Alaloth: Champions of The Four Kingdoms

**Expansive, unpolished, game with decently fun iso-combat**

I read a journal review article on the game an bought it sight unseen as the reviewer claimed it was a Diablo-Souls fusion type. The game is quite expansive and the combat is pretty decent. I tried to play through in a more thorough fashion, but quickly grew bored of the quests with 90% garbage rewards. I killed all the bosses, optional dragons, etc. in 28 hours, but had no interest in trying to complete all the low-end quests.

If you thought this game was Souls+Diablo, it is not. Combat is slow and janky at times, with few mechanics of interest. Lots of weapon choices, but mostly all play the same, short-range, hit-and-run/block/parry. The skill tree is unnecessarily complicated, and there is very little guidance on how to apply the skills, or what they do. Easy to respec though, so you can try it all out and determine what works. There is a lot of 'magic' and 'ranged' skills, but they aren't really usable as the primary form of combat. There is not much equipment for them, nor much variety in the gameplay with them and they are pretty solidly underpowered. The Devs clearly state on the discord that "this is a melee focused game," so I suppose that is what they intended. Lastly, and this one was pretty rough as the game went on is that all the lore, dialogue and VA can feel largely unpolished.

I'm glad I bought the game and I did enjoy the game, but it's not a super great game for the price and the hours I got out of it. I don't believe I'll desire a second play though as another class or play style, even though that is possible with the way they have it setup.

**EDIT: removed comments about AI-generated text, per developer's assertion.

for an indie game this packs a lot more content then expected and the devs constantly added new stuff to the game

well worth the buy

the combat is of course the main point of the game , focused on melee with revamped companions and magic system

You can clearly feel the love and passion with which it was made, and this shines through in every detail. The attention to the creation of the game world and its lore is evident, making exploration both rewarding and stimulating. I highly recommend this title to anyone looking for a quality RPG crafted with dedication and expertise.

It's ok had some fun but I would not recommend it.

The EXP system, or lack thereof, is atrocious. You need to beat a dungeon in order to level up, the difficulty of the dungeon doesn't matter and if that dungeon has been claimed by you or by any other NPC champion you get no levels for clearing it. The various random encounters that happen on the world map give you no levels whatsoever, mercifully they can be completely avoided making them pointless.
The melee combat of the game can be quite fun. There are different weapon styles with different pros and cons some of them take advantage of the weapon reach while others take advantage of the weapon speed. The same cannot be said for ranged and magical combat since they both feel quite underdeveloped and weak in comparison to melee.
I fail to see how this game borrows from Baldur's Gate. In BG1 and in BG2 you had classes to choose from and attributes that you allocated while making your own character, in this game you have none of that. You just start as a dude in light armor and a melee weapon of your choice with no stats in anything. No starting attributes to choose from, no starting skills, no class identity, nothing, Even Dark Souls offered you some semblance of class identity in the beginning of the game despite that identity being lost due to Dark Souls' leveling system.
In conclusion, this is a good game buried beneath multiple layers of jank and questionable gameplay decisions, buy it only on a discount.

Great game overflowing with content.
It's advertised as "Baldur's Gate meets Dark Souls" but luckily It has its own personality and vibes, and gameplay-wise stands out as one of a kind. The gameplay loop Is challenging but rewarding, and great even for short sessions.
As for the writing, Alaloth ditches the "show, don't tell" wave, while delivering a world full of lore and stuff to be learned through a very detailed codex system.
You can see the devs put a lot of effort into creating this world, and while not for everyone, It would be a shame to rush through dialogues and quests without diving into the great mood they managed to create.
I am Happy Gamera managed to pull off this gem of a game, despite all the hardships they went through during development.

P.s.
Plays flawlessly on Steam Deck

The worst game I played in 2024. I demand devs just remove "Baldurs Gate" from the discription, it is not true. I doesn't have anything from BG except 20-years old graphic.

– You start suffering right from fhe beguinning because of interface. Some buttons need you to click twice, some of them not. Some buttons you need to hold so they will work. It is tedious, just WHY?

– Fight is real time with a lot of unclear buttons: shift, ctrl, C, space, moddle mouse button. And battle doesn't give you time for that. Absolutely boring, not engaging. You press hit-button and block button, but it doesn't matter because all the enemies attack you at once and you will die. And you slow as f, and your stamina (which nobody told you exists) will drain out, you stop foghting and will be killed.

– It has no story, it is just blah-blah filler for you to have something on background to CLEAR DUNGEONS. The game is about endless dungeons. Which looks like and area with random enemies - I've got some dudes and scorpions. All the enemies just run to you and attack together, no tactics. There is nothing but dumgens. And you task is to clear it without dying - that's the game.

– Your character is VERY slow. WHY do they do this to me in peaceful locations? All the time you will press Ctrl to run faster until you finger will hurt.

– NO SAVES

– There is no exploration, characters, story. You don't have motivation. There are basically dungeons and hubs where you can buy heal potions. You will see different npc - the majority of them have several random phrases and that's it. There is no quests, except "bring me 5 flowers", "deliver this to that city". Basically the game is 100+ arenas where you need to kill all the enemies.

– When you open the world map you realise that you don't see where you need to go. Just 100 objects with names, locations marks, etc. And they have a SPECIAL mode which you need to find first to STOP TIME on the map and just read.

In a nutshell - it is tedious, boring, suffering game with a lot of very odd solutions from devs. The process is basically grind on arenas, many battles as a preparation for the battle with big boss.

