Info about Tales of Old: Dominus:

Official game description:
**The Kingdom Lies in Ruins**
When corrupt nobles introduced Prima Nocta rights, they ignited a rebellion. The poor and the few just nobles banded together, fighting a desperate war that ended in the Battle of the Brides. The rebels were slaughtered and their forces scattered to the winds. You are one of these survivors, Eric of Woldham, who returned to find his village burned to the ground, his people killed, and sister taken by the victors.
Tales of Old: Dominus is the story of his revenge, an open-world RPG mixing brutal combat with engaging stealth mechanics, crafting and survival, and eventually building villages, managing your domain, and leading troops in a second rebellion against the corrupt nobles brutally exploiting the realm.
*   Grim Story of Vengeance: Eric's path will take him from the smoldering ruins of his village to the halls of nobility, as he grows in power from an anonymous survivor to kingmaker in a dark medieval setting.
*   Detailed, Brutal Combat: Blood will be spilled. Overcome your foes using period-accurate weaponry, fighting up close and personal or letting your arrows and bolts do the killing. Or force them to flee, surrender, beg for your mercy, using a complex, gory combat system.
*   Realistic Stealth Mechanics: Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. Sneaking is affected by light, noise,- and of course, staying hidden in a wild forest is a much different challenge than in bustling cities or peasant homesteads.
*   Open-Ended Character Progression: Eric is not confined to any specific class. Combine and mix skills to define his path: A noble swordsman with mastery of martial skills, a cunning thief capable of pickpocketing and lockpicking, a military commander - or anywhere in between.
*   Build and Lead your Rebellion: Deep Crafting and Leadership Mechanics: Eric's rise starts with a camp in the forest. Craft everything from bolts and arrows, through clothing, to upgrading and managing villages, cities, even strongholds. Attract people, gain income, then hire troops to lead them against your enemies in battle - but remember, loyalty comes at a price.
*   Dynamic Survival Systems: Staying alive means taking care of hunger, thirst, warmth. So hunt, forage, farm, buy supplies - or steal, rob, and murder. Mind the weather: Exposure to rain, snow, and scorching sun will break Eric as surely as lack of bread.
*   A Living, Breathing World : Explore a richly detailed medieval kingdom. Fight and lead soldiers, join a guild and become a merchant, turn a simple homestead into a prosperous farm, become a leader of the underground... There are many paths to vengeance.

Release date: 3 Nov, 2025

Categories: Open-World Exploration, RPG, Real-time Combat, Stealth Gameplay, Crafting, Survival, Base Building, Strategic Combat


- 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:
- High Potential and Value (weight 0.97): The game is seen as having significant potential, offering a lot of content and a solid concept for its price point. Reviewers often state it's a "steal" or "amazing value," believing it will grow with updates and developer support, making it a worthwhile investment.
- Impressive Visuals & Atmosphere (weight 0.72): Players consistently praise the game's graphics, animations, and overall visual quality, especially for an indie title. The dark, gritty medieval atmosphere is particularly highlighted as effective and immersive, with detailed environments like towns and forests contributing to the game's strong aesthetic appeal.
- Impressive Solo Developer Effort (weight 0.71): Players are highly impressed that such an ambitious and feature-rich game was predominantly created by a single developer. The visible passion, commitment, and responsiveness of the developer, coupled with active bug fixing and updates, contribute to a positive perception of the game's development and future.
- Robust Medieval RPG Mechanics (weight 0.7): The game offers a rich blend of classic RPG elements including challenging, visceral combat, deep crafting and survival systems, and character progression. A standout feature is the extensive settlement building, management, and rebellion mechanics, allowing players to build a village, recruit NPCs, and lead an army in an immersive, open-world medieval simulator with strategic camp claiming and stealth options.
- Compelling Story and Characters (weight 0.42): The game's narrative is frequently praised for being interesting, engaging, and easy to follow, often drawing comparisons to historical epics. Reviewers appreciate the well-written main characters and a relatable protagonist, enhancing the overall experience.
- Quality Audio and User Interface (weight 0.16): Players appreciate the great voice acting and engaging conversations, which enhance the narrative and world. The melancholic medieval soundtrack also contributes to the atmosphere, complemented by a clean and nicely designed inventory system.
- Immersive Open-World Experience (weight 0.13): The game creates a strong sense of immersion through its large world, with activities like riding through forests or sneaking at night being highlighted as particularly atmospheric and tense. This contributes significantly to the feeling of being within a medieval setting.
- Minor Bugs Not Detrimental (weight 0.04): While bugs are present, players generally feel they are not severe enough to significantly detract from the overall enjoyment. This perspective is often tempered by the game's indie nature and active development.

