Drova - Forsaken Kin

Baldur's Gate 3 is a great game, but most people have already played it, and waiting for the next game of that quality is going to be long. That gets us to the question of what exactly is great about BG3, and what we would be looking for in another computer RPG. Is is the high technical quality, great graphics, and voice acting? Or is it the narrative, the interaction with NPCs, and the multitude of choices? It turns out that different other companies are giving different answers to that.

I already mentioned Dragon Age: The Veilguard here, which by all accounts has great technical quality, graphics and voice acting. But a lot of people aren't happy with the writing and the dialogues, and find the game too linear, with too few actual choices. So I didn't try that game, and went for the exact opposite: Drova - Forsaken Kin. Drova is more of an indie RPG, with pixel art graphics, and no voice acting. It is obvious that making this game only cost a fraction of what is cost to make a Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age. But once you get over that, Drova - Forsaken Kin is a great RPG, with enormous depth. It is very old school, and reminds most people of games like Gothic. There are no features like quest markers, you need to listen to (or rather, read) what the NPCs say to figure out where to go. There are a lot of visible walls, but no invisible ones, and no railroading. If you want to march right into an area that is way too high level for you, good luck, the game isn't going to stop you.

Combat in Drova is action combat, just in 2D pixel art. You can choose between different weapons, which have different speeds, damage, and range. Fighting with a sword and shield feels different from fighting with an axe or a spear. Normally, I don't like action combat, because I am slow. But Drova fortunately has an explorer difficulty, which makes combat easier. I'm playing on the default settings for that mode, but the options would allow me to fine tune damage dished out and received even further. The options also allowed me to turn of the mini-games used to do things like fishing, mining, or lockpicking. You can play Drova on ironman mode, but I'd recommend the opposite: Save early, save often. You *can* get completely lost in this game and end up in the middle of far too many monsters that one-shot you with no way out.

I am still in Act 1, so I can't say how the story is overall. But it sure is a dark one, and gives you plenty of choices on whether you want to be good or evil, up to the option of becoming a drug dealer. The game also has subjects like slavery (and you might end up as a slave for some time), so I really wouldn't recommend this game to snowflake players that get triggered easily. The most important feature of the story is that it isn't too on the nose. After the tutorial you end up in this foreign world, with only a vague sense of purpose. There is a starting area to gain a few first levels and learn things, but you aren't forced to do that. There are two major factions, but it isn't as easy as one of them being good and the other evil. You get a feeling with time what areas are for what "level", but all of that is very open and non-linear. You just adventure and explore, and bit by bit find out more about the world and its lore. The world is both hand-crafted, and an open world.

In Drova, your actions have consequences, and they matter. That part where you are captured as a slave and have to work your way out to freedom? If you kill the people that want to capture you, that will never happen. I was stunned when I discovered that after learning how to extract the claws of animals, I could go back to the corpses of animals that I had killed levels ago and still get their claws. Nothing seems to respawn, not even the inventory of the traders. Which is good, because if you sold some crafting material earlier, but then find you need it later, it will still be there, you just need to buy it back for 5 times the price. There are resources everywhere, and the game lets you use things like healing plants raw, but if you learn how to craft salves and potions, you'll be a lot more efficient. Cooking is also important, as food also heals you, albeit slowly. You can also craft a lot of interesting consumables, like traps. At the start of the game, magic is also available only as consumable scrolls, which are extremely powerful. But apparently you can learn magic much later in the game.

Drova - Forsaken Kin costs €25 on Steam, as is currently rated 96% "overwhelmingly positive". This is not an early access game, but a complete and finished game, although there are patches, and some more content will be added to the game. If you like old school RPGs, I can only recommend this one.