Steam Deck HQ

Duskfade was provided by Fireshine Games for review. Thank you!

I grew up during the glory days of the PS2, where we had classics like Sly Cooper, Ratchet and Clank, and Final Fantasy 10. However, my favorite game during that era was Kingdom Hearts. To this day, the series is my favorite of all time, with its flashy combat loop, convoluted story, and nostalgic worlds. So, seeing Duskfade, a game clearly inspired by Kingdom Hearts, brought back tons of memories and excitement. For the most part, it lives up to that anticipation, though I definitely needed a perspective change to really enjoy it.

Duskfade is clearly inspired by the best games of the PS2 era, taking aspects of them to create a compelling experience. Going into it, I was hoping for more Kingdom Hearts influence, and when looking at the protagonist, Zirian, it’s very clear a lot of influence was taken from Sora. However, when it comes to the actual gameplay, it felt way more like Jak and Daxter. That’s not actually a bad thing, but I did have to change my perspective a bit once I started playing.

The basis of the story revolves around Zirian’s adventure to save his sister. Out of nowhere, a giant Clock Tower appears, locking his sister in the tower while she’s working on something huge. After meeting a mechanical bird named Cuckoo, Zirian will have to travel to multiple different locations to unchain the world and open the Clock Tower to find his sister.

It’s a decent story that has a lot of interesting parts to it, even if it can be somewhat predictable. From the history of the Clockmakers to the stories of the individuals we come across, the lore is a nice mix of intriguing and haunting. This is accentuated by the gorgeous, wild landscape we will be traveling through, with each location feeling vast and distinct from the others. It can be a little too big at times, and I did find myself getting lost between the few spots where it would point us in the right direction, but it never took me too long to figure out where to go.

The journey itself feels appropriately long. Not overstaying its welcome, but padding it out enough to still feel fulfilling. It helps that there’s a good chunk of collectibles to find scattered throughout, and will require some sort of platforming or fighting to get to. This helps each location feel more populated instead of just big and empty, which is much appreciated.

The combat itself left me with mixed feelings, but overall, it was fun. It’s ultimately quite simple: we attack, dodge, and use special abilities to take down ink blot foes. It starts off a little boring, since a lot of the essential abilities and upgrades come later, but it starts to get a lot better once we start unlocking new moves. I would consider some of these essential, like the heavy attack and final strike. It makes the comeback feel a little monotonous at the beginning, but it really picks up with more variety as we progress and buy upgrades.

There’s a good chunk of enemy variety as well, with some that force us to move away from just spamming a button to attack. Some may be best to deflect projectiles, some may require a heavy attack, but all of them are challenging in a way that feels quite rewarding to take them down.

However, Duskfade's movement in general sometimes just feels either clunky or too floaty. Combat generally ranges between decent and aggravating, especially when dodges don’t land as they should, or there’s a slight delay that can screw it up. There are also some enemies that are a bit too vulnerable, like the little ink balls that can pop up from the ground and attack. They are easy to defeat in general, but when they come up to attack, it’s very tough to fight back. Despite that, the combat is still fulfilling once we start to gain more upgrades and expand our move set.

The larger issue is the platforming. There are just too many times when it can feel too floaty or clunky, to the point where it becomes more frustrating than enjoyable. It’s very easy to overshoot platforms you’re jumping to when using the air dodge, and it led to my death multiple times. There’s also a pretty high recovery time, which became a bigger issue when they were bosses that required me to jump and move around consistently. I was almost always shot by the beam of the second boss and knocked into the water, and it was aggravating.

On the other hand, jumps were more inconsistent than I’d like. Sometimes, the first jump would not go as high as usual, or the long jump wouldn’t actually go far or fast. Both of these led to my death more times than I could count, and it happened enough to feel like a consistent issue. With games that require platforming, precise movement is very important, but the inconsistency made it more difficult to enjoy jumping around and platforming to find the rest of the collectibles.

Despite this, the emphasis on platforming throughout the world can be fun. When everything clicks, and we are able to do a long jump to find shortcuts, it just feels great. I wish those inconsistencies didn’t exist, because without them, I would really love jumping around a lot more.

As I mentioned, there are a lot of collectibles to find in Duskfade, and some of them feed into progression. We will primarily be picking up shards, which are the currency we’re going to use for everything, but we can also find upgrade gears to unlock our abilities, and a bunch of items for our aesthetics, including yarn to create new outfits and ingots to change how our blade looks. While I am someone who prefers focusing on stuff to upgrade my character instead of aesthetics, there are enough items to find in enjoyable ways that keep me coming back for more. Some of them even require later abilities, invoking a Metroidvania-esque feel for backtracking to get everything.

Duskfade - Steam Deck Performance

Duskfade is an interesting one on the Steam Deck. It does have a dedicated Steam Deck preset, but it didn’t default to it for me. Still, the preset is decent, with a good combination of visual quality and performance. However, it fluctuates in battle and cutscenes, so if you’re going to use this preset, you will need to lock it to 30 FPS for the smoothest experience.

And honestly, this might be the best way to experience the game. The preset seems to be resting between the Medium and High presets, and settling on the Balanced Image Fidelity setting with Medium Shadows. There are most likely some other settings that aren’t accessible and are being changed, but the Steam Deck preset has the best balance for performance. We can also bring up the Image Fidelity setting to Quality for a little boost to the image, but it does drain more.

I tried playing the game on the Low preset to see if we could push framerate, and while it does stick at 50 FPS pretty often, there are still a good chunk of areas that will drop into the 40s and 30s. Cutscenes in particular are quite heavy, so I would expect those to drop as well. Ultimately, the sacrifices to visual quality don’t justify the fluctuating performance increase, so I would just stick to 30 with higher quality.

And by sticking to 30 FPS, we get decent battery life. The drain will stick below 15W, except for cutscenes that will go to 20W-22W, and we will get an average of around 3 to 3.5 hours of battery life.

Conclusion

Duskfade is a love letter to the classic PS2 Action Platformers, and does a great job of living up to it. While it wasn’t what I was expecting, it was definitely nostalgic in its feel, with a solid story and great combat that gets better as time goes on. The movement and platforming aren’t as consistent as I’d like, but I still found a lot of enjoyment exploring the beautiful world.

Despite the compromise that is needed, it’s quite playable on the Steam Deck, and I had a good time with it. Playing at 30 FPS didn’t bother me as much, especially with the better visuals that we have. So, at the end of the day, it’s an experience worth taking on the go.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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The Mermaid Mask was provided by SFB Games for review. Thank you!

The Mermaid Mask accomplished something I did not know was possible: this made me enjoy detective games again. Developed by SFB Games, the brilliant minds behind Crow Country and Detective Grimoire, Mermaid Mask had already built up some hype ahead of its release, and it really pays off.

I’m not particularly good at detective puzzle games, nor am I that experienced with them. I enjoyed The Drifter last year; however, at the time, I found it the new standard all point-and-click puzzle games should be held up against. After playing The Mermaid Mask, we might just have a new yardstick!

With three highly successful projects already under their belt, The Mermaid Mask had many people curious to see if SFB Games could do it again. I wasn’t aware of this until later, but Mask is the third in the series after Detective Grimoire and Tangle Tower. I haven't played the previous two games, so it may feel strange to dive into this third iteration. Don’t worry, though, as this is mostly standalone. The Mermaid Mask is not only an excellent game in its own right, but it might be a sleeper Game of the Year.

Players take on the role of Grimoire, a supernatural detective who, alongside his partner Sally, is called to a derelict island to deal with a puzzling murder. The victim is found dead within a locked room, and this is just the tip of the iceberg for the duo. The Mermaid Mask makes an awesome first impression with some great visuals, voice acting, and characters. Right off the bat, the game just oozes charm, and I love how our detective team works together. Sally is brilliant yet a little scatterbrained, and Grimoire’s sense of humor blends beautifully.

Each room in this submarine feels unique. It might be the weirdest submarine I have ever seen, but it is a great example of worldbuilding in The Mermaid Mask. It’s a tiny slice of a much larger world, but it made me want to see more of it. There’s even interactivity in the ‘Clues’ section, where every clue has full 3D modeling and can be viewed from any angle.

I also must commend the writing. The characters are well written and likable, with great voice acting and dialogue. Everyone involved has done an amazing job bringing each persona to life. It’s been a while since I've laughed so much with a video game, rather than laughing at something stupid the game did.

Moving on to the gameplay, I was pleasantly surprised by how solid it was. I’ve found many point-and-click games struggle to deliver interesting gameplay, usually relying on weak puzzle design to survive. Fortunately, the Mermaid Mask does a great job overall. Naturally, puzzles are the meat and potatoes of this genre, and they are deliciously creative. They are also very difficult on occasion, and remember how bad I am at puzzles? Fortunately, there are optional hints. Finding the culprit involves real detective work: interviewing suspects, cross-examinations, and interviews. It is all compelling stuff, and honestly, more detective games should do this.

I love how The Mermaid Mask leaves things to the player, as too many of these point-and-click games hold the player’s hand to the point of wiping their arse. However, I’ll admit I spent many parts of the game stumped on how to proceed. I ended up flailing around every location like a gibbon throwing poo around. I don’t find this a fault with the game itself, but more on my lack of intelligence with puzzle games!

Overall, The Mermaid Mask is excellent, with only a couple of minor issues, which were the performance issues. The fully animated detective interviews and the clues menu can get pretty intensive and greatly ramp up power usage even on more powerful systems.

The Mermaid Mask - Steam Deck Performance

The Mermaid Mask is Verified on the Steam Deck, with ProtonDB providing a Platinum rating. While the Steam Deck verification process is still a weird duck, they got it right this time. The Mermaid Mask is a lovely experience on the Deck, despite no settings to tinker with.

The game has full controller support, with the mouse being controlled by the left joystick to access everything on the screen. There’s no way to remap controls, but I was able to access everything I needed.

Performance is solid overall, but The Mermaid Mask is surprisingly intensive in places. Most of the gameplay runs at a full 90FPS without many hiccups, but a few scenes hit both the framerate and battery hard. Some conversations with the suspects, the animated cutscenes during ‘The Night of the Murder’, and inspecting the clues, for example, all saw some big frame drops, and the power draw really ramps up. Therefore, it is hard to work out an average power draw.

Recommended Settings

I found a 50FPS/50hz framerate/refresh rate lock, native resolution, and native TDP to be the best sweet spot for the smoothest experience. During standard gameplay, I found the power draw around 8 watts, but the heavier scenes ramped up the voltage. In the worst-case scenario, I saw it spike to over 16 watts! These sequences don’t last for long, but it is something worth mentioning. Average battery life is difficult to estimate with this much variance, but I would expect around 4 hours on the Steam Deck OLED as a rough ballpark.

