Info about Archaelund:

Official game description:
Archaelund is a roleplaying game with deep classic roots but also exciting innovations to bring you the ultimate adventure.  
*   **Exploration as you remember it:** you can play Archaelund your own way. Take your party of adventurers through a vast open world and explore as you wish, find awesome secrets and run into unexpected trouble, get involved in conflicts or just pursue your own goals and discover what lies beyond the horizon.  
*   **Unique dual perspective:** just as the best classics did, you'll be able to explore the world of Archaelund in immersive first-person, wondering what lies behind each corner of the dungeon. When combat starts, the view seamlessly changes to top-down perspective, and you'll issue orders to your party, placing them over a battle grid to face your enemies in a deeply strategic turn-based combat.  
*   **Deep and engaging character progression:** a career-based system will have your characters start out as street ruffians, squires, hunters or even beggars; later on you can move into new career, including advanced ones like Knight, Loreseeker, Assassin or Battlemage. A character might leave behind its humble origins, but those days might bring in unique talents to your advantage!  
*   **Deadly battles with a focus on strategy:** a non-inflationist, bounded system will ensure that every battle matters, and every opponent is scary. When your characters advance in levels, you'll gain new tactical options to defeat your enemies, not just increased numbers.  
*   **An expansive world, handcrafted in detail:** Archaelund is big enough to lose yourself in; yet everywhere you go you'll meet people to talk to, unique quests to complete, mysteries to solve and, of course, battles to fight and treasures to loot.
Background: the Fall and the Exile
----------------------------------
The Andorian Empire united the whole human race under the same proud banner for millenia, until a magical cataclysm brought the Horrors from another world. The Empire and most of the human race was annihilated in just a few days; only a few hundred ships could escape to the savage island of Varannar, a distant imperial colony beyond the western ocean. The refugees endured the hardships and tried to rebuild their old civilization, but never again stood united under the Imperial banner.  
The newly founded Exiled Kingdoms bore the scars of the Fall, each of them in a different way. Varsilia, the mightiest and noblest of the Kingdoms, became grotesquely obsessed over Imperial history and preserving its traditions. Ilmarans turned into fanatical zealots of a new faith, while in Thuram, the remnants of the Imperial Wizards established a magocracy that disregards all matters except the arcane, and quickly declined into endogamy. On the west, the Kingdom of Mercia had emerged from the surviving Imperial Legions, establishing a nightmarish rule based on slavery and arbitrary discipline.  
The four Kingdoms held irreconcilable views and ambitions, and locked together in a small and hostile land as they were, they often plotted against each other or even clashed openly in the battlefield. It seemed as if a perpetual cycle of war, famine and misery would become mankind's unavoidable fate.
Archaelund, mankind's new frontier
----------------------------------
The future of the Kingdoms, however, brightened up generations later when a sea route to the old continent of Andoria was discovered, and it was proved that the Horrors were no more. Most of the old continent appeared to be an uninhabitable wasteland, but finally a vast and fertile coastal region was found: Archaelund.  
For the first time in a long time humanity left aside the old grudges and obsessions and looked up to the future. Expeditions were arranged, and thousands of colonists, soldiers, adventurers and rogues embarked to Archaelund. The promises of land, riches and Imperial relics excited the imagination and ambition of thousands, from mere farmers to noble second-sons.  
The re-colonization of Archaelund went on but the Exiles had to face many obstacles they had not foreseen. The Horrors may be no more, but they left behind a scarred world where eldritch energies and warped monsters roam the lands, and imperial ruins are often an unpredictable arcane hazard. Conflict between the Kingdoms is still very alive, and to make things worse, a subterranean race called the Geldryn (once slaves to the Andorian Empire) now aspires to inherit the surface world, and raise against the Exiles with increasing might.  
Despite all the dangers, Archaelund is still a land of adventure and opportunity. Just like many others before, your party of adventurers has finally saved up enough money to embark and sail East. The Silver Star has crossed the Andor Sea for two weeks, when you catch the first glimpse of the ancient land of your ancestors, unimpressed by its mundane visage. Little you suspect that, very soon, you're going to get involved in a plot that traces back to the terror of the final days of the Empire, and now threatens to destroy the remnants of civilization...