I'm not a fan of souls-like games, but it is not even souls-like. And I'm a big fan of Baldurs Gate, and I find it not cool that devs just put this name on their product. It is absolutelly opposite of Baldurs Gate. And what about copyright? It is a shame to use this name for this product.

designing an PC CRPG game to be played mainly (and more effectively) with gamepad is a blasphemy ...

but I cannot neglect to the fact that the game also has "fun" in it ...

Combat its something funny, not amazing, RPG side of the game is not, its like someone tried to design a baldurs like game without even play to it, just by hearing stories, world is huge, as big as empty, places are just some npcs without anything at all, small pieces of background, few npcs which tell you something about a lore you will not even hear again, or not form part of the actual history at all, you forget all places and characters, cause they just doesn´t matter at all.

You just go tons of places searching for something to do, random enemies roam the map (and you have no f idea if they will destroy you or not), goal is to do several mini dungeons, some of them seems to have a boss, I finished 5, I didnt saw a boss, just, very small empty dungeon where enemies pop up and run mad to kill you.

Combat is not hard as they told you, its just bad mechanics, enemies have different impact mechanics, and as they run to you in masses they can destroy you with bad luck, dodge button is invulnerability, IA is bad, game difficulty rely in numbers mostly.

Someone wanted to make a real time combat and put some rpg to give it a background and call it a day.
Just save your money, or just check the clock to refund the game (I just lose the time searching in internet and looking videos, cause really wanted to give it an opportunity, btw, there is nothing, cause the community is as empty as the game).

Maybe I will keep play again in the future, not sure, last hour I was bored as hell trying to keep playing, wishing maybe something will improve or a real story will start, didnt happen.

It's feels like souls like + Baldurs Gate old version, especially they have 4 races and have their own adventures

Great game.

My only complaint is there are way too many quests. Like 125 quests but only about 8 have any meaning which progress the game. This causes a bit of bloat and can lead to not knowing where to go next. I had all the requirements done for the main questline and had no indication that I was ready to move forward.

Coming straight from a BG1-3 and Icewind Dale, Neverwinter, Dragon Fan. This game is amazing. It feels like a real world where you are not the center of it. That gives you a lot of opportunity to play as you want. Combat is amazing. It's not just about stats. You can win hard battles with just a sliver of health if you play well. Really recommend this game for everyone.

С одной стороны довольно интересная, с другой довольно скучная рпг - смесь хэк энд слэш и солс лайк.

История мира - довольно пустая. Большинство квестов относятся к типу неинтересных - сбегай на другой конец карты, убей 50 мобов опредлеленного типа, побегай курьером по десятку локаций.

Иногда встречаются интересные квесты, интересные данжы, но их немного.

Боевка довольно интересная.

Игра - не юзер френдли. Догадаться как убить определённых босов крайне сложно (например, чтобы убить самого крутого дракона Бейсана - нужно заставить молнией зарядить все электрические башни, чтобы снять с него щит, но об этом можно узнать только перечитав много форумов), как найти финальную локацию тоже не особо понятно (круг друидов, после того как нашли 4 артефакта, в ночь полной луны).

Квестов очень много, но они абсолютно не интересные.

Финальный бос - довольно сложный (если не играете на простой сложности), и заставляет попотеть.

Где искать тренеров для получения не особо понятно - по факту, нужно зайти на все локации и ночью и днём.

В общем 7/10. Рекомендую покупать по большой скидке, при наличии тонны свободного времени.

Прошёл и забыл. Возвращаться не буду.

I waited until the official release to play, and so far, I have very mixed feelings about the game in its version 1.0. It reminds me of a much less ambitious indie RPG—Sands of Salzaar.
What gets me to recommend it while I didn't like all design choices here is:
really cool game loop and I will later (after some patches) try it again in competitive mode. I actually was very involved in game for a 3 days and finished all dungeons it had so it is very addictive experience.

The soundtrack and level art are quite nice. Somehow most places was as pretty as in bigger RPGs like Pillars of Eternity or Pathfinder. The story and quests, however, are a 50/50 experience for me. I guess I expected for choices will be available. But quests are linear, and the abundance of quests doesn't necessarily good if you have so much. Some quests force you to revisit already explored dungeons repeatedly and it was a bit tiring. On the other hand dungeons are actually not very big too.

The game certainly has a lot of text, but it mostly feels like filler—largely meaningless since characters have little agency or choice in the dialogue. It’s more like Diablo-style interactions, where you don’t make decisions, rather than conversations typical of classic RPGs. I liked characters and plenty of lore behind them but felt sad that I actually can't decide, speak my mind, have meaningful dialogues with them like in older RPGs. I guess it is very important thing personally for me.

For me, the most frustrating aspect is the UI. While the large font is a good choice, the city map uses very small icons that blend in with the map itself, especially the quest markers. So it was a bit hard to see some quest icons on some maps.
The number of cities on the map makes map look overburdened by info. I’m not sure I can explain it clearly, but while the game is non-linear, it feels unnecessarily disorganized and messy. And after a while it is full of quest markers too)

The final straw for me was the developers' stance on old-school quest design. They deliberately avoided adding quest markers and QoL features for some quests, claiming that this is what makes the game feel old-school. But that’s not working. The game has an abundance of meaningless text and filler fetch quests, and while some quests don’t have markers, others do. For example, you have to remember where to find four different NPCs for a dragon quest. It seems the developers want to teach players the “art” of reading text, but even older games had quest information in journals or dialogue tabs, and important things was pointed out by NPCs.

There is something captivating about the game. The world, with its constant changes and the passage of time, is intriguing. The combat was addictive and interesting. The world is beautiful, even if it feels a bit generic and artificial, "gamey". For a small team, this is an impressive effort, and it had chances to eventually become a solid AA game. However, in its current state, it needs some balancing and adjustments.