Accessibility

The Mermaid Mask is available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish - Latin America, and Traditional Chinese. Only English has full audio, however.

The accessibility features in the game are somewhat lacking. You can change the screen resolution, volume, toggle subtitles, and limit the framerate in the main options. There are a couple of nice gameplay tweaks, such as highlighting interactable areas and turning on HD font, but otherwise there isn’t much else. There is currently no way to change keybindings or controller buttons.

Conclusion

The Mermaid Mask is that wonderful blend of mechanics, setting, and storytelling that all just works, to quote a certain Bethesda bloke. While it is ‘just a point-and-click puzzle game’, it is much greater than the sum of its parts, and I loved almost everything about it.

The performance can suffer a little bit during the heavier scenes, especially on the Steam Deck, but apart from that, I struggled to think of any downsides for The Mermaid Mask. The puzzles are pretty challenging, but even if you are terrible at them like I am, the great writing and intriguing characters are more than enough to make up for it. I won’t be surprised if the game is in my Top 10 games come December!

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

ReStory was provided by tinyBuild for review. Thank you!

I have played many simulation games in my day, but one of the first that really hooked me was PC Building Simulator. There was something about taking orders, putting PCs together piece by piece, and cleaning them that just felt so enjoyable. Not many games have reached the highs that I felt when putting a PC together, but no other game has come close quite like ReStory. The way it touches on nostalgia, combined with its visuals, creates a repairing simulation experience that I found myself enjoying and continually returning to.

Unlike other similar games, ReStory charts its own path by evoking nostalgia in a gorgeous-looking package. We opened up our repair shop smack in the middle of Japan during the mid-2000s. Because of that, we will be operating on devices that my generation and older grew up with. This includes the PSP, PS1, Xbox, DS, Motorola Flip Phones, BlackBerrys, and even genuine ATARI consoles. Most of these have different names and slightly different looks, so they don’t step on the toes of the IP holders, but the ATARI devices are licensed and genuine.

This is quite possibly the biggest reason why I fell in love with the game. Here I was, taking apart a knockoff PSP, unscrewing its UMD drive, cleaning it, and putting it back together. There’s something so satisfying about working with these devices that are iconic and meaningful to my upbringing. Even if I was continually working on the same type of device for jobs, that satisfaction didn’t fade. I actually felt accomplished as I memorized which parts go where and optimized my workflow to take it apart and put it back together as quickly as possible.

There’s a solid variety of products to work with. As much as I love video games and classic phones, it was cool to start working with flashlights, walkie-talkies, kettles, and even robot dogs. It has a nice variety that really shines in the game's opening hours. We start off with a couple of phones, then work our way through the other products we can fix. This then expands to painting, hacking, upgrading, and soldering, which does spice up the gameplay a bit. And thanks to the visuals, it’s very satisfying to take them apart, clean them, and see their inner workings.

However, even with the new products and mechanics, I still found it a little monotonous. I understand that’s the point of these types of games, since we are working with the same products and constantly repairing them, but I found myself getting into a cycle of making more money that didn’t really change. When I was looking to get more expensive licenses or upgrades, I found myself working on the same few devices that would get me the most money. I found almost no motivation to go back to the older devices because they only made me 20,000-30,000 yen, whereas I could find a few others that would give me 80,000-90,000. I also almost never checked online orders, since repairing and selling devices became much more profitable.

I’ll admit, there is something very satisfying about buying broken products and scalping them for pieces until I have enough to put together a full product and sell it, but that takes time. There’s also a neat competition mode, which I do like because it’s fast-paced, but I also found little motivation because it didn’t make nearly as much money. No matter what was thrown at me, I almost always found myself in the same cycle of picking 2-3 devices to focus on to repair and sell on the market to make money.

Luckily, the cast of characters and setting are quite possibly the most redeeming qualities of the game. Games like this don’t usually have an overarching story, or at least one that isn’t notable. ReStory is different. The storyline isn’t the most original, but it was still enjoyable with an interesting lineup of customers to meet and choices that do change aspects of the story. It wasn’t long before I found myself starting to fall in love with the househusband yakuza and Yui.

I always find myself excited to see who was going to appear next, even when I got lost regarding what was happening to the town. While there were definitely some moments where I understood what was happening, it would start to become a little difficult to follow. I started to get confused about which characters were related to each other, who was staying with whom, and what I was fighting for. I also ended up pissing off a rival repair company, but I was tasked with repairing products for them, so I was a little confused. It was enjoyable when it all clicked, but there were definitely moments when I was not sure exactly what was going on.

ReStory: Chill Electronics Simulator - Steam Deck Performance

As for playing ReStory on the Steam Deck, there are a few mixed feelings I have. It’s definitely playable, and with recent updates, I’ve started to enjoy it a bit more. However, there are still some compromises and issues that remain, so I could see a good chunk of these being fixed with future updates.

My biggest woe is controller support. When I was reviewing the game, it didn’t have controller support yet, so I got used to the keyboard and mouse control scheme. It was janky and hard to control at times, but it worked. After a few updates, controller support was added, though it isn’t as clean as I would’ve liked.

While moving the cursor and rotating the device is more precise and streamlined, it can still feel like a chore to move around. Looking to the left and right of our desk requires us to move our cursor all the way to the left or right of the screen, and on the default settings, it moves way too slowly. It’s great for making fine-tuned adjustments when repairing devices, but I wish the cursor moved faster when we aren’t repairing. There are also some minor adjustments that could’ve made navigation easier, like using the shoulder buttons to switch tabs when we’re using the computer or shortcuts to pick up certain tools for repair. These adjustments could make using the gamepad much easier and make the entire entirety of the UI more accessible.

As for performance, it’s playable, but it has some very odd issues. For instance, no matter what the setting, battery drain will rise. There are either CPU or GPU spikes from just standing still, and they happen at weird times. If we aren’t capping the framerate, the GPU will spike. If we are capping the framerate, the CPU will spike. This can happen whether we use the in-game framerate cap or through SteamOS.

The only way to get around this is to also set a TDP limit, but there may be some drops here and there. Still, for a game like this, it’s better than trying to play at 30 FPS on low settings and still get a whopping 23W battery drain.

This was a weird game to optimize for, and I expected to have multiple recommended groups of settings for this. However, the behavior is so odd that I couldn’t justify playing it any other way. Setting the game to Low without any FPS cap will ultimately be the best way to play. There is no frame time instability, while the game regularly sticks to 60 FPS, with some minor dips to 57 or 58. Yes, the battery drain will be massive, but at least it will be smooth, stable, and look ok.

We could set the graphical quality up to Medium and still get above 30 FPS, but I didn’t find the best improvement from Low to be worth playing below 60. High can fluctuate even more, and again, not massive improvements over the smoother edges of some devices and props in our workshop.

I expected better performance for a game like this, but it was disappointing how many odd drops there were.

The game does support cloud saves, but it carries over the settings as well. This means that if we try to play the game on a desktop PC after playing on Deck, the resolution will still be 1280x800 and the graphical quality will be on Low.

Conclusion

ReStory is an enjoyable electronics repair simulator that excels at setting and nostalgia-inducing products to repair. It was so fulfilling being able to work on old devices I've come up with, like PSPs, DS, BlackBerrys, and Atari consoles, and the mid-2000s Japan setting really sets the mood nicely. The cast of characters is great, and the story is decent when it isn’t confusing, but it’s very easy to fall into a repetitive cycle that shuts out a lot of the variety that comes from all the devices we can work on. It’s not necessarily bad, and there can still be some enjoyment, but I never felt compelled to utilize all of the features the game offers and just focus on the few products that make me the most money.

Performance on the Steam Deck was also disappointing. I expected more flexibility with the less-detailed visuals and static workshop, but I was met with CPU/GPU spikes and frame time issues. It’s still playable, but it will require a compromise on battery life and visual quality.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu was provided by Nacon for review. Thank You!

Horror games aren't usually my jam, so I was a bit nervous when picking up The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu, promising to be a Lovecraftian-inspired horror game mixed with first-person extraction-style gameplay. Select your expedition, head off in a boat, get as much loot as you can, and escape before the forest claims you.

While The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu can be played with up to 4 players in co-op, I was doing this one solo, and I was given an AI companion to assist me in my expeditions. I'll start right away by saying that you probably want to be playing this one in co-op. You can play the game solo, but the AI in the game is... a bit dumb.

A cart accompanies your members on their expedition to deposit the loot you find, as well as help guide you somewhat if you get lost thanks to a salt trail left by the cart. The problem is the AI pathfinding in the game leaves much to be desired. Your NPC companion, the cart, and even the enemies sometimes don't seem to know where you are, or where they should be going. The cart tries to follow you, but I often found that it had pathed far away from me. The NPC companion also sometimes goes astray, which is problematic in a game where you need allies to defend you against certain enemies.

This also makes it pretty difficult to play the game solo. You're expected to reach a quota for acquired loot per expedition, but collecting enough loot solo is very difficult, as your NPC companion rarely finds loot by themselves, as another player would. You also only get granted 1 AI companion, which is strange when the game can be played by up to 4 players in co-op.

The gameplay itself has good and bad points. The "horror" aspect of the game mostly takes the form of how your environment plays with you. The forest is "alive", and your actions will determine how it reacts to you. Creating a lot of noise will cause you to get attacked sooner and more aggressively. The enemies you'll encounter and this dynamic way of handling it all is definitely the highlight of the gameplay, and creates a sense of urgency that you need to "get in and get out" of the expedition.

The combat feels OK, but is fairly basic. You have a couple of melee weapons and a couple of firearms, depending on the mission you embark on. Firing a weapon is mapped to the A Button, or Spacebar by default, which is very strange. Gear, meanwhile, is selected for you by the game; you don't get to choose for yourself, which is a shame. And although you can upgrade your gear, everything you take with you on a mission gets returned at the end of the mission, so you'll need to upgrade all your gear over and over.

This lack of agency transfers into the range of movement you have in the game, namely, you can't jump, nor can you even vault over objects. There are very few situations where you can do anything but walk and sprint; mostly ladders and certain ledges can be interacted with, but you often find yourself impeded by small ledges that your character cannot surmount, resulting in you having to take a lengthy, frustrating detour to reach a place right in front of you.

The story is told in the form of narrated logbooks that you collect as you progress deeper towards the island; they are quite lengthy (usually a couple of minutes each) and can be optionally played when you finish an expedition, so you can technically skip the story entirely if you wish, just like the developers skipped any sense of gear or character progression you might want in the game.