Release date: 8 Jan, 2024

Categories: RPG, Open-World Exploration, Turn-based Combat, Strategic Combat, Character Progression, Character Customization, Party-based Combat, Item Management, First-Person Perspective


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Classic RPG Experience (weight 0.94): The game successfully captures the essence of challenging, tactical, old-school RPGs from the 90s and early 2000s, reminiscent of titles like Might and Magic, Wizardry, and D&D. It blends traditional elements with modern features, offering a deep and strategic turn-based combat system.
- Engaging World Exploration (weight 0.84): Players highly enjoy the first-person exploration of the game's large, lovingly designed open world, finding secrets and hidden objects. This immersive exploration blends seamlessly with tactical turn-based combat, creating a rewarding and fun adventure loop.
- Strategic Turn-Based Combat (weight 0.62): The game features a challenging and deep turn-based, isometric combat system that rewards strategic planning, party building, and clever positioning. Combat encounters feel earned and offer significant tactical possibilities as characters progress.
- Promising Early Access (weight 0.61): The game is already highly enjoyable and well-made in its Early Access state, offering significant gameplay hours and a high level of completion compared to other betas. Reviewers see immense potential for future development and improvements.
- Rich Character Customization (weight 0.35): The game offers extensive options for character and party creation, including diverse races, classes, multiclassing, skills, and perks. This allows players to build unique and tailored troupes, enhancing replayability and personal investment.
- Dedicated Developer Support (weight 0.3): The developer is highly praised for actively listening to community feedback, consistently releasing patches, and showing genuine care and dedication to the game's improvement. Their stellar track record from previous titles instills confidence in future development.
- Builds on Exiled Kingdoms (weight 0.18): The game is seen as a strong successor to Exiled Kingdoms, building upon its lore and world-building while offering an enhanced 3D experience. Fans of the previous title appreciate the continuity and improvements.
- Balanced Game Mechanics (weight 0.15): The game's underlying mechanics, including skills, magic, talents, and progression, are praised for their depth, balance, and nuanced design. The scaling of items, rewards, and enemies feels spot on, contributing to a well-crafted experience.
- Enhanced Visuals & UI (weight 0.15): Reviewers note the game's detailed and visually appealing graphics, lighting, and overall visual upgrade. The user interface and interaction are also highlighted as simple and seamless, contributing to a smooth gameplay experience.
- Fitting Atmospheric Music (weight 0.13): The game's orchestral soundtrack is consistently praised for being beautiful, atmospheric, and perfectly chosen to complement the mood and locations within the game world.
- Compelling Story & Lore (weight 0.1): The game's story, lore, and world-building are described as fantastic, very good, and excellent. They provide a unique world that holds player interest and complements the gameplay well.
- Humorous Dialogue & Text (weight 0.1): Players appreciate the game's witty, funny, and complex dialogues, as well as the detailed descriptions of items and events. This adds charm and depth to the narrative experience.
- Realistic & Engaging Quests (weight 0.1): Quests are highlighted as a positive aspect, being well-thought-out and engaging. They offer realistic scenarios and opportunities for player choice, such as deception, making them feel meaningful.
- Intuitive & Fair Systems (weight 0.1): The game's systems are described as intuitive and straightforward, with a seamless UI that doesn't interrupt gameplay. Despite being challenging, the game is perceived as fair, contributing to a positive player experience.
- Highly Enjoyable Experience (weight 0.05): Reviewers express overall delight and strong enjoyment of the game, appreciating its smart storytelling over flashy graphics. This point reflects a general positive sentiment.

Common complaints:
- Empty World, Tedious Travel (weight 0.72): The open world is criticized for being vast but empty, lacking meaningful exploration incentives and content. This is compounded by limited fast travel, forcing players to traverse large, barren areas on foot, leading to a tedious and time-consuming experience.
- Combat & Balance Problems (weight 0.68): The combat system is criticized for its poor balancing, including unfair difficulty spikes and dishonest information. Players report extreme RNG, leading to frequent misses and frustrating experiences, compounded by a lack of enemy and loot variety. Combat initiation is awkward, and the system can lead to soft locks or overwhelming encounters.
- Bugs, Crashes & Performance (weight 0.5): Players frequently encounter numerous bugs, including game-breaking ones, and experience significant instability, leading to freezes and crashes. The game also suffers from poor optimization, resulting in slow performance, high GPU load, and long loading times, particularly for the world map.
- Missing QoL, Design Flaws (weight 0.46): The game lacks essential quality-of-life features, making the experience less user-friendly. Specific design flaws include overly punishing skill checks that can halt progression without alternatives, and vague or fiddly quest systems that are not well-designed.
- Unfinished, Limited Content (weight 0.38): The game is widely perceived as unfinished, with many core mechanics not yet implemented or polished. This results in a short, unengaging story, limited overall content, and low level caps that hinder progression, leading to a feeling that the current offering does not justify its price.