Right now, it’s not Baldur’s Gate meets Dark Souls—it’s more of a Diablo 2 experience mixed with Sacred 2. Still it was fully playable and bug-free on release. Rare thing novadayes. Not a single bug was encountered.

PS. 1. After finishing the game hardcore mode is opened and sure game will be harder to play. So I deleted a rant about imbalance since it is not actually problem in hardcore mode.

2. Final boss was actually decent challenge even on normal difficulty. But you will be locked off from traders and if you had not enough health potions - it will be a problem. Happened to me, managed to win but it was not easy without best healing and I had a healer abilities too.

3.Another point in favor of game: dev said he will add some more hints for quests. So they actually will listen to players. Underrail dev was like that too about in game map feature and it made a game much better. Some QoL things are essential)

4. Devs have a most caring attitude about player opinion I ever met from devs. One thing I'n sure of - this is product of love and care. I will return to game in some time to replay it and check how it evolved. Hope to see another game from this studio too)

Got it in early access because I liked the concept and believed the gameplay had potential, but it sadly feels like it failed to live up to that; Its one of those games that makes me wish steam had a middle between yes and no; This might well work for someone else with different expectations, but for me... its a bit of a miss.

Pretty good game for starters but the main aspect that I enjoy the most is that since there is no mana or alternative energy form besides stamina, it's an open path to create hybrid characters which is a dream-come-true for me. It may be a bit subjective but the game, in its this form, it's a bit easy once you get used to the mechanics (which takes like 30-45 mins if you are a gamer). My biggest criticism is about the visual effects of the spells, especially huge spells. The screen shakes so wildly that it becomes virtually impossible to see what's going on on the screen for the duration of the spell. To be able to see what buffs consumables provide in the dungeon would be great as well. Really good game, strongly recommend it.

Pretty cool game that is a different take on several genres at once. Combat and the leveling choices you get both are well done. UI is mildly clunky at times, but overall decent.

returned nearly immediately
looks super promising but combat is just terrible
took like 30+ minutes of lore and cut scenes, collecting missions and walking along the overland map to get to the first actual combat scenario outside of the tutorial
mission descriptors seem to indicate challenge level, so I accept the one for goblins which says it seems like an easy challenge.
forgot the combat controls because I didn't use them for 30 minutes of brain dumping exposition on lore and complex game systems
got murdered in the first encounter before landing a hit and using all my potions
5 more tries and zero successes later and a host of issues are clear which need to be solved in this game before it can actually be fun
the most glaring are the opaque camera blocking (should go transparent) terrible target selection (are they numbered and cycling through their indexes? why is not selecting the nearest enemy) and camera control (especially trying to adjust zoom while in a fight - it's BAD and usually results in accidentally selecting a target that makes no sense).
Seem like it could be a great game but no rest for the wicked is doing what this game wants to be doing around 1000 times better.

this is 35 bucks and PoE is free and Last Epoch is about the same price so no i cannot recommend.

Immediately just did not like this at all. Isometrics are some of my favorites, and this one has everything I did not like from a bunch of games I've played. Its clear the Dev's and I have similar interests, but very different taste.

No thanks. I am not going to ask for a refund because this is a small studio. Support small studio's unless their work is sloppy. this is a well made game, if you think pillars of eternity is preferable to BG3, or Rogue Trader then you will enjoy this game.

Super fun game with a really interesting combat system. As others have said it's challenging with an intentionally restrictive leveling system, but I think it's a design choice that works well for the game. Levels and good gear are hard to come by but make meaningful differences in your play style and ability. There is also tons of variety in enemy design- the dungeons and bosses all feel unique and challenging.

Mediocre game at best.

TL;DR: You really have to like how the combat plays and accept the fact the game is closer to Diablo/Sacred with Dark Souls combat than Baldur's Gate in terms of how RPG-y it is. Otherwise you can end up being disappointed.

Some minor annoyances (minor for me, the might be a deal breaker for you, so I am listing them below):

- If you want to hear the Narrator you're forced to enable music.

- The quest log not having all the informations you need, meaning you can end up not being able to finish the quest if you don't pay attention to what NPC is saying or forgot it after returning to the game a week later.

- The other Champions are immortal and will harass you non-stop when you get all the Crystals. They aren't that difficult to defeat, but having to kill them over and over is annoying as they ressurect after 3 days. You can get rid of that by picking the solo campaign (the rewards from defeating the other Champions are not really worth worrying over).

- The hidden repair equipment button in the crafting tab(!). I didn't feel the need to craft anything (most stuff I found or got from quests is better anyways), which is why it took me so long to find out there is an option to repair equipment outside of crafting benches in the dungeon locations.

- Sometimes (mostly during intermissions when you enter a location for the first time, but this is true for some "lore" NPCs as well) the exchanges are too verbose. I like the idea of giving the player the feel of what a given location is, but they are trying too hard to provide information to the player at the expense of making the whole exchange believeable. The result is that these scenes sound artificial/fake, like a poorly executed play.

- In case of larger enemies it can be hard to judge the distances, and they can attack VERY fast (trolls, for example), which can hurt a lot.

- You have to go to the inn to manage your inventory. Considering you can't get attacked in a city/town/village I find the need to go to the inn just to unload my inventory or change my items to be a needless busywork.

- The AI companions can be helpful/useful, but I found them to be more of a distraction for enemies than something I am grateful for. In short; don't expect them to play tactically.