One area where The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu does shine is the environment. The game does a great job of presenting a dense jungle to you, while still leaving room for somewhat varied environments within that jungle. Thick foliage and rocky cliffs reduce vision to the point where you often can't see more than a few feet ahead of you, leaving room for ambushes and making you feel constantly on edge about what might be around the corner. Add in some dense fog on certain expeditions, and you really do feel like you are on an abandoned, cursed island where you don't belong.

The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu seems to suffer from poor optimization, even on my RX 9070 XT PC. Playing on High settings at 1440p with FSR on Quality mode, I was unable to maintain 60 FPS, with GPU usage stuck at 100%. Given that the game isn't hugely impressive graphically, that was disappointing.

Also, because the game is primarily designed as a co-op experience, the game cannot be paused, even in solo games, which can be awkward as expeditions often take around 30 minutes to complete.

The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu - Steam Deck Performance

While The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu does carry the "Unsupported" rating on Steam, I believe you can technically play the game on the Steam Deck. Controls work fine, although inventory management was a little fiddly, but that's just the way the game plays. The game also does run at 1280x800, taking full advantage of the Steam Deck's display.

As for performance, the game does struggle on the Steam Deck, but with low settings and AMD FSR on Ultra Performance mode, you can get the game to run at 30 FPS for the majority of the time. The visuals aren't great, but it is playable.

Specific areas can drop the frame rate into the high-20s, especially when the weather is dense fog, but most of the game did run at 30 FPS. Whether that's playable or not is up for you to decide. Personally, I found it playable but slightly unpleasant, and if you do have any other device to play the game on, you should probably use that instead.

Power draw was on the higher side, given that the Steam Deck is pushed constantly by the game. Expect a draw of around 19W-21W, thus giving us a battery life of around 2.5 hours on a Steam Deck OLED and around 1.5 hours on a Steam Deck LCD. Temperatures were around 70C throughout.

Accessibility:

The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu supports some accessibility features. There are subtitles for voiced dialogue. Also, when you first boot the game, you will be asked to choose between Cinematic and Normal camera modes. Normal reduces certain visual effects such as camera rotation and camera lag, so if you suffer from motion sickness, choose that. You can also adjust camera shaking, FoV, and the size of subtitles.

Conclusion:

Interesting concepts and a solid presentation don't do enough to save The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu from a sense of being rushed, with its lackluster gameplay and poor progression.

Performance on the Steam Deck is rather poor. It is playable, but you'll need to make serious visual compromises and expect occasional dips below 30 FPS. The controls do work well, though.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

Beast of Reincarnation was provided by Fictions for review. Thank you!

When I first heard of Beast of Reincarnation, I was intrigued. Not only did it look and sound like a game that was right up my alley, but it was being developed by Game Freak, the team behind the Pokémon series. I know they have made games outside of Pokémon before, but since that is their main series, I wasn’t sure what to expect for this. This looked like a massive undertaking for the team that is known for the Pokémon games, and while there are some little hiccups and predictable areas, I had a blast with Beast of Reincarnation in the balance of its gameplay elements and story to create a compelling experience that I would happily keep coming back to.

In Beast of Reincarnation, we play as Emma, a purifier who has been tasked by the Administrator to defeat the Beast of Reincarnation. This beast comes back every 100 years, and we have the special ability to absorb Malefacts and gain their power. So, we go on a journey to find and defeat the powerful Malefacts, called Nushi, to gain their power and use it to defeat the beast and save the capital.

However, the story is much more gray than it appears, and it sucked me in. I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic settings, and this scratched my itch. The world is basically demolished, and humans are now living in colonies throughout the land. Back in the past, humans tried to separate their emotions, which led to them becoming the animals known as Malefacts that now eat people. Other humans who wanted to survive separated their souls and put them into mechanical Golems, which still roam around the world today.

I was pretty hooked in as soon as I saw the setting, as I am a sucker for post-apocalyptic worlds, but there were definitely some twists that I didn’t see coming in a story that is a little tough to follow at times. We are drip-fed information until the last 85% of the game, when we get an entire history lesson that brings everything together. The little bit of info leading up to the last 15% is still satisfying, but as soon as I heard all about the history of the world, I was a little disappointed that more information didn’t come earlier.

One of the reasons I loved the story so much is because of how perfectly the world shows it. Japan has been devastated by the Miasma and Malefacts, and we can see it throughout the different prefectures that we play through. Seeing the overgrown forest, bushes and tree roots winding across buildings, rusty colonies where the last humans gather, and signs of those trying to survive throughout all of it are apparent throughout the world.

It’s both haunting and stunning, with the unique locations of each chapter painting a picture of a world that truly stood no chance. Understanding the past of the game does provide a new outlook on how the world is right now and why, so it’s definitely worth playing until the end.

The combat in Beast of Reincarnation feels like a great combination of a soulslike and more generic Action RPG, taking the best mechanics of both and combining them into one. The actual attacking, parrying, blocking, and dodging feel like they came straight out of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, but it doesn’t feel as punishing. Parrying is a little easier, dodging covers more distance, and if we die, we don’t lose any currency we need to increase our attributes. Instead, we get experience based on the enemies we defeat and level up in a more traditional manner, which I really appreciate.

In the beginning, Emma can feel a little monotone in her combat, but this does open up in different ways. We have our standard attack, as well as being able to block, parry, dodge, and use a ranged weapon. Even though we can find different swords throughout the game, and they all have different effects that activate when you parry, it doesn’t change the way she moves or how she fights. So, we basically only use swords to fight up close, and that doesn’t change much. We also get a special attack that can slow down time so we can get in some extra hits.

However, as we continue playing, her combos open up. After each of her four sword swings, we have the option of pressing a button to go into a different combo. We unlock these as we beat bosses and absorb their powers, and can end up dealing with massive amounts of damage and bringing up their break bar to more quickly stun. Using these combos, or Blade Arts, uses the Entanglement Gauge, which goes up as we attack enemies or unlock skills that help bring it up quicker. This will be the majority of combat, though we will ultimately unlock other moves to utilize, like a slam from the air or using our hair to attack.

It definitely feels a little simple at first, but the combat is so tight and fast that I always felt engaged. Thanks to the slightly larger parrying window compared to other Action RPGs, each fight felt enjoyable despite the simplicity. However, that’s only when we’re looking at Emma, and we still have our faithful companion Koo.

One of the biggest things that shocked me about the combat was how essential it is to utilize both Emma and Koo to really overcome tough enemies and bosses. Immediately, I’m someone who tends to invest all of my time and skill points into my playable character, usually ignoring the ones that I can’t control directly. However, Koo started to feel vital to overcoming enemies and setting myself up to blow through their health.

Game Freak touted Beast of Reincarnation as having a fusion between real-time and turn-based combat. I’m not sure if I would describe it that way, but that doesn’t make the combat lesson enjoyable or unique. The system feels very similar to Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s combat, where time will slow down so we can order our ally to attack.

However, Koo’s attacks are more than just for dealing damage. Some of his skills focus damage, while others can break enemies to open them up to dealing huge damage, and a majority of them will help inflict debuffs or status ailments. Helping to inflict those ailments became an essential part of combat and was key to taking down bosses and elite enemies.

The balance of utilizing both Emma and Koo didn’t really click until later in the game as I started to unlock other ways to inflict ailments. I started to plan out my strategies, figuring out which weaknesses enemies have and utilizing the best skills and debuffs to appropriately strike them down. Even if the brake bar isn’t full, fully inflicting ailments cannot only damage them over time, but also stun them for a little while as well. The satisfaction of successfully doing this, and using a combo to deal a ton of damage in one go, always felt great.

And this was further amplified by the skill system. We will be getting tons of skill points as we kill enemies, and we can use those to enhance our combos, Koo’s skills, and give ourselves new abilities. Some of these are small and won’t see huge differences, like making some of our skills slightly faster, but there are some really helpful ones like regaining health and the entanglement gauge. There are also some essentials that I would get to as early on as possible, like generating cloaking grass around us when we crouch to more easily stealth kill enemies, or having Koo execute a second foe whenever we either perform a finisher or stealth kill. These end up costing a lot, but thankfully, we can get scale points relatively fast with almost every enemy we kill.

The tree unlocks as our attributes go up, which is directly tied to the leveling system. Whenever we level up, we can upgrade one attribute, which will affect our stats and increase things like our health, attack, defense, skill power, and critical rate. Once we reach a certain amount, we can increase our base skills to unlock the rest of the tree.

And that’s not the only way to increase our stats! There’s a whole Spirit Stone system that can push them further up, as well as give us some passive effects similar to Monster Hunter’s Jewel system. If we have multiples of the same passive effect, its power will increase. And every time we go back to our home base and rest for the night, we can make food that will permanently increase our stats. I really liked this aspect because it encouraged me to stop and go back to eat new food to push my power further up pretty consistently. It also gave me a reason to utilize the very tiny plant/chicken growing system so I could keep making new foods that will increase my stats more.

We can also enhance our equipment using the Beast of Reincarnation's currency, Amber. We can get more of this just by killing enemies or finding it throughout the world, and then we’ll have to sit down at a camp to enhance it. The system works, but I was a little bit annoyed by how slowly it unlocked. I would get a ton of materials and Amber, but I couldn’t use any of it because I had to collect specific items to upgrade our home base. These items were scattered throughout the chapters, and I couldn’t fully upgrade my weapons until Chapter 6, even though I had enough amber in Chapter 2.

On that note, using materials we collect to craft stuff is automatic and a little bit confusing. Koo will just make his own equipment using the materials we find automatically, but for the longest time, I thought I would be able to use them or use them directly to craft. It’s not a very negative thing, but it was a little confusing.

It all really works in blends together seamlessly to keep the gameplay loop going and make it feel worthwhile. I thoroughly enjoyed grinding for skill points and experience, getting new Spirit Stones to equip, finding new foods and seeds to bring back to homebase, and eating all of the food I can to bring my stats up. It was engaging and exciting, and while I have had trouble seeing stat improvements while actually in combat, I could clearly see Emma and Koo getting more powerful.

However, there are definitely a few issues that popped up as I was playing. As I got to the game, I very quickly noticed a lot of repeated attack patterns. Enemies themselves did look somewhat different, at least when it came to the Golems, but their attack patterns remained largely the same, which made them very predictable and easy to parry and defeat. This extended to bosses, where a few of them are reused in later chapters. The attack patterns never got too complicated, nor did they have a ton of variety. Because of that, I was able to defeat most bosses in 1-2 tries. I was playing on the Normal difficulty, so we could say it’s a greater difficulty for more of a challenge, but I still don’t think it should be that easy in general. It didn’t ruin the experience nearly as much for me because I really enjoyed the combat, but it was very noticeable and obvious.