Common complaints:
- Game is unfinished and unstable. (weight 0.94): Players widely report that the game feels like an unpolished early alpha or an Early Access title, plagued by numerous game-breaking bugs, poor optimization causing stuttering even on high-end systems, and clunky mechanics. This overall state makes the game frequently unplayable.
- Poor UI, controls, and dialogue bugs. (weight 0.35): Players found the user interface ugly, the controls terrible with strange keybindings, and the item interaction system cumbersome. Dialogue sequences are prone to issues like freezing, audio dropouts, subtitle misalignment, and texture pop-in.
- Outdated visuals and generic story. (weight 0.35): The game's graphics are described as milky and visually outdated, akin to older titles from 2010-2011. Character models and animations are criticized for being unnatural and lacking emotion, with limited player customization. The storyline is widely considered generic and shallow.
- Clunky combat and movement. (weight 0.27): The combat system is criticized for being clunky, unbalanced, and weak, featuring poor hitboxes and issues where attacks fail to register. Additionally, general character movement and animations are stiff and awkward, negatively impacting the gameplay experience.
- Steam Deck compatibility issues. (weight 0.11): The game is reported to be unplayable on Steam Deck, with users experiencing crashes during launch or the console being forced to restart, indicating severe compatibility problems.
- Lacks player engagement. (weight 0.07): Some players found the game difficult to get into, particularly in the early stages, resulting in an overall feeling of discomfort and a lack of sustained interest in the gameplay experience.

Gameplay feedback:
- Dynamic combat options (weight 0.14): Combat features diverse and interactive possibilities, allowing players to use environmental objects like torches or clubs to damage enemies. Stealth mechanics enable silent takedowns, and combat feels responsive with actions such as kicking and dodging.
- Promising revenge narrative (weight 0.11): The game establishes a strong and engaging revenge-driven narrative. Players start as Eric, whose village is torched and sister taken, leading to a compelling quest for vengeance that reviewers find promising.
- Survival & camp management (weight 0.08): The game incorporates survival mechanics, notably food spoilage, which occurs relatively quickly (around 300 seconds). Additionally, a leadership system allows players to establish a camp, attract followers, and develop their settlement.
- Fixed character, varied playstyles (weight 0.08): While the main character, Eric, has a fixed appearance without customization options, players can choose distinct combat roles. These include playing as a resilient knight, a stealthy rogue, or a flexible hybrid of both.
- Mouse wheel combat control (weight 0.07): The mouse scroll wheel is utilized for combat actions, specifically enabling fast attacks and other battle maneuvers. This indicates a unique input method central to the game's fighting system.
- Menu-based quick saving (weight 0.04): The quick save function is not accessible via a direct hotkey but requires players to navigate through the ESC menu to select the 'Quick Save' option. This might impact user experience for players expecting a more immediate saving method.
- Tutorial presence noted (weight 0.03): The game includes a tutorial, providing initial guidance for players. This feedback is purely observational, with no specific details provided regarding its quality or effectiveness.
- Vague world loading behavior (weight 0.02): Initial game loading reportedly brings up 'another world' with buildings. This feedback is extremely vague and lacks specific details, making it difficult to ascertain if it describes a feature, bug, or general observation.

Performance notes:
- Poor performance and optimization (weight 0.12): Players are experiencing significantly low frame rates, even on high-end graphics cards like the RTX 4070 and RTX 4090. This core performance issue is compounded by reports that frame generation technology, intended to boost FPS, does not appear to be working effectively.
- Frequent item placement bugs (weight 0.05): Users have reported that bugs related to item placement occur frequently within the game. This issue can lead to disruptions in gameplay and negatively impact the player experience.

Recommendations:
- Positive, Worth Supporting (weight 0.57): A significant segment of players expresses positive sentiment, finding the game fun, enjoyable, and worthy of support, especially given its low price point. It is particularly recommended for enthusiasts of open-ended RPGs.
- Await Bug Fixes & Development (weight 0.53): Many players advise holding off on purchasing the game until significant bugs are resolved and further game development, including story progression, occurs. While some acknowledge its potential or current fun, a common sentiment indicates the game is not fully ready, leading some to seek refunds.