Things I like:

- The combat. There is plenty of playstyles that change how you approach the fights. There are also many skills, weapons and armours to pick from. It can also be quite demanding, even on the beginner difficulty (you have to win the game in order to unlock a harder mode).

- The world. It feels like a combination of Tolkien's traditional high fantasy with some elements from the Game of Thrones and for all its fault with the writing, it gives the world some sense of history and cultural identity, even if the delivery does not always land.

- Vorastel the Dice Game. This one is quite neatly executed, allowing for some strategy in a game consisting of - essentially - random dice rolling. It is also a nice way to make some money, outside of raiding the dungeons.

- The visuals are fantastic. The game gives me the Sacred vibes in 3D and the loading times are nigh-instant (although I have also a very strong PC, so your milage may vary).

- I adore the tabletop-y map. It is a joy to simply look at. It also has some nice functions that help you find locations (atlas of locations, I think it's called).

All in all I have a blast playing this game. It is really hard to put down once I start playing, because doing "just one more quest" or "just one more location" is quite addictive and I enjoy the combat wholesale.

Unique idea of playing against other champions as you progress through the story if you choose the option. Also like the crafting where you can use other materials for the same item and get incremental improvements if you have the items. A fun game that I suck at!

This has been a honest delight to play. The combat feels so natural, the lore is incredibly deep. The dungeons are a little cookie cutter, IE enter, fight dudes, loot big box at the end, The combat is tough, but its not souls like. Its aiming for realistic while still being a video game.

Loads of quests, loads of story, loads, of things to do. Truly an awesome retro RPG feel.

This game isn't perfect like in a skyrim or morrowind kind of way but doesn't mean people didn't love those games because they were charming and fantastic right? Same pretty much with this game. Its such a nice break to play a game thats not a 100h long turn based game. Not that I dont like those... but they get really exhausting sometimes. Also Diablo/POE/grim dawn games arent exactly very challenging its just grind so having the mix of the action hack and slash with the challenging combat is a nice breath of fresh air and I think this game is very underrated. The skill systems is pretty cool I like that they get more powerful the more you use them and you can mix them all.

The lore and characters are very well written but they also talk WAYYY tooo much like the fact i have to read paragraph after paragraph and listen to someones whole life story and every struggle they have gone through in their entire life and what they had for breakfast this morning and history or all the priests in the village and every ancestor they have ever had just to explain why they need my help to kill their ex wife that became a bandit isnt exactly going to make me want to keep talking to random people and try to immerse myself.

It takes a little bit to catch on to everything, which honestly I think there's a lot of ways they could improve that like not popping up tutorials until you actually go to a specific place or talk to a specific person in a game you can go literally anywhere you want, especially if some things only appear at night and you don't even know they exist because you might not run into them until a couple hours in and lotta these things are core game mechanics like companions and being able to restore your health at a tavern which you don't even know that you can do that until you actually walk into the cavern which i went to a fighting area on a quest first. I feel like that might be a point where some people stop playing, but if you get past those few hours of learning how the game works it becomes a charming fun CRPG.

This game is a hidden gem, I got my ass beat down the first couple of hours but once I figured out the combat it came full circle. I've played a lot of bloodborne, demons souls, dark souls, etc etc - the amount of mechanics that go into the combat here can correlate with those games. It may seem overwhelming at first but it's all about muscle memory on the controls. People complain about ranged mobs but they don't understand how line of sight even works or what LOS even means. Utilize your map, run / dodge when you need to and use the game mechanics to your advantage. This game is fucking awesome and the depth of the talent system is really fun, a lot of bad reviews coming on here but at the end of the day it's because people cant play games correctly, everyone crying about the targetting system but they don't get it because they skip the tutorial. I would reccomend this game to anyone who isn't a faint hearted little bitch. 8/10

The gameplay core is okay, but everything surrounding that is horrible:

1. The inventory management is awful
2. Wildly overdone lore/journal/tutorial crud
3. Stats design and level scaling awful
4. Loot drops poorly balanced

I've just scratched the surface of this game, so my opinion might change in the future. However, at the moment, I'd say that it is a very interesting game. There are some rough edges here and there (combat tends to focus more on "swarms" of enemies, which makes the parry system less useful), but the broad scope of the experience, the places you visit, the excellent customization, and the rewarding challenge highlight a game I could easily get lost in.

The overall look and feel are on the old-school side of the gaming spectrum, so if you prefer modern gameplay and easy adventures, you're probably in the wrong place. During the first hour or so, it didn't resonate enough with my tastes, but I'd say that during the next couple of hours, I changed my opinion and wanted to play more. Death after death (and I died a lot!), I became more and more engaged.

It's a 6.5/10 indie action rpg game with a decently enjoyable gameplay loop and some major flaws.

PROS:
+Locations' art design. Locations are all unique and rather pretty. There are lots of thematic cities for each of the 4 races and large hand-drawn map where you move your character as a pawn to travel between locations.
+Various builds options: from different melee weapons, to ranged, to magic caster ones. You can easily respec and the game encourages players to experiment by regualrly doling out various builds' gear through quest rewards and crafting.
+Decent crafting system. Just be aware there's also weight feature and you must stash your unused stuff and ingridiends on the regular to not get encumbered.
+Combat is real time with no pause and is a mix of Souls and Diablo games: you get active abilities you can use on cooldown and you must kite, roll, parry and block to survive enemies attacks.
+Boss battles are a highlight of this game.
+The game is well polished. No game breaking bugs. Throughout my whole playthrough I've encountered only one minor combat bug (enemies stopped being hostile in one fighting area) and one minor text bug.