And apart from eating and growing crops, there wasn’t much reason to go back to home base. Yes, we could build our affinities with our team so they research new skills and recipes quicker, but this can happen extremely fast and be maxed out before getting to the 50% mark. Otherwise, everything you can do in there is something you could do sitting down at a campsite in the world, which made the process feel a little bit more draining.

On the bright side, running around in the world and exploring is great. Not only can we lift ourselves up into the air quite high, allowing us to assassinate enemies from above more easily, but if we are on a rooftop or high platform, we can create a small bridge to jump further. There’s a lot of verticality in the movement, which I really liked. Koo will also automatically find items and enemies around us, so as long as we are exploring, we won’t miss a thing to collect. I appreciate this, since that meant I didn’t have to investigate every nook and cranny to make sure I got everything that I wanted to.

Beast of Reincarnation - Steam Deck Performance

Now, let’s talk about how Beast of Reincarnation is running on the Steam Deck. I reported months ago that the game would be getting a Steam Deck version. In a way, this was further confirmed to me after I received my review copy. However, it wasn’t ready when I first got the key, so I primarily played through my desktop. However, there were a couple of updates, and I can’t say that the game has gotten better to the point where I would consider it borderline playable.

The game is very CPU-heavy, which initially led to a lot of stuttering and drops. It was initially horrible to just run around. With the new patches, most of that is eliminated, and while there are still some stutterers here and there, it’s nowhere near as bad as it was before, and I could see myself playing it this way if I had no other way to play.

We default to the Low graphical quality with FSR 1 upscaling on Performance. I was a bit surprised, considering FSR 1 has generally poor image quality compared to its newer versions, but I’d still say it looks pretty good. And because of that, most fights will stick to 30 FPS. There might be some here and there that drop a little bit, but it wasn’t enough to stop me from enjoying the fights.

This is a tough one. On one hand, I do find it very enjoyable, and the performance is great for the kind of game it is. On the other hand, there are still some issues like the drops, needing low-quality settings, and somewhat blurry visuals from FSR 1. This is the game I would give 2.5/5 stars for its Steam Deck performance, but because of the type of game it is, and how I would consider it playable, I will round up. It’s a great way to do some grinding for skill points and find everything on the map, but I could see myself playing through the entire game this way.

Conclusion

Beast of Reincarnation came out of left field for me. I didn’t expect the developers of Pokémon to hit all the right notes in an Action RPG that invokes combat from soulslikes into a more digestible format that will be accessible to more people. The fast-paced combat is enjoyable; Koo’s skills make it dynamic, and the abilities we can unlock can change it up completely. The repeated attack patterns and narrative structure are some sore spots, but nothing changes the fact that I loved this game and was happily able to look past the problems because of all of the good.

Despite the compromises that need to be made, I was quite happy with its performance on the Steam Deck. The game is filled with pretty large open areas, so I would consider it performing well for the type of game it is. Ultimately, even with the visual downgrades and slight stuttering, I could see myself playing through the entire game on the go, so it’s one I can happily recommend. Just be very aware that it’s not going to be a perfect experience, but it will be a playable one.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

Big Walk was provided by Panic for review. Thank you!

There have been many different co-op games that I have played, and a lot of them are extremely fun. However, it has been a while since I’ve seen one that not only intrigued me, but challenged me in more ways than one. That’s what made me so excited when I first saw Big Walk. Not only did it look like the puzzles required true communication and teamwork, but it also looked like there was no handholding, which requires a lot of strategy in planning. Narrative plate, I can confidently say that it’s quite possibly one of the best co-op games I’ve ever played.

Big Walk is a simple game in its premise, but that simplicity becomes complex as soon as we see what we are up against. You are running around on a giant island, going to different locations to complete puzzles. There’s no fast travel and no handholding; you have to use your wit, memory, and brains to work with friends and figure out the secret behind completing the puzzles. Some may seem easy, some will be challenging, but almost all of them will be fun.

The game is designed from the ground up for co-op, so you will need at least one other person to play. And it makes sense as soon as you start seeing the puzzles themselves. Each one requires some form of coordination and planning, whether it's making hand gestures, having to vocalize directions, or stacking on top of each other. However, despite how different each puzzle is, they all have one thing in common: you will need competent partners.

The variety and strategic thinking are what elevated the experience past other co-op games. It gave me a similar feeling to Portal 2’s co-op when we go to completely new chambers that added in a new element, whether it be goo or light bridges. Instead of just a new element here or there, each puzzle in Big Walk felt like a completely new challenge. We could go from one puzzle where we have to direct someone with a blindfold through when an obstacle course, to another puzzle where we have to come up with a strategy to coordinate which light to turn on through three people, to another where one person has to sit in a chair and can’t hear, and the other others have to figure out why there are six microphones behind them.

Some of these definitely required some trial and error, but all of them felt rewarding to complete. With each one being so wildly different, we were trained to think outside the box and experiment. I’ve played a lot of puzzle games where there may be 80 puzzles, and they are all split into 10 and have a specific theme to them with a familiar base mechanic. While the mechanics in Big Walk are fundamentally unchanged, every puzzle utilizes them in different ways, while pushing our critical thinking and problem-solving to the limit. And at the end of the day, the joy of seeing the confetti come down when completing it always gives me a sense of satisfaction.

I also wanna praise the sound design and voice communication systems put in place. It’s extremely cool to walk through different landscapes and have our voices change with the proximity chat depending on the area we are in. If we’re in a tunnel, there might be a bit of an echo, or if we are behind the door, our voices might be muffled. This is a game where using the voice chat is essential to the experience, and trying to go around that through Discord or other calls defeats the purpose of what makes the teamwork so essential.

The structure of the game is also quite interesting. You can play with two, three, or four or more people, which is an option you choose as soon as you boot up and host the game. Depending on which option you choose, the puzzles will change to be compatible with that number of people. There are some puzzles that will change themselves to require more people to complete them depending on the options you choose. For example, there was a puzzle where we had to use hand gestures to create a pattern, and in the 4+ mode, it required one person to make the gesture, one person to relay the message, and one person to place the pattern in the correct order. However, when choosing the two-player mode, a random window will appear in between the first and last player to cut out the middleman. And yes, even if you start a game with four people, you can boot into that same save with the two-player option, and the puzzles will change.

Completing puzzles gives us these gourds, and we have to take these gourds to one of four towers. With each tower needing five gourds, we have to place the ones we have in the tower, then move on to the next one. Once all five are in there, you’ll get a key, which can expand the island and unlock shortcuts to get around quicker.

This leads to what I would consider the weakest part of Big Walk: exploration. I know it’s in the name of the game; you are going on a long walk, but it was also a big drain. I’ll admit, it was very satisfying to use the map and figure out where we were and where we needed to go by using the landmarks and tracking our position. However, apart from that, it just wasn’t as enjoyable.

One of the things I love about the game is the lack of handholding and difficulty for its puzzles, which usually offer little to no clues about how to complete them. That same realistic difficulty is why I dislike the exploration. Getting lost from the pack without a solid plan can completely waste everybody’s time. It can be catastrophic, and if you don’t plan accordingly, it can really disrupt the flow of the game.

That kind of planning is essential, because we can only carry one thing in our hands at a time. So, if you’re going to stick to a group that splits up, it’s imperative that one of you each has a walkie-talkie to coordinate. You could also shoot up a flare at the tower when you reach it to signal the other people, which does the job and we can see it from pretty far, but there are many ways to find each other once you get lost.

The issue is the amount of time it takes to actually find each other. We walk pretty slow, which means that if there’s a problem and we are notified, we’re going to have to walk back to where the other person is to regroup. Some of this might be absolved if you have the right tools, but that still means the person who is lost or the people who need to find the lost person need to make the trek. Either that or you could meet in the middle, but this still means everybody is going to be walking for some time.

This happened in our experience playing as well. We had a plan to split into two teams of two: one team would tackle a puzzle, while the other would bring the gourd back to the tower. However, one person got lost, and they didn’t have any other way to contact the other person. Despite that, they didn’t have a plan to meet at the tower, so the person with the gourd got to the tower and waited for the other person to show up, but they didn’t. So, he continued the plan and came to the puzzle that we were at. Five minutes after he arrived, a flare shot up at the tower. We tried to signal to the person with a light to show where we were, but he never arrived. This led him to walk around for about 20 minutes to try finding us, and even though we sent someone out to find and bring him, they couldn’t because he was looking for us as well.

Some of the issues can be avoided, like having a much larger group to reduce the time spent going back and forth, but it’s always going to result in someone or some group walking across the island. It’s possible that if the island wasn’t almost completely devoid of color, not counting the puzzles, it could be a more enjoyable walk, but that’s not the case. There are still some beautiful sites to see here and there, but they are few and far between. The majority of the island will be walking through trees and bushes, or getting stuck on rocks when you try to jump over them and impeding progress.

That uneven balance between the amount of time we spend in interesting puzzles and the amount of boring travel time makes it feel like there aren’t enough puzzles to go around. Even the Shortcuts can take a little time to get places; with a slow train and tunnels that take a good chunk of time to run through, you can just take a little too long to get around. Granted, there are some puzzles that are very close to each other, but add in the possibility of getting lost, and it becomes more of an issue. This also extends to when you boot the game again, since your starting point will always be the same. We can unlock shortcuts to get back to where we were a little quicker, but it does require some backtracking that could take some time if you aren’t sure where you’re going.

It’s a little weird to think that the Big Walk is one of the reasons I dislike the game. I love the puzzles, and the difficulty and lack of handholding, but that also contributes to the downtime between the puzzles that I didn’t like. There are some nice viewing spots and Dan’s areas where we can unlock new music to play through a radio we can take, but when we can only carry one item each, that precious space is better used for a walkie-talkie, map, or even a megaphone. A careful plan that everyone follows won’t be subjected to this issue, and I do love the careful planning it takes and the feeling when everyone follows it, but even when everyone falls into a tee, there’s still a lot of walking around that can feel quite draining.

Big Walk - Steam Deck Performance

Ahead of its release, Big Walk was given the Steam Deck Verified badge, though I would say this is another one where the badge can be misleading. The game is playable on the Deck, but it needs some modifications to the default graphical configuration to run well.

The default settings keep the game on High quality with 100% resolution scaling. The game looks nice like this, but as soon as we’re walking through Forest areas with lots of shadows, the framerate will drop below 30 FPS. It’s relatively fine when standing still, but the drops can be a bit obnoxious, especially as more of your friends join.

So, I have three configurations for playing Big Walk on the Deck: one that focuses on higher quality with shadows, and the other two focus on higher frame rate with lower quality and fewer shadows.

