Guild Saga: Vanished Worlds Review Summary

Extensive character customization options: The game offers extensive character customization, allowing players to create unique builds and hybrid classes. This freedom extends to skills, talents, equipment, and even character backgrounds, influencing gameplay and strategic options.

Appealing and detailed pixel art: The game features detailed and appealing pixel art, often enhanced with modern rendering techniques. Many reviewers praise the art style, noting its charm and clarity, and some draw comparisons to classic tactical RPGs.

Fun and engaging combat system: Reviewers consistently praise the combat system as fun, engaging, and challenging, often drawing comparisons to classic tactical RPGs. The system rewards strategic thinking and creative play, with a good balance of depth and accessibility.

Compelling narrative and characters: The game features a compelling narrative with interesting characters and well-written dialogue. Reviewers highlight the story's depth, engaging writing, and the distinct personalities of the companions.

Engaging and well-designed quests: The game features well-designed and engaging quests that encourage exploration and offer multiple solutions. Reviewers appreciate that the quests feel meaningful and contribute to the immersive world.

Lacks depth and content: The game is criticized for lacking depth and content, especially compared to similar titles like Divinity: Original Sin. Reviewers note the story, quests, and interactions feel weak and disconnected, with limited choices and uninspired dialogue.

Technical issues and lack of polish: The game suffers from numerous technical issues, including a lack of polish, bugs, crashes, and poor optimization leading to lag. Many reviewers mention the game feeling unfinished and unpolished, impacting the overall experience.

No skill respec option: The game lacks a respec option for skill points, limiting build diversity and making mistakes permanent. This is seen as a major issue, restricting player experimentation and customization.

Missing quality of life features: The game lacks essential quality of life features such as controller support, quicksave/quickload, and inventory management. The absence of a minimap and one-click inventory management adds tedium to exploration and item handling.

Content is too short: Several reviewers mention the game being too short for an early access title, with limited content and low replayability. The slow pacing, due to slow movement speed, further exacerbates this issue.

Flexible class and skill system: The game features a flexible class system reminiscent of Divinity: Original Sin, with extensive character customization options. Players can freely combine classes and skills, creating unique builds and playstyles. There are no fixed character classes.

Strategic turn-based grid combat: The game employs turn-based combat on a grid, emphasizing strategic positioning and tactical decision-making. Character stats determine turn order, requiring players to coordinate their team's actions. It has foundations of good depth and nuance.

Crafting, trading, and buffs: The game includes crafting and trading systems, allowing players to create food and potions with buffs. Players collect loot after battles, which can be used for trading and resource acquisition.

Environmental combat interactions: The game encourages environmental interaction, allowing players to use terrain and elements to their advantage in combat. This includes setting traps, using cover, and exploiting elemental combinations.

Action point based combat: Combat actions are governed by movement and action points, allowing for multiple actions within a turn. Players can spend action points to move further or execute skills, adding a layer of resource management to combat.

Pink square font/number bug: Some numbers and fonts are replaced by pink squares, requiring a full restart to fix. This bug severely impacts the user experience, as it disrupts gameplay and requires a complete restart of the game. Addressing this issue is crucial for a smoother and more enjoyable experience.

Inconsistent loot highlighting/interaction: The 'alt' key for highlighting lootable objects is inconsistent, and sometimes items are unclickable. This makes looting more difficult and frustrating, hindering player progression and enjoyment. Fixing this would improve the user experience.

Battles slow and prone freezing: Battles can become slow and prone to freezing over time. This performance issue can disrupt the flow of combat and lead to frustration. Optimizing the battle system would improve the overall gameplay experience.

Obscuring map selection UI: The map area selection UI obscures the map itself, potentially hiding important locations. This UI issue can make navigation difficult, especially at certain resolutions. Adjusting the UI would improve map usability.

Teleport after saving slime girl: The game teleports you after saving the slime girl. This is a very specific and isolated issue. It is hard to determine the impact without more context.

Strongly positive; promising potential: Many reviewers express strong positive sentiment, recommending the game and praising its potential, even in early access. They highlight the engaging story, tactical combat, and rich world-building. Some suggest supporting the developers and eagerly await future content and updates.

Wait for future updates: Several reviewers recommend waiting for updates or the full release before investing heavily in the game. They cite a lack of content or the need for more polish as reasons to hold off, while still expressing interest in the game's future.

Try the available demo: Reviewers suggest trying the demo to get a feel for the game. This allows potential players to experience the gameplay and determine if it aligns with their preferences before purchasing.

Improve battle controls/speed: Reviewers suggest adding hotkeys for checking enemy attributes and confirming turn endings to improve the battle experience. They also propose an auto-battle option or increased game speed to address the length of normal battles.

Address text/grammar issues: Reviewers emphasize the need to address text issues, as they detract from the excellent plot and world. Fixing these minor details is crucial for maintaining the quality of the game's presentation.

Anticipation for future development: The game is in early access, with developers actively working on improvements and additions. Reviewers express anticipation for future updates and continued development.

Incomplete story, early access: The game is in early access with about 10-30 hours of content available, focusing on story and lore. The main story is not yet complete, with more content planned for future updates.

Inspired by CRPG classics: The game is a pixel art CRPG drawing inspiration from titles like Baldur's Gate 3, Divinity: Original Sin, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Ultima. Some reviewers specifically noted references to BG3 within the game.

Mixed feedback from Chinese players: Some negative reviews from Chinese players mention disliking the art style and lack of Windows 7 support. The game includes Chinese voice acting and a second translation, showing consideration for the Chinese market.

Unclear or niche references: These points are difficult to interpret without further context. One mentions the game being a substitute for something else, another references a 'dual-armor system', and the last notes the game's connection to an NFT project. Due to the lack of specific details and potential for misinterpretation, these points are given a low importance score.