CONS:
-There's no rp in this rpg. When you talk to characters your options are limited to: take the quest or decline it.
-Companions are pretty much furniture. Their AI could be better, they can't survive for long on their own, their interactions with the main character are limited to their personal quest after which they turn into dummies.
-Stronghold is a useless waste of money. Nothing there is worth spending money on - you can get all those vendors in cities and shrines, they don't sell or do anything unique. And you can't teleport to the stronghold at will, making visiting this location pointless. It generates some money once per year, but its amount is not significant and after half the game money is not a problem anyway.
-There's tiny bit of VA, but most of the game is not voiced. Narrator's VA is laughably bad.
-The're a ton of lore in this game. But it's all rather dull and boring. If you're into it there's a lore dump tab in the character menu. The game fails to show and not tell though, so it's hard to care for any of the kingdoms, characters or the world in general.
-Main quest is nothing to write home about: you gotta find 4 crystals to perform a ritual to reach the BBEG who is patiently waiting for you to reach him in the middle of the map. There's even an achievement for taking it slow and reaching ingame year 5. That's it. No multistage main quest or different endings.
-Side quests are glorified fetch quests you get a bunch of in every city. In their structure and quantity they are very similar to Diablo 4's, but unlike Diablo 4 there are some quests that are unmarked and the journal does a piss poor job at hinting where you must go to finish them, so you may even fail some unknowingly. Some quests are also timed.
-Character progression in this game sucks. You'll hit max level even before you clear half the map and for the rest of the game players can only keep combat fresh either by crunching numbers with better gear or respeccing into other builds.
-Some abilities are inferior to others and some are frankly traps made to gimp a build. Same goes for some weapon types - two-handed weapons suck atm compared to dual-wielding one handed weapons. Definitely in need of tweaking and rebalancing.
-Game balance is questionable and is in need of tweaking. Early game difficulty is brutal until you get some abilities and gear. Enemies encounters are not fair like in Souls games and you often get zerg rushed by mobs. Could be offputting for new players who may end up dropping the game because of this. Late game can be facerolled though with how easy it becomes (unless you play a gimped build, of course).

Champions of Fluff

if you enjoy parry/dodge souls-like combat and are fond of pillars of eternity/baldurs gate isometric perspective, you'll most likely like alaloth. it's got some unique mechanics too. there's some wonkiness to it, but so far its been worth the ride.

The game is littered with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. The gameplay itself is ill-conceived and poorly executed.

I had fun. I would not recommend it to others.

Hold off on buying if you're interested. It's eurojank right now and needs a significant amount of polish. It feels like ~70% of the text could be cut and you would lose no value, and probably gain a lot of functionality.

The devs have a very specific thing in mind in regards to 'an old game feel' which is making one of them give boomer rants in the discussions. Obscure silliness is not interesting content, and most of what they and the community they're arguing about could be fixed with the script cut. Players will have more of a chance to notice small details when their eyes haven't been glazed over for several hours of meaningless eurojank babble. The writing isn't great (possibly translation issues, as there are several typos and such as well- hard to say.) When you have an absolutely enormous amount of not-that-great writing that has severe translation and localization issues, noone's going to bother reading the trash to find the treasure.

Don't intentionally make specific useful notes in the middle of a 7-8 page eurojank babble of text. Noone's reading that, and half the time it's nonsensical.

It feels like several features are not fleshed out as much as the devs intended. The crafting system is the only (although a dev seems to be incorrectly claiming otherwise) way to get a socketed item outside of a single quest reward that I saw. The gems you can socket do not feel impactful. Crafting requires a fairly significant amount of fame to use in a meaningful way (you need fame to order things at better blacksmiths), and the material requirements are semi-absurd in a lot of cases. By the time you can randomly roll a purple item with sockets, you will already have access to legendary equipment that will be better than anything you can craft, rendering the system moot.

The balance is a little off, with pretty standard eurojank inflation right at the start. Enemies appear to scale as you level to some extent- effectively throttling you and halting any feeling of progression, as they just get tankier but your damage will likely stop increasing in a meaningful way. Very Remnant 2-feeling, and it sucked there just as much as it sucks in FFXIV and everywhere else ass-backwards implemented scaling exists.

Balance is off with gear and damage available as well. Very few of the weapons have significantly different base damage from the forgeable weapons, and gear stats are all over the place in general. With the exception of a handful of quest rewards, the volume of loot may as well have just been given to me as gold, and picking them up in the first place wasn't worth my time.

Standard eurojank alien control layout, feels like the dev never played a game before and has very odd default settings. Remappable, but the remapping is weird. Did not accept my controller for some reason; I blame steam, not the devs on this one.

Music's fine, looks good.

The AI on your opponents if you play the competitive mode is very basic; hopefully it gets a little better. Right now they never heal, and only rarely have anything on them at all, so they aren't worth fighting unless one of them has a shard.

I was stalled from completing the game for ~90 days as the last shard I needed kept getting deleted as it was passed between enemy champions somehow, and then getting rediscovered. It eventually dropped from one of them long, long after I'd given up killing them repeatedly hoping they'd actually have it. Then I was lost for another 90 days as I had skipped past some miniscule line of text telling me some obscure hint about where I needed to take the shards. **edit -- apparently there is a small icon on whatever dungeon the shard is teleported to when another champion loses theirs. I never noticed it or knew it was there, so that's partially on me. There is supposed to be a line of text referring to the location where the druids are on the quest log- this was not present for me that I'm aware of, so whatever step produces it I also might have missed.