(All framerate comparison testing was performed walking the same path at the same time of day for the same period of time. The framerate was uncapped and captured using the same Steam Deck).

The Tests

I love Big Walk, but it felt like there was always some compromise on the Steam Deck. We could play at High with great Shadows, but the framerate would drop with more noticeable stuttering. While bringing it down to Medium fixed the stuttering and brought up the framerate, some of the shadows were gone, and the world could look a little ugly. However, the differences between the quality settings and framerates were immediate and drastic:

Low vs Medium vs High settings

We do have a render resolution scale that we can move as well, and while it can help, it didn't eliminate the issues. I was hoping sticking to High settings with 80% render resolution would be doable, but I felt those big stutters when walking around and a few areas where the framerate would still dip below 30 FPS. On top of that, a lower rendering scale on High would make those shadows flicker a lot.

So, this led me to make some tough decisions, but I am ultimately happy with the results.

This was a tough one to choose, but I ultimately went with lower quality and a higher framerate as my preference. By setting the graphical quality to Medium and bringing down the render resolution to 80%, we can get a pretty stable 40 FPS throughout. There is some obvious pop-in when walking around during the day, and some of the shadows are gone, but we can get a smoother framerate that is ultimately more stable than trying to play on High with the same 80% render resolution.

So, while the sacrifices are apparent, the stability and smoother gameplay make up for it. The world still looks pretty nice, especially in the right lighting, and with the shadows being gone, there was no extra flickering that felt overwhelming from the lower rendering scale.

Ultra Performance

If you really want to push performance, then you can bring the quality settings to Low, while keeping the rendering scale at 100%. Even more shadows will disappear, and the world won't look great, but the framerate increase is massive. So massive that we can comfortably play 90% of the game at 60 FPS. There are still some spots that will drop, especially when you are on top of a tower and looking around or on the Gondola, but it will stick to 60 when walking around and during puzzles. It's the smoothest experience we can get for sure.

Quality

Now, if you want to push the quality to High and play at 30 FPS, you can, but expect some drops and compromises to the rendering scale. You will need to bring it down to 70% for a more solid 30 FPS, but if you don't like the blurriness, 80% will do the job. It's not the greatest way to play, and I disliked the drops and stutters, but it definitely makes the world look better, and I like that.

Conclusion

Big Walk is an incredible game that truly hooked me in from the beginning. Each of the puzzles feels unique from each other and requires communication and planning, and completing each one felt so satisfying. The world itself is a little on the bland side, and there is a lot of walking that can get boring, especially towards the end where he needs to go back and forth to find the puzzles that you may not have completed. Still, that doesn’t change just how amazing the experiences are and how great it feels to work together in this way.

While it does need some compromises on the Steam Deck, it can run and work well. The microphone on the Deck is detected, and we can just speak directly into the device, so I consider it very playable.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

When Stellar Blade launched as a PS5 exclusive in 2024, it quickly became a massive hit. Unfortunately, much of the conversation surrounding the game focused on its Korean-inspired art style, attractive character designs, and eye-candy visuals rather than the quality of the game itself. But a memorable game needs more than good looks and hot chicks, and this is definitely a memorable game.

Stellar Blade follows Eve, an elite soldier sent to a ruined Earth to help humanity reclaim its home from the Naytiba, mysterious creatures that have driven mankind to the edge of extinction. Along the way, what starts as a simple mission to save humanity slowly unravels into a deeper mystery about the planet's past and the truth behind the war.

The game's story is built around religious themes, creation, and what it truly means to be human or machine. These are topics I usually enjoy, but unfortunately, Stellar Blade presents them in such a cliché and uninteresting way that the entire narrative ended up feeling like a wasted potential.

The narrative and presentation are easily Stellar Blade's weakest aspect. I'd even go as far as to say they're the main reason the game isn't considered a masterpiece. The dialogue often feels dull and emotionless, while many of the major story beats and plot twists are delivered in a way that feels extremely forced. Several important side characters are so poorly written that I eventually found myself skipping dialogue, something I very rarely do in any kind of game.

The pacing of conversations is often painfully slow, and the game's attempts to inject cute anime-inspired moments frequently feel awkward and out of place. Combined with the weak characterization and predictable storytelling, much of the narrative ended up feeling unintentionally cringeworthy, making it difficult for me to take the story seriously despite the interesting themes it tries to explore.

Fortunately, Stellar Blade more than compensates for its weak storytelling with outstanding gameplay.

It's best described as a souls-lite. It borrows many core elements from the souls-like formula, including campfires that function similarly to bonfires, character upgrades, challenging enemies, and a combat system heavily focused on parries and dodges. Unlike traditional souls-likes, however, it doesn't go out of its way to punish the player and even includes multiple difficulty options.

It also takes a very different approach to storytelling. Rather than dropping players into a mysterious world and relying on environmental storytelling and lore snippets, Stellar Blade follows a much more traditional narrative structure filled with lengthy cinematics and scripted story moments.

Personally, I prefer this approach. It creates a best-of-both-worlds experience, combining the satisfying combat and exploration of a souls-like with a more accessible and story-driven adventure. I've never been a fan of games that expect players to piece together the entire narrative through item descriptions and scattered lore, so the game's more direct storytelling worked better for me.

The combat in Stellar Blade was incredibly satisfying from start to finish. It combines fast-paced, combo-driven, hack-and-slash action with stylish slow-motion dodges and rewarding counterattacks. Unlocking new skills always felt meaningful, and experimenting with different moves and combo finishers remained enjoyable throughout the entire game.

The game offers a wide variety of special abilities suited for different situations, while successfully parrying and staggering enemies adds another layer of satisfaction to an already precise and responsive combat system. Boss fights are challenging, but they rarely feel unfair. Success often requires learning attack patterns, adapting to timing windows, and making smart use of your abilities, which adds a surprising amount of depth and strategy to every encounter.

There is a ranged combat option as well, featuring multiple ammo types and missiles, but it never really shines. Whenever the game forced me into ranged-only sections, I found myself missing the melee combat almost immediately, as those segments ended up being some of the weakest parts of the experience.

I feel like I have to mention Stellar Blade's minigames because it's rare to see this much variety done this well. While I'd still give the crown to Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, this is easily one of the strongest contenders I've seen in recent years.

The game features a surprisingly diverse selection of minigames, including photography challenges, a third-person rail shooter, tower defense segments, and much more. Better yet, they aren't just distractions thrown in for variety; they're genuinely fun and offer worthwhile rewards.

Fishing, however, deserves its own section. Stellar Blade features the best fishing minigame I've ever experienced in a video game. There are dozens of fish and collectibles to hunt down, plenty of opportunities to earn money, and a steady stream of rewards that make progression feel meaningful. As your fishing rank increases, you unlock everything from outfits and swimsuits to consumables and other useful items.

What surprised me the most was how engaging it remained even after many hours. I ended up spending nearly fifteen hours fishing throughout my playthrough, and somehow it never stopped being both challenging and enjoyable.

When it comes to gameplay, I have two huge disappointments. The biggest one is definitely the loot system. Exploration should be exciting, rewarding players with meaningful gear upgrades, unique equipment, or items that improve your character. Instead, most of the loot consists of small stat boosts, crafting materials, and various consumables hidden behind futuristic names that are difficult to get excited about.

As a result, opening chests rarely carries the sense of anticipation that I look for in exploration-focused games. Rather than wondering whether I'll discover a powerful new weapon, armor piece, or game-changing upgrade, I usually found myself collecting another tiny bubble of resource or minor upgrade component. Over time, this significantly reduced the excitement of exploring side paths and searching every corner of the map. I want weapons, not another boring "nano polymer exoblabla component."

Another issue I had with the game was its difficulty settings. There is no balance at all. Normal mode felt too easy for my taste, while Hard mode mostly increased enemy health to the point where some fights started to drag on for far too long. I don't mind dying in a few hits or having to learn tougher attack patterns, but spending several extra hours on every boss because of inflated health bars just isn't my idea of difficulty.

Graphics are a bit of a mixed bag in Stellar Blade. Character models, textures, and visual effects often look absolutely gorgeous, but the environments can feel surprisingly dated at times. Some landmarks and environmental assets have a low-detail look that occasionally made me feel like I was playing an older game with a modern graphics mod installed on top of it. Perhaps that's partly due to the game's use of Unreal Engine 4, which was already an uncommon choice for a major 2024 release. Nevertheless, the overall visual quality remains impressive, and the game still looks great despite running on an older engine.

The atmosphere is another area where the game excels. The game features a surprisingly diverse range of locations, and each one feels distinct and memorable. Whether you're exploring an underground facility, wandering through a massive desert, or walking through a crowded futuristic city, every area has its own identity and charm. Maintaining that sense of atmosphere across such different environments is difficult, but Stellar Blade pulls it off remarkably well.

Besides its attractive character designs, Stellar Blade is probably best known for its incredible soundtrack, and for good reason. The game is packed with futuristic, anime-inspired tracks that perfectly complement its world and atmosphere. In fact, I ended up adding a large portion of the soundtrack to my personal playlist. Every major area has its own distinct musical identity, and nearly every track manages to leave an impression. Music ended up being my favorite aspect of the entire game, and the overall vibe frequently reminded me of NieR: Automata, which is about the highest compliment I can give a soundtrack.

The sound design is equally impressive. Combat simply wouldn't feel the same without the satisfying audio feedback behind every perfect parry, dodge, and counterattack. The impact sounds, character reactions, and brutal finisher effects all contribute to making combat feel far more intense and rewarding.

Voice acting is another highlight. Despite the script often falling short, the cast does an admirable job bringing the characters to life, and their performances carry many scenes that otherwise wouldn't have had much emotional impact.

Overall, Stellar Blade delivers one of the strongest audio presentations I've experienced in years. From its soundtrack to its sound design and voice acting, the entire package feels remarkably polished and memorable. It has easily become one of the benchmarks I'll compare future games against.

Stellar Blade- Steam Deck Performance

Thanks to the clever usage of the older Unreal Engine 4, Stellar Blade is one of the best-looking and best-performing AAA titles to date, and offers a wide selection of presets to fit your needs.

By default, the game comes with a somewhat stable 60 FPS preset at the start. It looks extremely blurry, the environments look like they are from the 90s, and overall, it is not a pleasant experience visually. Also, when you get into demanding open-world areas such as the Great Desert or Wasteland, the stable 60 FPS becomes a dream, and it turns into a 40-60 FPS fluctuating experience.

The sad part is that the game uses a locked handheld preset that doesn't allow us to change most of the settings, but luckily, we can just add "SteamDeck=0 %command%" to its launch options, and everything should be unlocked.

