who you can hire based on your alignment was a bit of a downer.Also I don't understand why there is alignment as you don't really make any dialog choices besides accepting quests,The difficulty can be steep at the beginning but flattens out and plays like an rpg power fantasy once you earn better gear and level up

I played and enjoyed this game immensely! Great and varied combat. Sprawling beautiful open world map that you can explore however you want and at your own pace. I love that the map is tabletop-like and real time. There is deep lore if that is your thing (it is not mine) and no neg consequences for skipping through that lore and focusing on questing and exploring. The graphics are beautiful. The music is solid. It is very well made and original in my opinion, and I did not encounter a single bug. I honestly think some (not all) of the neg reviewers kind of missed the point of this game. I do have issues with Alaloth but I feel moved to briefly address some of the things some people have objected to because I think this is a fun game and I want small original teams like this to get a fair shake. Here are some of the common issues I have read and my quick responses. You will obviously make up your own minds:

1) Different Game Modes: I see a lot of objections about arbitrary time limits and pacing issues. I think some of this is due to misunderstandings about the different modes you can play the game in, and to be fair, Alaloth is not very clear on what these modes actually entail. If you just want to play the game the way (I believe) it was intended to be played, then do yourself a HUGE favor and play the SINGLE player campaign (can't remember what it was called exactly) NOT the mode where you are competing against AI champions. From what I understand of the games mechanics I believe this the actual way the game was likely designed to be played, but the developer can feel free to correct me if I am wrong. As I understand it, the competitive mode will put you on a timer where you have to complete the game before the AI or the AI will eventually beat the final boss instead of you and you will subsequently lose. This discourages exploration and questing as those take up valuable time and may cost you the game. I think this understandably frustrated a number of people as they were just off questing and exploring (two of the games biggest selling points) and then suddenly lost. It could also have just been avoided by playing single player mode. I'm not sure why the competitive mode is in there tbh. Maybe just to have a quicker, more intensive mode meant to drum up urgency and tension. The single player campaign does not, to my knowledge, have any timers and you are free to follow or ignore the main plot. This encouraging exploration and experimentation with different builds and is the main reason I enjoyed Alaloth.

2) Difficulty: It is a hard game early on when you don't know the skills and have very few abilities. I think people expect that they can just grind a few random encounters and quickly level up to be powerful enough to go anywhere, as is the case with virtually every other game. This game does this differently and I think rather than give it a chance, some players just got irritated. You can only level up by completing a dungeon. That's any location with a skull on it. The more skulls or the larger the skull the harder the dungeon. Obviously only try single (small) skull dungeons early on. Every dungeon is different. If you die a couple times on a single skull dungeon go try a different one. It may work better with your character build. You only need to complete a dungeon once to level up. Aloloth does not tell you this info and does not hold your hand. I like this but many do not. I would encourage people to explore this as a dangerous world where you have to gain experience handling low lv dungeons before you can survive elsewhere. The thing is, its only a brief initial difficulty spike for the first 5-10 levels or so depending on your skill level. I found the game to be exceptionally easy from lv 5 on. In fact this is my major gripe with Alaloth. My mage character melted enemies before they can even reach me. Many time when they are too far away to even aggro me. After having such an initial difficulty I was expecting that balance to persist. But I digress. Be a little patient with the difficulty. It will get easier.

3) Preconceptions: I think Alaloth does not fit the preconceived expectations of players who wanted it to be a clone of past games they may have enjoyed. This game has an original idea for leveling, for isometric combat, and for its approach to open world. I think it has significant balancing issues once you level up a few times but its a beautiful, large, interesting world. There will be tons of quests. Some may be interesting. Some you may not care about. Don't do them if you don't want to. The rewards are shown beforehand so if you don't care about that item or are not invested in that character there is no penalty for dismissing the quest.

Anyway, there was A LOT of love poured into this game. It is evident in every hand crafted location and game mechanic. If you end up giving Alaloth a chance, I encourage you to take a little time to experiment with it's original approach to open world exploration and isometric top down combat.

Man, I originally sat down to write just a couple of sentences...