Other player notes:
- Impressive Solo Dev Effort (weight 0.21): Players are highly impressed that the game was developed by a single person or a very small team. This context fosters understanding for its current state and generates goodwill, with some suggesting players should form their own opinions despite potential imperfections.
- Promising Early Access Title (weight 0.16): The game is recognized as being in Early Access and shows significant promise for the future. Players are optimistic, expecting upcoming patches and updates to address current issues and evolve it into a polished, high-quality experience.
- Limited Playtime, Superficial View (weight 0.05): Feedback from some players is based on very short initial playtime, sometimes as little as 15 minutes. This suggests reviews might be superficial, driven by factors like price or resemblance to other games rather than deep engagement.
- Desire for Multiplayer Mode (weight 0.05): There is a clear player request for the integration of a multiplayer mode. This indicates interest in social interaction or cooperative/competitive play within the game's existing framework.
- Mentions Game Engine/Origin (weight 0.04): Players noted the game was developed using UE5 and that it is Argentinian. These are factual observations about the game's technical foundation and origin, rather than direct gameplay feedback.
- Criticizes Steam Refund Policy (weight 0.02): One piece of feedback points to frustration with Steam's 2-hour refund policy, suggesting it disadvantages 'deep games' by not allowing players sufficient time to fully evaluate them. This is an external platform criticism, not directly about the game itself.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.17): Players are satisfied by the game's strong narrative, compelling graphics, and rich atmospheric setting. Engaging gameplay loops, such as quests and settlement building, combined with the game's perceived value for money and the developer's progress, contribute significantly to player enjoyment.
- Frustration (weight 0.17): Frustration stems primarily from numerous game-breaking bugs and poor optimization that render the game unplayable or severely hinder progression. Clunky, imprecise, and poorly implemented controls, alongside an unpolished UI and strange keybindings, further exacerbate the negative experience.
- Disappointment (weight 0.16): Disappointment arises from the game's overall unpolished and unfinished state, characterized by numerous technical issues, poor performance, and unresponsive gameplay elements. Players feel let down by weak core mechanics like combat and story, and that the game was released in a broken state despite its potential.
- Appreciation (weight 0.07): Players appreciate the visible care, effort, and passion demonstrated by the developer, especially acknowledging the impressive ambition and feature set for a solo or small team project. The developer's responsiveness and attention to detail also significantly contribute to this positive sentiment.
- Optimism (weight 0.07): Optimism is driven by the belief that the game has strong underlying potential and that its current minor flaws and bugs can be resolved. The developer's responsiveness and commitment to future patches and polish reinforce the hope for significant improvements.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.07): Enjoyment is primarily derived from the game's overall fun factor and the engaging combat system. Players report having a good time with the game, appreciating its unique aesthetic and specific gameplay elements like horseback riding.
- Hope (weight 0.06): Hope is centered on the game's potential to significantly improve over time, with players expressing a desire to see it become fully playable and polished. This sentiment is often linked to a belief in the developer's dedication and the expectation of future fixes and growth.
- Excitement (weight 0.05): Excitement is generated by the game's immersive open-world campaign, engaging story and narrative, and the freedom offered by mechanics like settlement creation and rebellion. Players are particularly thrilled by chaotic and brutal combat scenarios and the engaging core gameplay loops.
- Admiration (weight 0.04): Admiration is directed towards the impressive achievement of a single developer or small team in creating a game of this scale and visual quality. The mature, non-fantasy story elements also contribute to this respect for the development effort.
- Anger (weight 0.02): Anger stems from the perception that the game was released in a fundamentally 'raw' and unpolished state. This is compounded by annoying UI elements and frustrating survival mechanics, contributing to an overall poor quality experience.
- Surprise (weight 0.02): Surprise comes from the unexpected level of detail and vast content achieved by a solo developer or small team, especially within an open-world setting. Players are impressed by the scope and quality for such a limited development effort.
- Contentment (weight 0.02): Contentment is directly linked to the game's pricing, with players feeling satisfied that the price tag is fair and offers good value for the content provided.
- Annoyance (weight 0.02): Annoyance is caused by specific immersion-breaking elements like the use of American accents in a medieval setting. Minor issues within the combat and dialogue systems also contribute to this feeling.
- Sadness (weight 0.01): Sadness arises from observing the game's significant lost potential, primarily due to its current unpolished and broken state. Players lament what the game could have been if it had been developed more thoroughly.
- Caution (weight 0.01): Caution is advised due to the presence of major bugs and a general lack of polish throughout the game. Players warn others about these significant issues before purchasing or investing time.
- Confusion (weight 0.01): Confusion results from unclear or non-functional game mechanics, specifically noted with unseen worker animations and the inability to perform basic tasks within the game world.
- Understanding (weight 0.01): Understanding acknowledges that the game's current need for polish is a direct consequence of it being developed by a solo individual. Players empathize with the challenges faced by a single developer.
- Support (weight 0.01): Support is expressed as a general sentiment of backing the developers, often stemming from appreciation for their effort or the game's potential, despite its current state.
- Enthusiasm (weight 0.01): Enthusiasm is generated by the game being perceived as a high-quality "indie gem" or a "great game" overall. Players are excited about its positive attributes and recommend it highly.}