The game only uses FSR 3.1 as its upscaling option, with optional TSR, and no matter what I tried, it looked VERY blurry. That's why I decided to inject FSR 4.1 via the Decky FrameGen Deck plugin through DLSS 4, and it worked quite well. I recommend everyone do so. It's not difficult to mod, and there are guides about it everywhere.

The DLSS 4 method made the game extremely crisp, with very few performance drawbacks. Therefore, it allowed me to make a 45 FPS locked preset that was somewhat stable. My settings are a mix of low, medium, and high settings that prioritize lowering demanding and low-impact settings while improving visual clarity when needed. You can see the exact settings on the right side of the article.

The only location that suffered major drops was the Great Desert, which is incredibly demanding across all presets. The frame rate will fluctuate between 30-45 FPS while you're there, but it's only a small part of the game, and it's not worth optimizing the entire game around one of the ten major locations. It's still highly playable, though it can be a minor annoyance.

You can play the game at a somewhat stable 60 FPS with the default settings, or you can crank the graphics close to their highest values and cap the game at 30 FPS. Stellar Blade simply scales very well depending on what you're looking for. You can be flexible with your settings, which is very rare for a big-budget title that looks this good.

I think this middle ground preset offers the best of both worlds, and it's what I personally prefer. You can see the visual difference between the default out-of-the-box settings and my FSR 4.1 preset on the slider below. It's a night and day difference.

Conclusion:

Despite its disappointing story, weak loot system, and some questionable design decisions, Stellar Blade never stopped being fun. The incredible combat, memorable boss fights, fantastic soundtrack, beautiful atmosphere, and surprisingly addictive side activities constantly gave me reasons to keep playing. While I don't think it reaches masterpiece status due to its narrative shortcomings, it absolutely deserves its place among the best action games released in recent years. If you're looking for satisfying combat and some of the best boss encounters the genre has to offer, Stellar Blade is an easy recommendation.

When it comes to the Steam Deck, Stellar Blade is another success story. The game scales remarkably well, giving players the freedom to choose between higher frame rates or improved visual quality depending on their preferences. The default settings are far too blurry for my taste, but with a few tweaks and an FSR 4 injection, the game becomes significantly sharper while maintaining excellent performance. Aside from occasional drops in the Great Desert, Stellar Blade delivers a consistently enjoyable handheld experience and stands as one of the most impressive AAA games currently playable on Steam Deck.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

Kusan: City of Wolves was provided by PQube for review. Thank you!

I still remember back in the day when Hotline Miami first launched. The combination of retro visuals, electric music, and fast-paced, brutal gameplay made it one of the best games I had ever played. It was one of the first games where I felt like something small could be significant, and compared to the AAA titles I was playing, Hotline Miami was definitely on the smaller side. I haven’t seen many games. Try to recreate the magic that was captured back then, but Kusan: City of Wolves has gone for it. It has the same visual style and quick action feel, and apart from some obnoxious enemies, gives a very familiar feeling that brought me right back to what I loved so much about these kinds of games.

The gameplay loop is almost identical to Hotline Miami, with a few key changes that not only change our play style, but completely change up our way of thinking to deal with all the enemies around us. We are still going through each gorgeous pixel map in the top-down view, with the goal of killing every enemy on that floor. We have an assortment of tools at our disposal, including a mechanical hand, knife, and guns, all of which have their own uses. And once we are done with each floor, we will move to the next one, get our score, and then get some currency that we can use later on.

There are two key points that really elevate Kusan above other games like it: tools and upgrades. Both of these really go hand-in-hand, since the tools that we have truly change up our style once we modify them.

For every enemy, excluding bosses, they will all die in one hit. Whether it be from our punch, knife, or gun, they will all go down. Punching is our closest line of defense, which can take down any enemy that is close to us. However, this opens us up to getting killed ourselves, which also only takes one hit. That’s where our knife and guns come in. We can throw our knife at enemies that are near, but still have some distance. It’s a great tool to use to dispatch of multiple enemies while you’re readjusting yourself to punch. So, we can punch someone in front of us, throw a knife behind us, punch someone else, pick up that knife again, punch, and throw. The system blends together so fluidly, and it works so well.

Punches can also be charged up to throw enemies and environmental objects, including doors, further away. This can actually be used to kill other enemies and allows us to use the environment to our advantage. There’s something extremely enjoyable about being able to kill enemies around you, then charge up a punch and knock one enemy into another and make them both explode. Or even just busting down the door, strong enough that it smacks the enemy further away and kills them, just feels like an epic way to make an entrance into a bloodbath.

Guns are theoretically our first line of defense, which we can use to shoot. It won’t work on every enemy, as some have armor or shields that stop bullets, but it’s a solid way to keep dying to them. There are different guns we will get to unlock later on that augment our style, and I really did feel a difference between using a pistol and a shot shotgun, which changed up how I ran through the floor.

All these open up the possibilities of how we can tackle each of the floors and enemies on them, but it’s the upgrade system that truly makes it shine. As we keep playing through the game, we will get currency that allows us to open up our circuit board. This is where we will buy new skills and weapons and place them on the board to utilize them. If you enjoy Resident Evil 4’s inventory management system, this will feel very familiar.

Each upgrade in Kusan will take up spots on the grid; we have to mix and match with the ones we want to make sure they all fit. Some of these upgrades can be optimized, which reduces how many spots they take, but this uses a special currency we can get as we are going through missions.

There are two types of upgrades: ones that influence combat and ones that give us a gun. For the guns, we can only choose one at a time, but we can upgrade them for better rates of fire and more. However, there are other updates that completely change our moveset. It can range from something more simple, like increasing our movement speed, to completely adding new moves, like being able to juggle our knife when it’s thrown. This is actually one of my favorite upgrades, because it allows us to hit the knife with a punch after throwing it to knock it into other enemies to kill them. I cannot explain how satisfying it was to throw a knife at an enemy and then punch it into another player.

These are great systems, but there are some frustrating issues here and there. Out of all the enemy types, some of them are extremely annoying to deal with. The robot dogs that we destroy leave behind an electrical field that completely slows down our movement, which can kill the great flow of combat, in the enemies, that shoot guns or lasers, sometimes shoot way too fast. On top of that, some of the environmental objects can’t be shot over, which didn’t make a lot of sense. I can shoot over desks with computers, but I can’t shoot over an ammo crate? That led to my death a few times.

The level designs in Kusan are also a mixed bag. Some of them are straightforward and fantastic, but then there are others that just have too much going on, and it’s easy to get lost in the chaos. The one that stands out most to me is in chapter 2, where we have to run in the street to fend off enemies. Not only do we have to think on our feet and kill the enemies coming out of cars, but we also have to dodge incoming cars from both the enemies and random people driving through. I actually spent almost one whole night just trying to beat that level because I kept getting hit by cars or my punches were slightly off.

While the chaos in that level was frustrating, there are bits of it in every level. The choices and options we have to dispatch our photos make combat dynamic, but there are a lot of times where the chaos and all the enemies coming at us can be a little difficult to track. Some enemies can blend a little too much into the levels, and with some boxes blocking our shots, punches not always reaching the enemies, and ranged enemies coming out of nowhere, it can feel like too much. There were a few times where I actually had to take a break just because it got a little too obnoxious, and I wanted to relax.

Still, I would say it was a positive experience overall, and fans of Hotline Miami are going to love the gameplay loop. The story that comes along with it was also quite enjoyable and had me interested in the world and what was going on. We play as Jin, an ex-soldier who is recruited by a government agent to save a kid named Haru. The kid has been experimented on with Psionic powers, and now a group wants to steal Haru and turn her into a bomb.

The story stuck with me a lot. There’s a lot of gray area that starts to justify the group and their actions; well, the people we perceived to be trying to help start to show their true colors. The motivations and actions of each party start to come into question, and we see the turmoil of Jin as he understands the group's motives but turns away to protect what matters most to him. It’s hard. It’s a great story told in a unique graphic novel-esque format that still gave the intensity I was hoping for.

Kusan: City of Wolves - Steam Deck Performance

However, the most surprising thing about Kusan: City of Wolves is its performance on the Steam Deck. With the style of game it is, and how well Hotline Miami runs, I fully expected this to be a great game to play on the Deck. This was solidified a bit further when I saw it got the Verified badge. Sadly, I was somewhat wrong, and I’m still a bit surprised about it.

So, when I was first playing Kusan on the Steam Deck, the performance was quite poor. It would constantly stutter and drop due to extremely high CPU usage. For a game like this, I thought it was unacceptable. I was pretty dismayed, because it seems like the perfect thing to take on the go, similar to Hotline Miami. Thankfully, I checked again after it got an update, and it has improved somewhat.

It is now significantly more stable and sticks to the higher framerates more often. Because of that, it has become so much better to play on the Deck, and I couldn’t be happier. It actually feels pretty good to play, and I can almost recommend it, but there are a few issues that are still remaining.

Trying to play at 60 FPS still leads to some drops, and the CPU usage is still pretty high when running around the map quickly. Because that is a big part of the game, this is a common issue. But it’s not an impossible one to get around. While there may still be some drops, I did not feel them as much by setting the framerate to 55 FPS. This kept the gameplay smooth, my reaction times quick, and while the game did drop, it wasn’t something I could notice unless I was really paying attention and watching the framerate counter.

Even though there are still some drops, I don’t recommend dropping the framerate cap further. The game feels awful below 50 FPS, and it’s not a great way to actually play the game. Kusan is an experience that I would say requires 60 FPS, but 55 feels extremely close, and I would still consider it playable. But once you start going below that, it is no longer enjoyable. Because of that, I have to say this is going to be the best way to play the game on the Steam Deck. Seeing as how we can only change the resolution and enable Vsync in the options, there isn’t much more we can do to optimize.

Conclusion

Kusan: City of Wolves takes the formula I fell in love with in Hotline Miami in a different direction. It still has the mechanics I came to know and love, but splices in an interesting setting, intriguing story, and new tools to kill with upgrades that can drastically change our moveset. There are some frustrations with the types of enemies we can encounter and the environment getting in our way, but when everything clicks, it just feels amazing.

The Steam Deck performance is a little disappointing, since I expected a solid 60 FPS with a relatively low battery drain, but it is playable and enjoyable on the go. The minor compromise needed doesn’t detract from the experience, so I’d still say it’s a solid experience regardless.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

Corsair Cove was provided by Hooded Horse for review. Thank You!

I have to admit, it's been some time since I last played a pirate strategy game, let alone a pirate city builder, but Corsair Cove might be the best reintroduction I could have hoped for. Whether you like city-building or just pirates in general, you'll probably find the game appealing thanks to a mixture of gameplay and the great setting the game is based in.