Hopefully they keep working and polish this up instead of leaving it as is. Again, I had fun, I might even play it through again before I wait for what I hope to be a very long string of updates. I would not recommend it as-is.

Really impressed with this game. It fucking rules. It has a ton of depth and lots of interesting stuff going on. The combat is really fun and there's so much to do.

Note: I had to refund due to some budgetary constraints (had an emergency root canal lol). I did NOT refund because I didn't like the game! I thought I could buy it this month but it turned out I was wrong! I am hoping to save up and be able to buy it again soon!

I respect the goal here, but the mobile platform design for interacting with content and narrative just pulls me right out of the game. I grew up on the original Baldur's Gate and Fallout games, so I know that hardware and graphical limitations can be overcome with careful design, good writing, and leaning into the dominant themes of the work. This doesn't really do that.

The good and great things about this game:

- Design: Great looking maps inducing Old School RPG Nostalgia. The Map designers did a fantastic job overall with day and night versions of every town and city. Kingdoms and towns have distinct architecture. It gives a lot of LotR vibes in all the good ways.
- Map: A really big map with 4 distinct kingdoms (elves, humans, dwarves, orcs). There are a lot (a lot!) of locations (towns, cities, caves, dungeons, forest clearings, historical sites,...) to see and all the locations look great. There's enough content for more than one playthrough.
- Music: Major towns have different sound tracks and they're AAA-Level quality. Orchestra-heavy music that sounds just like Baldurs Gate 2 and the like: Drumps and trumpets in the orcish territory, lighter flute and string music in elven territory - the music really captures the distinct kingdoms well. Any game can learn from the musical quality in Alaloth.
- Character Creation: Race and alignment have some consequences for your playthrough.
- Item variety: There is a lot of item variety that promotos more than one playthrough: 5 types of armor (robes, light, medium, heavy, tank), a lot of different weapon types, magic, unique items for quest rewards, mounts, unique mounts etc.: This game has some chunky depth when it comes to item variety and map size, so it rewards exploring and questing in that regard.
- Fighting system: If you prefer action fighting systems instead of turn-based ones, Alaloth went and tried to implement a real-time fighting system with some success. The variety in equipment and skills allow for room for experimentation as well.

Now for the neutral thing you should know about:
- Level maximum: You can gain a maximum of 20 levels which you will get once you've visited maybe a third of the world's locations (or less). There is no purpose in visiting everything in one playthrough. This promotes going for more than one playthrough but people who want to do everything with one character will find out that it just doesn't make sense at some point. It's a design decision. It's very different from other games in this way.

Now for the bad things:
- The big TradeOff: The big map and many locations come at a price: There are lot of npc's but they're not voiced. It's a lot of text and the staging of the story is not very elaborate. Mostly, NPCs just stand around and do nothing. The npcs feel sterile, just standing around. Animated cutscenes are rather rare.
- Story: The story if very straight-forward: Collect four thingies, defeat the big bad. There are sub-stories for quests regarding factions and kingdoms, but they're only told in NPC dialogues. This game is a big example why "show-don't tell" is important. In Alaloth, it's all "tell,tell,tell". It's not an engaging way or exploring the world and story even at the best of times.
- Quests: Everything is just fetch quests. Deliver letters, defeat 50 goblins, defeat x skeletons, find a lantern etc. And since they're all told in unvoiced npc text dialogues, the quests feel absolutely mind-numbing to get into and go through. They're mostly just uninteresting save for some rare exceptions.
- Writing: You get hammered and clubbered with fantasy-lingo. Names of gods, npcs you never met (who all have similar names) etc. - the writing is easily losing you because the dialogue explains no context but throws fantasy words at you constantly while expecting that you are fully versed in all names and terms of this fantasy setting. Combine that with the lackluster presentation and it's just very hard to get into the story of the game.
- Leveling: You only level by doing the big dungeons ("Fighting arenas") and only for doing them the first time. You can repeat dungeons for item drops though. When you level up, you either get to put a point into stats, proficiencies (for armor and weapons mostly), and/or skills. The issue: Most of the skills and proficiencies are useless or uninteresting. E.g. you can't directly level up fire magic damage, only fire resistance. There are almost no proficiencies that make sense for mages or archers. Leveling if there is nothing useful for you to look forward to level up in is a bad experience.
- Many Skills are badly designed. There is a hard limit on summons and healings you are allowed to cast. you only get six abilities to cast/use in the entire game at max level - and then you have a lot of skills with limited uses only (heals 4x use, summons 3x use,..). That seems like a poor design choice.
- Enemy design: If you go ranged (mage/archer), all enemy encounters become trivial. Zero difficulty. Melee characters may experience a whole different difficulty with spongy enemies and bosses. Many players also noted that the final boss is ramped up in difficulty 10x to previous bosses and encounters - the final boss follows the idea of "just slap on 10k HP and make the boss instant teleport everywhere with stun-attacks and we're good to go!". That's a let down.
- Quest rewards: you can get unique weapons and armos as quest rewards: Chances are though, that it's not the equipment you skilled for. I reached max level without finding or getting a unique weapon/armor for the type my two different characters were skilling in. No reward choices
- Crafting: Crafting is meh. You can't craft some equipment at all and i found only one weapon in 20 hours where you can put a gem in (despite you finding gems a lot). Crafting doesn't make sense in that way.
- Pathing: You can do 1-2 dungeons and then you're inventory is full (due to item weight). Finding the relevant vendors and stashing the crafting loot you want to keep takes more than than doing the actual dungeon. The pathways to vendors and your stash are too long. And if you have to go to vendors and your stash so frequently, this will absolutely kill your fun. Imagine having to go to three different vendors + your stash every other dungeon which takes up as much time as the dungeon itself. It's so tedious.