Gameplay feedback:
- In-Depth Party Customization (weight 0.36): The game offers extensive character and party creation options, allowing players to craft a diverse group with specific skills and roles. This process is intuitive yet complex, requiring careful strategic choices as not all skills can be covered by one party.
- Unique FPS/Turn-Based Combat Blend (weight 0.29): The game uniquely combines first-person exploration with tactical, turn-based isometric combat, reminiscent of classic CRPGs like Baldur's Gate or Divinity. This distinct transition between exploration and combat views is a core and well-received feature.
- Deep Tactical Combat Mechanics (weight 0.27): Combat is turn-based, grid-based, and highly strategic, emphasizing positioning, action points, and dice rolls. Players need to understand the system to succeed, as strategic thinking is crucial for effective engagement.
- Varied & Challenging Difficulty (weight 0.24): The game offers multiple difficulty settings, including a challenging 'oldschool' mode and a more accessible 'newschool' option. Even on easier settings, combat can be demanding, requiring strategic play.
- Rewarding First-Person Exploration (weight 0.22): The game features extensive first-person exploration of a large, open world, reminiscent of old dungeon crawlers. It encourages and rewards players for paying attention to their environment and exploring thoroughly without much hand-holding.
- Authentic Old-School RPG Feel (weight 0.18): The game successfully captures the essence of classic RPGs, incorporating elements from D&D, d20 systems, and series like Wizardry and Baldur's Gate. It blends traditional mechanics with a modern approach.
- Flexible Class & Career System (weight 0.13): The game features an interesting class and career system with a wide variety of options. Players can choose different careers that can be changed every few levels, adding flexibility to character progression.
- Strategic Combat Pacing (weight 0.11): Combat encounters are strategically spaced out, requiring players to carefully choose their fights and manage resources like healing and magic. Players cannot spam abilities and are encouraged to save frequently.
- Slow, Impactful Leveling (weight 0.11): Leveling up is a slow process, making each level gain feel significant and impactful. This design choice contributes to a sense of progression and gratification.
- Challenging Naked Start (weight 0.09): The game begins with players starting as naked characters on an island with no equipment, immediately setting a challenging tone. This unique starting scenario is a memorable aspect of the initial experience.
- Meaningful Gear & Appearance (weight 0.08): Different gear visibly changes character appearance, though primarily seen in inventory or combat. More importantly, items significantly impact character power and combat tactics, making loot meaningful.
- Deliberate Early Game Pacing (weight 0.08): The early game progression, particularly leveling, is deliberate and can feel slow, with players often remaining at low levels even after significant exploration. This contributes to the game's challenging and methodical feel.
- Engaging Magic System & Clear Mechanics (weight 0.08): The magic system is described as original and fun to learn. The game also excels at explaining important mechanics during character generation, aiding player understanding and engagement.
- Thought-Provoking Quest Design (weight 0.08): Quests are designed to require player thought and exploration for solutions, rather than hand-holding. They feel substantial and often have consequences tied to earlier decisions, enhancing player agency.
- Deep Setting & Substance (weight 0.07): The game features a serious setting with profound mysteries and dark secrets, contributing to its overall depth. Character and party development are also noted as being deep, giving the game significant substance.

Performance notes:
- Needs performance optimization (weight 0.08): Players report significant issues with game optimization, indicating that the game struggles with overall performance and graphic intensity. This suggests a need for further development to improve stability and frame rates.
- Runs smoothly on various PCs (weight 0.08): Many players find the game runs smoothly, even on older hardware or lower settings. This indicates that the game is not overly demanding for many systems, providing a positive performance experience.
- Excessive loading times (weight 0.06): Users frequently experience extremely long loading times, with some instances taking several minutes, even on high-speed NVME SSDs. This significantly disrupts gameplay flow and user experience.