Corsair Cove is a game of two halves. The first half is the city building, and as far as city builders go, it's not too unique. Your buildings primarily serve as housing and production, with a few "special" buildings here and there that you can use to your advantage in certain situations.

Where you can build is perhaps the most unique part of this half of the game, in that you can construct your buildings just about anywhere. Place a building on the side of a cliff, and you'll create a platform that you can build a lift or a ladder up to. This is a great feature, as it means you can fit far more buildings on your island than you otherwise might think. And that's needed, as you only get one island that you can build on.

The production chains in the game are deep enough where you'll need to consider them when laying out your base, but not deep enough to overwhelm or frustrate players. Plus, the game highlights which buildings rely on each other when you place them, and will warn you if you're placing a building too far away from another in the chain, thus making it inefficient for the workers to transport resources, a very appreciated feature that should be a standard in this genre.

You will also occasionally get attacked by "The Crown", the game's primary antagonistic faction. They'll launch assaults on your pirate haven, requiring you to have defensive structures (supplied with ammo) around your island to fight back their ships, and this leads us into the second half of the game: the ship gameplay.

This is arguably more exciting than the city building aspect of the game, and fortunately, both run side-by-side. Once you get your first ship, you'll be able to send it off to various Points of Interest around the map, all the while continuing your city management as it sails, and once it's arrived, you can start an event to (hopefully) get some booty!

Sometimes the event is a simple pickup of goods; other times it may be a battle or some other challenge that must be overcome. In the event of a battle (or challenge), you'll have to balance the resources of your ship (health, crew, and supplies) against your opponents, playing different cards to deal damage to your opponent, while keeping your own ship afloat. The difficulty errs on the easy side, perhaps too easy, and you are made aware of what stats your ship should have before you begin an event.

I loved this mix of two mechanics; the city-building is exciting to see your base expand across the island, while your fleet is out exploring the oceans and uncovering new islands, factions, and events. Interwoven between both of these is the game's progression system, in the form of a large tech tree.

The tech tree is unlocked by performing "deeds", which are various tasks you can accomplish, each one giving you a point to spend on the tech tree to make your colony better. This was my favorite part of the game, and there's plenty to unlock; they really nailed the progression in Corsair Cove, giving you plenty to do while introducing fun, bite-sized tasks to the game.

Finally, the story of Corsair Cove isn't much to write home about. It's there; it gives a reason for you to be doing the quests you're doing, but it does feel as though it's been pretty hastily put together, and for the subject matter (pirates), the story is on the light-hearted, sometimes comedic side of things. It only pops up here and there when completing specific quests, and it was pretty much a non-factor to me.

Corsair Cove was generally bug-free, although I did have an instance where my ship could travel through solid objects, thus cutting down travel time quite markedly.

Corsair Cove - Steam Deck Performance

Corsair Cove supports 1280x800 as a resolution, but it does not have controller support, so you'll need to use the Keyboard (WASD) + Mouse layout or a community-created layout to control the game.

Performance is quite bad at the default settings, with constant sub-30 FPS. Lower all the quality settings to their lowest, then switch the Upscaling to AMD FSR and set it to Quality. Limit the framerate to 30 FPS using the in-game settings, then go into your Quick Access Menu and force a manual GPU clock of 1600MHz; this helps keep the framerate much more stable.

With these settings, you can expect the early game (the first couple of hours) to maintain 30 FPS, but as you expand your base, the CPU demands become greater, meaning the CPU and GPU vie for the Steam Deck's power. Unfortunately, this does mean that mid-sized bases will drop you into the mid-20s, and towards the latter stages of the game, to around 20, regardless of graphical settings. Given the slow-paced, managerial nature of the game, that may still be playable depending on what you can tolerate.

There is an option for Frame Generation, but the input lag is unpleasant, even in a strategy setting.

Because Corsair Cove pushes the Steam Deck almost the entire time, expect a power draw of around 18-21W regardless of what you're doing. This means battery life is on the lower side, around 2.5 Hours on a Steam Deck OLED, and around 1.5 Hours on a Steam Deck LCD. Temperatures were largely staying around 70C.

Accessibility:

Corsair Cove does have subtitles for its voiced lines; it also has UI scaling which defaults to the max of 250% on the Steam Deck. The text is still a little hard to read in places, but it's OK. There are also color blind filters.

Conclusion:

Corsair Cove cleverly combines city building with seafaring exploration and alternates enough to prevent either from getting stale. With a beautiful environment combined with a sizable tech tree, there's plenty to keep you entertained here.

Steam Deck performance isn't where I'd like it to be. It's so close to being a 30 FPS experience, but as your base expands, the CPU demands start to become too much for the Steam Deck to handle. The controls also require some slight configuration to be at their best. You'd be best playing Corsair Cove on a desktop PC or laptop.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

Forsaken Realms: Vahrin's Call was provided by Titan Roc for review. Thank you!

When we talk about indie games with small development teams, most of us picture compact experiences built around a creative idea rather than sheer scale. A unique art style, an experimental mechanic, or a memorable narrative are usually what define them. Massive third-person RPGs packed with handcrafted environments, dozens of hours of content, and deep progression systems are an entirely different beast, requiring an enormous amount of time, resources, and manpower to pull off.

That's exactly what makes Forsaken Realms: Vahrin's Call so intriguing. Developed over more than a decade by a self-funded team of just seven developers, Titan Roc's debut title sets its sights on something most indie studios wouldn't even attempt. A large-scale fantasy action RPG inspired by the classics such as Elder Scrolls or The Fable series.

After spending 40 hours of exploring every corner of its world, uncovering its secrets, experimenting with different builds, and seeing everything the game had to offer, I felt like I had truly immersed myself in Vahrin. So, did Titan Roc actually manage to pull off what initially seemed like an impossible task? Let's find out.

Vahrin's Call is a zone-based, open-world action RPG that blends a classic, old-school classless progression system with fast-paced, combo-driven combat inspired by modern action/hack-and-slash games. Complementing that is a vibrant, colorful world with a distinct Fablesque visual style, creating a fantasy adventure that feels both nostalgic and super fresh at the same time.

Set in the war-torn kingdom of Vahrin, the story puts you in the role of a mercenary rather than a classic "chosen hero." The kingdom has been pushed to the brink of extinction by the insectoid Khraiax, the undead, and countless other threats, leaving entire regions in chaos. Your job is simple: take on contracts, help those struggling to survive, and gradually become involved in a much larger and increasingly mysterious conflict surrounding the fate of Vahrin itself.

Unlike many modern RPGs, the narrative is completely linear, with no meaningful dialogue choices or branching paths. Instead, the focus is on following the main story while exploring the world, completing side quests, and uncovering bits of lore scattered throughout the kingdom.

To be honest, the story and overall narrative were the weakest and, surprisingly, the only part of the game that I didn't like at all. At the beginning, it was interesting trying to figure out what was wrong with this world. Talking to NPCs and putting the pieces together kept me engaged, but the real problem is the main narrative itself.

The entire story is told through in-game dialogue, with virtually no cinematics aside from a few simple boss introductions, no detailed backstory for the key characters, and no real way to connect with the script. Everything happens so fast, and your character mostly just stands there while everyone else talks, making it feel like you're watching the story unfold rather than actually being part of it.

From beginning to end, the narrative never provides the hook or payoff needed to keep you invested. It always felt like a rushed and cliché fantasy war story that never gives your character the spotlight or enough room to grow. I can understand and respect the decision to make your character a simple mercenary, but I think that idea could have been executed in a much more interesting and immersive way.

One positive thing I can say about the story is the side quests. Almost every side quest either expands the world's lore or offers meaningful, and sometimes extremely funny interactions. They never feel like the typical "my mom is sick, go bring her some medicine" or "my farm is under attack by monsters, please save me" quests that we've seen countless times in other RPGs.

In fact, I ended up liking some of the side characters and their storylines more than the entire main narrative. They surprisingly kept me hooked, sometimes made me laugh out loud, and before I knew it, I had completed every single side quest without even realizing I was going out of my way to do them.

Let's talk about what is, without a doubt, the strongest and most impressive part of Vahrin's Call. Exploration. This is the aspect of the game that completely won me over, and it's the main reason I ended up spending over 40 hours in its world.

Exploration constantly feels rewarding. Whether I was finding hidden chests, discovering new dungeons, tracking down skill points, or simply wandering off the main path, I almost always felt like I was being rewarded for my curiosity. There was always another cave to check, another hidden path to investigate, or another secret tucked away in a corner of the map. It never reached the point where I thought, "Why am I even exploring?" because the game consistently gives you a reason to keep looking around.

I also absolutely loved how the main quests are designed. Instead of placing a marker on every single objective and telling you exactly where to go, they often give you enough information to figure things out on your own. That means paying attention to your surroundings, understanding the layout of the world, getting lost from time to time, and even solving small environmental puzzles before reaching your destination. For some people that might sound frustrating, but for me it made every discovery feel earned.

One feature I especially want to praise is the optional exploration mode that completely disables quest markers. When enabled, finding your way becomes your responsibility entirely, much like the classic days of Gothic or Morrowind. You have to read quest dialogue, pay attention to landmarks, and actually learn the world instead of following a floating icon. I honestly think every RPG should include an option like this. Even if not everyone wants to use it, giving players the choice between full guidance and a true hand-holding free adventure is something more RPGs should embrace.

There is, however, one thing about exploration that I absolutely hated: the overwhelming amount of loot and shiny flowers, barrels, crates, and other objects.

This is completely personal, but as someone with serious loot OCD, it really hurt my sense of direction. One of my favorite things in RPGs is getting lost, then suddenly finding an unlooted room or a hidden path and realizing, "I'm on the right track." It makes exploration feel rewarding.

In Vahrin's Call, though, every time I died or accidentally backtracked, I was greeted by the exact same glowing objects all over again because they would end up respawning extremely fast. Instead of helping me navigate the world or making new discoveries feel exciting, they often made it harder to tell whether I was exploring somewhere new or just revisiting the same area.

Again, this is a very personal complaint, and it definitely wasn't enough to ruin the incredible exploration for me. I just think the game would have benefited from much slower loot respawns, or no respawning loot at all.

The gameplay is another area where Vahrin's Call absolutely shines. The game offers an impressive amount of freedom when it comes to building your character. Whether you want to specialize in dual wielding, greatswords, bows, fire magic, alchemy, or mix everything together, the choice is entirely yours.