There are some really good things about this game, but overall, the gameplay loop is so dissatisfying: The limited leveling, the choice between so many bad skills and proficiency options that you don't wanna put your level points into anything at all, tedious pathing to sell items that you have to slog through constantly, the disengaged story-telling and boring quests, the weird to badly balanced fighting system.. man, a beautiful visual and acustic presentation are hiding a gameplay that quickly ceases to be fun. I wonder if the developers will be able to finetune the gameplay to a point where it's fun, but after a long time in Early access, i don't expect any more great changes.

I wish I could give this game a 'recommended', but I just can't. Love the art direction. Dig the retro scope. Huge fan of small development teams... But there's just too many clunky design choices. The combat is a combination of extremely boring AND unforgiving. That sounds like an oxymoron, but allow me to provide an example from the starting areas:

The mobs you face have regimented, unchanging attack patterns. They'll swing twice. Then block. Swing twice. Then block. The only variation is when they have to walk forward to make sure you're in range to swing twice. It's so dull and repetitive. Then, add to that formula the absolute punishing cascading that can happen when you make a mistake. Oh? You took damage... here's a debuff so you take more damage... oh, you took more damage? Here's a stack to that damage debuff that makes you take even more damage. Oh, you're dead. We're shaving three days off of your game calendar and sending you across the map to walk back to the dungeon.

In short, the combat doesn't feel like it's testing anything other than my patience. The only thing to add variety to the mix is talents/spells... but most have such a long cooldown combined and have so little impact. You'll get a single spell/talent (which requires you to level, of course... no variety at start)... only to realize you have to wait 30 seconds in between an ability that takes off a quarter or less of a trash mob's HP. If you make me wait a long time for a skill to cooldown, then that skill needs to have a big impact.

Combine the lackluster feel of skills with the repetitive combat and I'm just not engaged with the core gameplay loop. I'm a 'game first' kind of player. You can have the biggest world... filled with great art... cool lore... and it doesn't matter if I don't want to engage with the game part of the game. Then you add some minor annoyances with quests from a distant town sending me back to the same place I've already completed at the start of the game to grind it again... nail in the coffin for my enjoyment.

I'm still going to pay attention to updates to this game. I think a lot can be done to improve things with a massive reduction to skill cooldown times and a leveling system that provides you with more varied combat options sooner in the experience. As it stands, though, I would not recommend.

insanely hard even by souls standards and sure im betting it gets better later on but its so hard at the start of the game that most people will more than likely lose interest that paired with the awful durability system in place where it feels like your equipment constantly needs repaired yeah this game is a hard pass for me

This is an interesting game that tries to do a lot of new things, most of which work. First of all this can be best described as an isometric rpg with souls-like combat. What I mean by that is that combat involves dodge, block and perfect parry mechanics as well as the ability to break the enemy's posture/defense and leave them vulnerable, so it's far more skill based than most ARPGs where you just build up stats and facetank enemies or spam skills from range. Weapons also have different characteristics, dual daggers is very fast attacking and doesn't drain stamina much but has far less stagger, while halberds have long reach and their heavy attacks can stagger enemies in just a couple hits, but will drain your stamina really fast.

The other thing this game does that is new is the leveling system, you don't actually gain experience in this game, you level up after completing fighting areas (this game's equivalent of dungeons). These are ranked on difficulty and spread between the game's 4 regions, if you complete one you level up and get a mix of stat, trait, perk and skill points you can then allocate to level up your character. So you can farm enemies in the open world all day, and complete as many quests as you want, but those will only give gold and loot, not level ups (granted, loot is a very strong determiner in your overall power level as well).

Finally, there are a variety of skills and perks you can choose from, I'd say melee is the most fleshed out but there is a good number of magic spells, some which have limited numbers of use per combat, others which have a stamina/cooldown that limits them. These include a variety of melee skills like charges and rogue blink+backstab attacks, to magic attack spells, buffs and summons. Your gear determines how often you can use spells as light robes and magic staves improves their effectiveness while heavier armor and weapons lengthen's the cooldown, meaning you can still use them but far less often. There is also bows/throwing daggers for ranged combat but that has the fewest skills asociated with it (it is pretty effective though).

There are companions you can get, they are restricted based on your alignment, personally I prefer the good companions as one of them has an area effect healing spell which is fantastic to use in between enemy groups as you are limited on how many potions/consumables you can bring into a fight, and all healing spells have limited number of uses in a fight. So having an extra heal, that you can even use at the end of the fighting area to top off your health before leaving is really a good quality of life thing, at least for your initial run when you are learning the game.

Finally, I will say there has been a lot of effort put into this game from a relatively small team, the art and environments is very good, the combat generally feels good although it can definitely be hard to get a handle on at first, and there is even a competitive mode where there are other rival champions also trying to reach the same goal as you, but they will also complete quests and fighting areas themselves (denying you their rewards, even the level up rewards) so I would NOT recommend it for a first run, only something to challenge yourself if you finish a single player run and want a more hardcore experience. I think the game is worth trying out, although whether it's worth the price point is up to you, perhaps wait for a sale if you think it's a bit pricey.

The game is decent over all, I would consider this more of a neutral than fully negative. but there's just too many things in it that waste your time for no reason.