Recommendations:
- Recommended for RPG Fans (weight 0.86): The game is highly recommended, especially for fans of old-school, hardcore, and turn-based CRPGs, including those who enjoyed games like Might & Magic or Exiled Kingdoms. Many reviewers find it worth the current price and a solid experience even in Early Access, despite some rough edges.
- High Future Potential (weight 0.39): Many reviewers express strong optimism about the game's future, believing it has the potential to become an "Indie AAA game," an "excellent game," or even an "all-time classic" with continued development and content.
- Awaiting Full Release (weight 0.3): Many players are eagerly anticipating future content updates and the game's full release, with some advising others to wait until then. There's a strong desire for more story, world expansion, and polished features.
- Praises Developer Effort (weight 0.14): Reviewers commend the developer(s) for their work, effort, and care, often referencing previous successful titles. Some express a willingness to support the developer by purchasing their other games.
- Offers Gameplay Tips (weight 0.06): Reviewers provide specific advice for players, such as the importance of saving frequently and always having a healer in the party (either through herbs or magic).

Other player notes:
- Early Access Development (weight 0.32): The game is currently in Early Access, which explains its unfinished state, including bugs, limited content, and ongoing development. Reviewers acknowledge this and often base their feedback on this understanding, with some noting the developer's long-term plans for completion in a few years.
- Positive Developer Outlook (weight 0.23): Reviewers express excitement for the game's future and trust in the developer, often based on their positive experience with the developer's previous game, Exiled Kingdoms. They note the developer's responsiveness to community feedback and a history of delivering on promises.
- Content & Feature Gaps (weight 0.23): Players note the current limited content, such as only two regions and a cap on experience levels, and express a desire for more. Specific quality-of-life improvements are requested, including a third-person view option, stack selling, battle animation acceleration, and quick load shortcuts.
- Pricing & Value (weight 0.06): Some reviewers find the current price a bit high for the Early Access state, but acknowledge that it is likely to increase as more content is added. This suggests a consideration of value for money in its current form.
- Localization Needs (weight 0.03): There is a specific request for Russian language support, indicating a need for broader localization to cater to a wider player base.
- Frequent Saving Advised (weight 0.03): Players are advised to save their game frequently and use multiple save slots. This suggests potential for bugs or difficult situations where a previous save might be crucial for player progression.
- Visuals Improved by Reshade (weight 0.03): A player found that using Reshade helped improve the game's visual appearance. This suggests that some players might find the default visuals lacking or desire more customization options.
- Genre Comparison (weight 0.03): The game is compared to a mix of Might & Magic X and Grimrock, providing a clear reference for its genre and gameplay style. This helps potential players understand its nature and target audience.
- Developer Origin (weight 0.02): A factual observation that the developers are Spanish. This information is not directly constructive feedback on the game itself.
- Reviewer Updates (weight 0.02): The reviewer updated their review after reaching a certain point in the game and in response to other feedback. This is meta-commentary about the review process rather than direct game feedback.
- High-End PC Performance (weight 0.02): A reviewer mentioned their high-end PC specifications (4090, 13700k) and that they played with max settings. This provides context for their performance experience but isn't direct feedback on optimization or issues.
- First-Person Perspective (weight 0.02): The game is played from a first-person perspective. This is a factual description of a core gameplay element.
- Indie Appeal vs. AAA (weight 0.02): The game is noted as not being AAA-level but is subjectively found more interesting than a major title like Baldur's Gate 3. This highlights its indie appeal and unique draw for some players, despite its current state.

Emotions:
- anticipation (weight 0.05): Emotion: anticipation
- satisfaction (weight 0.28): Emotion: satisfaction
- enjoyment (weight 0.06): Emotion: enjoyment
- disappointment (weight 0.1): Emotion: disappointment
- frustration (weight 0.12): Emotion: frustration
- appreciation (weight 0.03): Emotion: appreciation
- confidence (weight 0.01): Emotion: confidence
- nostalgia (weight 0.03): Emotion: nostalgia
- anger (weight 0.02): Emotion: anger
- excitement (weight 0.12): Emotion: excitement
- joy (weight 0.03): Emotion: joy
- optimism (weight 0.02): Emotion: optimism
- admiration (weight 0.02): Emotion: admiration}