What I especially love is that progression works much like the classic Elder Scrolls games. Instead of simply spending points in a menu, your skills improve the more you actually use them. Swing a greatsword long enough, and you'll become better with greatswords. Spend time crafting potions, and your alchemy will naturally improve. It makes your character's progression feel much more organic.

And the upgrades themselves feel very meaningful. Even something as simple as a basic healing potion can eventually become a throwable debuff potion as your alchemy improves. Traps gain new properties, you can eventually disarm traps in the world instead of triggering them, and every weapon or magic upgrade unlocks new attacks, combos, and techniques as you level it up. It constantly feels like your character is learning new tricks rather than just getting bigger numbers, and that made progression satisfying from beginning to end.

As a personal example, I ended up trying pretty much every playstyle the game had to offer. I leveled every weapon type and skill to see how they played, but eventually settled on a build that I fell in love with.

I recreated an Enhancement Shaman from World of Warcraft. A melee spellcaster that controls the elements. I fought with dual-wield weapons, constantly enhancing them with fire and ice magic to quickly stack elemental debuffs, while my Earth Shield orbited around me, dealing consistent damage to nearby enemies. On top of that, I focused almost all of my amulets on increasing magic power, turning my character into something that felt more like a melee mage than a traditional warrior.

The fact that a build I came up with on my own worked this well was one of the biggest highlights of the entire game. It perfectly showcases just how much freedom Vahrin's Call gives you when it comes to experimenting with different playstyles. Instead of feeling forced into predefined classes, I was able to create exactly the kind of character I wanted, and it ended up being one of the most fun RPG builds I've played in a long time.

By this point, it should be pretty obvious that I absolutely fell in love with Vahrin's Call's combat. Unlike many RPGs that lean towards slower, heavier combat, Vahrin's Call is fast, responsive, and feels much closer to a hack and slash game without sacrificing its RPG mechanics. It actually reminded me a lot of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which is one of the biggest compliments I can give to an action RPG.

Combat always feels exciting thanks to the huge variety of combos, techniques, and status effects available. Enemies constantly keep you on your toes, requiring quick dodges, well-timed parries, and fast decision-making. Instead of repeating the same attack over and over, you are constantly mixing abilities, elemental effects, and different combos together, making every fight feel extremely fluid.

Boss fights deserve a special mention as well. Almost every major boss introduces a new mechanic or attack pattern that you have to learn instead of simply overpowering it with better gear. Figuring out their moves, learning when to dodge or parry, and finally defeating a boss after understanding its patterns was very satisfying.

It doesn't matter if you prefer melee, ranged, or magic. Every combat style feels polished and surprisingly deep. Alchemy and spell crafting only make things better, allowing you to prepare different potions, upgrade your spells, and create powerful synergies during combat. Instead of feeling like mechanics you'll use once and forget about, they become an essential part of the combat loop and constantly make fights more enjoyable.

When it comes to the visuals, Vahrin's Call might be the biggest mixed bag I've ever experienced. The art direction is absolutely fantastic, and the colorful, Fable-inspired environments are beautifully designed. However, at the same time, some armor designs, character models, and low-poly foliage can look extremely dated. It almost feels like you're playing an old RPG that's been remastered with fantastic lighting and modern visual effects.

Oddly enough, I didn't mind it at all. In fact, it gave me a similar feeling to Valheim. Those lower-quality models and engine limitations created a unique charm that fit the overall old-school RPG with modern twists style of the game surprisingly well. It felt nostalgic somehow.

The most impressive part of the visuals, however, is easily the environment design. Every mini open world zone feels completely distinct from the last. Whether I was making my way through snowy mountain paths, exploring eerie haunted forests, wandering through beautifully lit castles, or simply enjoying the colorful, vibrant landscapes, every area felt masterfully crafted and memorable. Considering the budget and the size of the team, being able to create something this impressive is a remarkable achievement. Bravo!

Without a doubt, the audio was the biggest surprise of the entire game for me, to the point where I honestly couldn't believe it was real. The soundtrack is excellent and always fits the mood perfectly, but the aspect that truly deserves its own paragraph, and honestly should be studied by other indie developers, is the voice acting.

Normally, voice acting is one of the weakest parts of indie or even AA RPGs, often feeling flat and lifeless. Vahrin's Call completely shattered that expectation. The performances genuinely felt on par with many AAA productions. Every single actor delivered an incredible performance, but Lysa's voice acting deserves special recognition. It was so good that I would've believed she was voiced by one of the industry's biggest and most experienced actresses. Her performance was phenomenal, carrying so much emotion that it often elevated the scenes by itself. In fact, despite the weaker narrative I mentioned earlier, her delivery alone managed to carry much of its emotional weight, which is an incredible achievement.

My only complaint about the audio department comes down to the sound effects. They're by no means bad or distracting, but I did find myself wishing they had a bit more impact. Especially during combat, I would've loved the swords and weapon hits to feel a little punchier and more satisfying.

Forsaken Realms: Vahrin's Call - Steam Deck Performance

Before getting into the Steam Deck section, it's worth noting that developer Titan Roc is looking into optimizing for the Steam Deck post-launch, and it wasn't their focus during development.

Vahrin's Call uses Unreal Engine 4, and unlike UE5 games, it usually delivers fantastic performance on Steam Deck. Sadly, that's not the case here.

First of all, the graphics options only include DLSS upscaling. Out of the box, your only option is using the manual resolution slider, and it looks absolutely horrendous and heavily pixelated.

I switched to Desktop Mode and looked through the game's files, where I found both FSR and Intel XeSS files in the directory. So the technology we need is already there; it's just not implemented in the game's options. That gave me an idea: what if I used OptiScaler to force FSR by injecting it through the DLSS option? I'm happy to say it worked flawlessly.

I tested multiple methods and upscalers, and FSR 4.1 using the DLSS Ultra Performance preset gave me the best results both visually and performance-wise. The only downside is that properly injecting FSR 4.1 is still a long and complicated process. You have to replace multiple files and tweak a few things manually.

I also tested XeSS and regular FSR 3.2 through the Decky Frame Gen plugin. Using the XeSS Balanced preset (displayed as DLSS in-game) still looked miles better than the manual resolution scaler. So if you don't want to spend a lot of time setting everything up, it's a simple alternative that avoids the horrible pixelated image.

The game's performance is extremely unstable. During the first two areas, I honestly started losing hope that the game would be playable at all. Even on the lowest settings, I frequently saw drops into the low 20s, especially in the South Vale area, where the game often stayed below 30 FPS. The only way to avoid that was turning Shadows completely OFF, but losing all shadows made the game look absolutely terrible.

The later areas, however, surprised me. I was hitting 45-60 FPS in some open-world sections and even a stable 90 FPS inside caves and dungeons. Aside from the first two locations, the game is actually surprisingly playable and enjoyable. The only thing I can recommend is accepting the rough performance during the first couple of hours. With performance fluctuating this much, it was honestly impossible for me to create one graphics preset that worked well throughout the entire game.

I played on the Lowest preset with Textures and Foliage set to Medium. Visually, the game still looked great. FSR 4.1 at DLSS Ultra Performance (or Decky Frame Gen using the DLSS Balanced preset) was easily the best way to experience it. Hopefully, the developers improve Linux/Proton optimization in the future. I contacted them myself, and they confirmed they're currently looking into it.

Another issue is a constant multi-colored box (or a black box when using upscalers) in the bottom-right corner of the screen. I eventually figured out what it was. It's the "Saving Game" icon that appears correctly on my desktop PC, but for some reason Proton doesn't render it properly. It's ugly, but I'm sure it'll be fixed in the future.

Overall, it's a very unstable experience. However, if you're patient enough to get through the first couple of hours, it becomes a surprisingly fun and enjoyable game on Steam Deck.

Conclusion:

Despite its narrative shortcomings, Vahrin's Call is one of the biggest surprises I've played in a very long time. It feels like a true passion project, taking on the incredibly ambitious task of building a massive handcrafted fantasy RPG with only seven developers, and somehow managing to deliver on most of its promises. Outstanding exploration, addictive progression, some of the most enjoyable action RPG combat I've played in years, and voice acting that honestly rivals AAA productions make this an easy recommendation for anyone who loves classic RPGs. It's far from perfect, but considering its budget and the size of the team, what Titan Roc achieved here is nothing short of remarkable. I can't wait to see what this studio creates next.

On Steam Deck, however, it's a much more complicated recommendation. The first few hours suffer from very poor optimization and extremely unstable performance, and getting the best visual experience requires manually injecting FSR 4.1 or using the Decky Frame Gen plugin. Thankfully, things improve considerably after the opening areas, and once they do, the game becomes surprisingly enjoyable on the handheld. If you're willing to put up with a rough start and spend a little time tweaking the graphics, Vahrin's Call is still well worth experiencing on Steam Deck, especially with the developers already looking into future Linux and Proton optimizations.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement	1 year	Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie is used to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category .
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
CookieLawInfoConsent	1 year	Records the default button state of the corresponding category & the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie.
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Cookie	Duration	Description
__gads	1 year 24 days	The __gads cookie, set by Google, is stored under DoubleClick domain and tracks the number of times users see an advert, measures the success of the campaign and calculates its revenue. This cookie can only be read from the domain they are set on and will not track any data while browsing through other sites.
_ga	2 years	The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognize unique visitors.
_ga_VF6TNG7YS7	2 years	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics.
_gat_gtag_UA_232930512_1	1 minute	Set by Google to distinguish users.
_gid	1 day	Installed by Google Analytics, _gid cookie stores information on how visitors use a website, while also creating an analytics report of the website's performance. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously.
CONSENT	2 years	YouTube sets this cookie via embedded youtube-videos and registers anonymous statistical data.

Cookie	Duration	Description
__gpi	1 year 24 days	Google Ads Service uses this cookie to collect information about from multiple websites for retargeting ads.
edgebucket	session	Reddit sets this cookie to save the information about a log-on Reddit user, for the purpose of advertisement recommendations and updating the content.
IDE	1 year 24 days	Google DoubleClick IDE cookies are used to store information about how the user uses the website to present them with relevant ads and according to the user profile.
session_tracker	2 hours	This cookie is set by the Reddit. This cookie is used to identify trusted web traffic. It also helps in adverstising on the website.
test_cookie	15 minutes	The test_cookie is set by doubleclick.net and is used to determine if the user's browser supports cookies.
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE	5 months 27 days	A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface.
YSC	session	YSC cookie is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages.
yt-remote-connected-devices	never	YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video.
yt-remote-device-id	never	YouTube sets this cookie to store the video preferences of the user using embedded YouTube video.

Cookie	Duration	Description
csv	2 years	No description available.
DEVICE_INFO	5 months 27 days	No description
GoogleAdServingTest	session	No description