Zoria: Age of Shattering
Last updated: 2025-02-22
- Engaging story and immersive game world.
- Enjoyable and polished tactical combat.
- Nostalgic, classic RPG feel.
- Appealing and distinct visual style.
- Unpolished, buggy, and incomplete experience.
- Shallow character customization/progression.
Verdict
Mixed
Summary
Positive 70% · Negative 30%. Score: 30 / 100
Positives:
- The game features an engaging story, rich lore, and immersive world-building, enhanced by well-written dialogue and voice acting. The narrative is compelling and keeps players invested, with a plot that unfolds gradually and becomes increasingly focused as the game progresses. The world feels alive and well-defined, encouraging exploration and discovery.
- The game offers enjoyable, fast-paced, and intuitive turn-based combat with a good level of tactical depth. Battles require strategic planning and utilization of character abilities, providing a satisfying and engaging combat experience. The combat system is polished and relatively bug-free.
- The game evokes nostalgia for classic RPGs like Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights, capturing the feel of old-school adventures. It successfully blends familiar RPG elements with refreshing innovations, providing a unique yet comfortable experience for fans of the genre. The game emphasizes combat and looting, similar to older titles.
- The game has appealing graphics and a distinct art style that enhances the overall experience. The visuals are well-done, with impressive special effects and world-building. The absence of overwhelming visual effects allows the game's clear graphics to shine.
- The game is enjoyable and worth its price, offering a substantial amount of content and a refreshing experience. Many reviewers found the game addictive and fun, especially after getting past the initial learning curve. The game's imperfections add to its charm.
Negatives:
- The game suffers from numerous issues, including bugs, poor optimization, and a lack of polish. Many reviewers felt the game was rushed or incomplete. The developer's response to reported issues was also criticized.
- Character customization and progression are limited and uninspired. Skills are simple and unbalanced, and many classes feel similar. The game lacks depth in its RPG mechanics, with stats and skills having minimal impact.
- The game features an overwhelming amount of loot, making inventory management tedious and frustrating. The lack of sorting options and the abundance of useless items exacerbate the problem. The crafting system is also overwhelming due to the sheer number of items and their randomly generated stats.
- Navigation is frustrating due to poor pathfinding, confusing maps, and the lack of fast travel within zones. The maps are often too large and empty, leading to excessive running and backtracking.
- The game suffers from various quest-related bugs, including quests that cannot be completed or that fail to trigger properly. These bugs can prevent progression and lead to wasted time.
Gameplay:
- The game combines familiar elements of CRPGs, tactical RPGs, and ARPGs. Players explore the world, complete quests, manage a base, craft items, and engage in turn-based combat with a party of characters. The game emphasizes strategic party composition and utilizing character skills.
- Each character class has a unique skill tree with various skills and specializations. While the skill system is functional, some reviewers felt it lacked depth, with limited skill choices and a reliance on a few core abilities.
- The game features a crafting system for equipment, potions, and food. Crafting allows players to create powerful gear and consumables, but some reviewers found certain aspects of the system, like cooking and alchemy, to be somewhat unnecessary.
- The game offers adjustable difficulty levels, with 'normal' being challenging from the start. However, some reviewers found the combat became too easy later in the game.
- Players manage an outpost, upgrading facilities and recruiting new characters. Characters can be sent on missions to gain experience and rewards, and the outpost management system is well-integrated into the game.
Performance:
- The game generally runs well, even on older or mid-range PCs, with smooth gameplay and decent optimization. Some players experienced initial performance issues that were resolved with driver updates or adjusting graphics settings. The game is also reported to run well on Linux.
- The game features mouse controls with available controller support. The controls are described as classic, similar to Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, using a click-to-move system.
- Many players have reported a stable experience with very few or no bugs and crashes encountered during their playthroughs. This suggests that the game is generally well-polished in terms of stability.
- The graphics are considered average or decent, with some describing them as simple and indie-like. While functional, they are not a standout feature of the game.
- Players have reported instances of clipping through walls and getting stuck in certain areas of the map. These issues can be resolved by saving and reloading the game.
Recommendations:
- Reviews are mixed, with some praising the game's value, fun factor, and potential, especially considering its indie status and low price. However, many others cite significant issues such as bugs, unpolished gameplay, and a lack of depth, leading to a wide range of recommendations from strong endorsements to outright rejections.
- Many reviewers mention the need for quality of life improvements, indicating that the game is missing features or polish that would make it more enjoyable to play. This suggests a need for better UI, clearer tutorials, or more convenient systems for inventory management and other common tasks.
- The loot system is criticized for being unimpactful and not useful, suggesting that the items found are either not powerful enough or not relevant to the player's needs. A rework of the loot system could make exploration and combat more rewarding.
- Reviewers express hope that the developers will continue to improve the game through patches, updates, and DLC. They commend the small development team and encourage them to address the game's issues and build upon its potential.
- Some reviewers express disappointment, especially when comparing the game to titles like Baldur's Gate 3, noting that it lacks the depth and polish of AAA CRPGs. Others find the game to be a tedious slog.
Miscellaneous:
- The game was developed by a very small indie team of only three people. While this is impressive, some reviewers noted that it resulted in a lack of polish and lower quality graphics compared to larger productions. The game is also explicitly noted as an indie title, setting expectations appropriately.
- The developers are actively engaging with the community, responding to feedback, and releasing patches to address bugs and implement quality of life improvements. Some reviewers appreciate the developers' commitment and responsiveness, even revisiting the game after initial refunds.
- Reviewers highlight specific skills of different classes, such as the Lancer's ability to clear obstacles and repair equipment, the Guard's skill with military equipment, the Sentinel's action point buff, and the Ranger's evolving skill set. Some skills, like the Sentinel's, are considered less effective.
- The game primarily supports English and Chinese, with the developers open to adding more languages based on sales. However, the quality of the Chinese localization is criticized as being machine-translated and difficult to understand.
- The game's graphics are considered basic, and there's limited voice acting and polish in some areas like item names and dialogue. However, reviewers generally found the graphics acceptable and didn't encounter significant glitches.
