Just finished Dread Delusion and I am very conflicted on the game. Overall this game is worth playing and i absolutely loved certain aspects of it, but it is far from perfect. Clearly a love letter to Morrowind in a lot of ways, from the world design to the mechanisms. I’ll keep this brief:

Firstly, the Positives:
- The art design of the world is fantastic. I did turn off the overly blurry grain so it was a bit sharper though, but visually i love how colourful the world is and how alien a lot of it feels.
- The world they have built is genuinely a fascinating one. There’s an incredible sense of history and mystery to the world.
- The writing is generally really, really good weaving interesting short stories in throughout the grander narrative.
- The quests are generally decent (narratively speaking).
- there is a great sense of wonder and exploration, and they do a good job of rewarding you for exploring (Although the lack of weapons and equipement to find does hurt it slightly.)
- The music is fantastic for the most part.
- i really like it when open world games have mini-narratives confined to areas. For example the clockwork kingdom and Endless regions having their own self-contained mystery, storylines, vibe and history. Really breaks the game up and stops it feeling stale.
- the skill system. This is more of a neutral, but i liked the idea of having different ways to complete tasks depending on how you spec into them, even though it is a little arbitrary in its execution.

Now for the Bad
- The combat is really weak. I’m actually baffled they a game so lovingly crafted had so little time put into the combat. There are barely any weapons, and they mostly feel the same. Combat is the same with every enemy and their AI is almost identical. The most interesting enemy in the game is literally the soldiers in the first area, as they heal themselves, and have shields.
- The game is so incredibly easy. Even on hard. There is no challenge to the combat at all, and you can literally just run past every enemy if you want and it wont matter.
- magic is pretty much useless outside of utility
- Items/inventory/skills. Constantly changing clothing and trinkets to pass skill checks just isn’t fun. The item menu is tedious to navigate and weirdly confusing for how few items there are too.
- Traversal/the map. I understand they were taking the morrowind route and not relying on quest markers, which is great for the most part. But then they don’t mark the names of place on the map, so it’s easy to forget where the hell places are. They make the compass a seperate item you need to use, which is annoying.
- the lack of fast travel! I enjoy exploring, i don’t mind not using fast travel sometimes, but half the missions have you visit an area, then go back, then go to that area again, then to somewhere else you’ve been.
- the fast travel options are so inconvenient that they are barely worth using. The only one i used was the magic to warp you back to your last crystal. Because it’s so inconvenient to find a warp point. (Until you get the airship)
- The game is too long. Theres a point i thought the game was about to end (you know which part) and then it throws you back to the world map. Honestly, it didn’t need it. I was happy with it ending there.

Overall, despite sounding negative, the world is fun to explore, great writing and world building; just expect a little bit of annoying traversal and very basic combat.
7.5/10

If you like this game, i recommend you try Northern Journey. Janky combat, incredible world.

I was loving this game until something clicked. Every single reward for anything I did seemed to be an upgrade material which I didn't need. And every single enemy functions the exact same. A quick horizontal slash and a slow vertical slash.

Once I got to the surface world, I just couldn't be bothered anymore. It's a strange game where it has some of the most fun exploration that is then hamstrung by rewarding you with nothing interesting or useful.

The perfect game doesn't exist.

Basically same exact thoughts as you. Super cool world to run around in and take in the views, amazing artstyle and good music, pretty terrible gameplay and some meandering writing here and there. Magic was useless for me and combat skills completely unneeded, just level the stuff useful for exploring.

I thought the final section was quite good

As for the suggestions, yep. I played Lunacid and it definitely gives the same vibes (together with the "worse towards the end" thing lol) and I've been planning to play Northern Journey since I saw Mandalore's video about it years ago. Arx I had started and I definitely want to go back to it. There's just something about dungeon delving and sprawling cave systems that tickles my brain just right.

Yeah, and when you do upgrade a weapon it does SLIGHTLY more damage, so it’s the same combat but very slightly quicker. I really wish there was more to find, or any incentive to use a bow or magic. The world and narrative managed to JUST pull me through to the end.

This game looks so cool but then I remember the negatives seem to revolve around the gameplay so I know I'll just fall off of it.

Thanks for the write up anyway.

you do a full critique of the gameplay but then you suggest Arx Fatalis

Oh yeah! The super janky airship would have helped the tedium early on. Even if they had a slightly better fast travel sytem too.

I LOVE Dungeon crawlers. Next up i’m playing Verho, which looks great.

Also, I recently finished Blade of Darkenss, which is a 3rd person dungeon crawler. a little janky, but was incredible. Really interesting combat system, and fun exploration. Pretty tough too.

What do you mean? The gameplay in Arx is way better

The world and exploration was just enough to get me through to the end, but the combat is exactly the same at the end as it is at the beginning.

It say that the original sin of this game design was the persistent save and no way to fail a quest. Respawning enemies (that are a bad idea) are imho, a result of that decision. It also makes the quest design space far smaller. For example you cannot fail the stealth sequence

I did play this for maybe 5 hours after loving Lunacid and I gotta say, while I really want to love it and I will eventually give it another chance, I just didn't find it fun at all. And the world building/aesthetics/writing isn't good enough to a) stand entirely on their own and b) make up for all the tedium.

I also remember the distinct lack of RPG mechanics. Like in Morrowind I love all the options and it's always fun to find a new spell or some gear or something, but as I remember this was extremely bare-bones, almost nonexistent.

Amazing game. I loved it, a lot of intrigue, interesting world, great quests.

As you said combat is terrible but you can skip it entirely, only the final boss has to be killed.

Disagree on magic and fast travel, both are very useful.