-there should be a button to leave a town from anywhere
-give me the option to skip cut-scenes. There are cut scenes when you enter some towns that are not interesting but you have to watch them. If you need to have a second try on a boss, you shouldn't have to watch that cutscene on the next attempt.
-castle upgrades are entirely useless. Why did I just spend 8k on a blacksmith that only knows basic recipes. Upgrading the level of my castle should give my smith more recipes.
-Some companions are terrible, the rogue guy on a neutral alignment isn't worth the pixels he takes up.
-The dragon fights are buggy. The shadow dragon stays in the air for literally three-five minutes. The lighting dragon gimmic fight is lame.
-companions should be able to add to weight capacity.

This game don't let you access your inventory while in the dungeons. Its like I know I have 30+ HP potions and not being able to use them because they are not on my belt is BS. Plus there's so many people to talk to and cutscenes in the beginning I felt chained to the idea to trying it. Now I can't get a refund.

I will edit the review I did post so it's not so harsh. I wrote it while mad. But most of the feeling is still there. The Devs just don't deserve to have their game called trash because I was frustrated. I just think a couple things need reworked before I'll try it again though.

Do you like Dark Souls games? Do you like Diablo type games? Can you imagine the mix of these 2 genres (Soulslike and Action RPG) with graphics from Old Baldurs Gate but enhanced? That is literally Alaloth.

The game is not perfect and made by a small company, but I think it is really fun and challenging having played all the big Souls Like (Elden Ring, Dark Souls, Bloodbourne, NIOH, Sekiro, etc.) and ARPGs (Diablo, Path of Exile, etc.)

Story telling
- I can see that there is amazing lore about a war between gods and demons, and there are 4 factions/races in the worldmap. I dont know what the end story will look like, but so far I like what I read since it is about a world that is in danger and races that dont like each other or trust each other, but all have a common enemy.
- The story is told by small chats with NPCs. There are no voices, so you will have to read. But instead of reading 1 huge piece of text you get smaller textboxes to read when you talk with NPCS, which I really like.

Dungeons
- It is not like Diablo or Path of Exile where you go into a dungeon and start killing 100s of enemies with 1-2 attacks. I really get bored of these ARPGs to be honest.
- Every dungeon you need to prepare and often time you cannot fight more than 1-3 enemies at the same time, which is the "Souls Like" genre. If you play Souls Like games, then you know that you cannot fight more than 3 enemies at the same time.
- Dungeons give loot at the end (IF you finish it). However, if you die you loose all! I love this feature, because once again, this is "Souls like genre". Extremely punishing and extremely rewarding.
- I love the combat system. Just like in Souls Like games you need to: Understand your enemies, their patterns, their attacks, their weaknesses and then block, parry, dodge, use talents, heavy attacks and talents to overcome the dungeon.
- You will die a lot! But thats the point! The point of dying in Souls like games is that you use your brain, think about how to overcome a challenge, learn of your mistakes, come back and defeat your enemies.

Progression
- You do not level! Love it again. This time I will compare it with Outward (an amazing survival action RPG).
- What makes this cool is that you cannot level up like crazy and then avoid the challenges of dungeons by just entering Overpowered and 2-shot enemies. No, you need to finish dungeons to be able to level up. Outward had something similar, where you use currency to get stronger skills and you cannot level up. It works very well.
- You get better loot by dungeons, roaming enemies in the world, crafting, quest rewards or buying it from vendors. And this is another way how to get stronger in the game.
- You have a pretty interesting talent three with skills, proficiencies, stats and unique talents. You cannot choose all of them as you have a leveling cap, so you really need to build your way or playing way in advance. You can respec with a special orb, so that is cool.

Graphics
- They are perfectly fine for 2024/2025 games. Look the game up at Youtube and judge for yourself

To conclude, this is not a AAA Game, but it definitely gives you the value for 35 USD/Euro if you love the mix of genre between ARPG, Souls like and RPG Storytelling.

I would give it a 8,5/10 and can recommend the game.

im not the best at words but im enjoying this game a lot. the combat is really on point and im enjoying it, i never feel like im struggling with the stamina system at all and the enemy's hitbox are fair if that make's sense to you.

Alaloth is definitely unique.

What I've quickly come to realize is that Alaloth is not a traditional RPG. It's really more like a board game in spirit. You are a hero racing against three other heroes to find four mcguffins by conquering dungeons, picking up companions and quests. You do this by fighting in isometric combat of questionable quality and making your build. The maximum level is 20, and you get 1 level per unique dungeon conquered, so this is supposed to be a relatively fast paced game you finish and go try a new build.

I'm yet unsure if it is good, but it definitely has an identity of its own.

Gave this game a chance after it came out of the Early Access, but no, it's a pile of fuming garbage. This is the best way to describe it. 2/10.

1.0 is here. Souls-like Isometric ARPG. Slice, dice, and roll. Shoot magic out your ass. Become a master chef or that other type of cook. There is an abundance of things to do in this game. I have only scratched the surface. Fair warning the game is challenging.

Not fun - Plays like a board game, I got so bored by the 5th enemy I killed, especially after I looked and saw no leveling system, nor xp from kills.

Peasent's quest had better combat and plot.

A decent indie action RPG, although not a masterpiece.

What I liked:
- Combat system does feel like an isometric Dark Souls, and is satisfying to master.
- Gorgeous art that invokes Baldur's Gate 1 nostalgia.

What I didn't like:
- The narrative, especially quests and dialogues.

Very interesting RPG with loads of quests, combat is fun from what I've played pre 1.0. I was thrilled at the announcement of them expanding magic systems.
Hoping to jump back in when 1.0 hits as a Orc Warlock!
Try this, it'll surprise you.

Fun game that doesn't take a space shuttle to run. World is huge, skills and specializations aplenty. Combat is rich but isn't too hard as to be punishing. :-D