Verho - Curse of Faces
Last updated: 2025-11-11
- Excellent core gameplay and replayability.
- Authentic King's Field spiritual successor.
- Satisfying, deep combat featuring charge attacks.
- Rewarding, extensive dark fantasy exploration.
- Combat difficulty often feels unbalanced.
- User interface is confusing and cumbersome.
Emotions
Players felt satisfied by the rewarding exploration, engaging combat, and well-crafted atmosphere, often noting improvements over similar titles like King's Field and Lunacid. The game's ability to meet or exceed expectations regarding its core gameplay, replayability, and authentic King's Field feel contributed significantly to this positive emotion, alongside a balanced challenge and smooth performance.
Excitement stemmed from discovering the game as a 'hidden gem' and its strong potential as a 'Kingslike' experience, blending elements of King's Field and Souls games. Players anticipated future content, praised the amazing design with hidden elements, and felt a strong positive impression, leading to instant purchases and a desire to support the developer's future projects.
Appreciation was driven by the developers' clear passion and thoughtful design choices, delivering a well-made homage to classic RPGs. Players valued the game's focus on gameplay and exploration over cutting-edge graphics, as well as the excellent voice acting, sound design, and overall atmospheric quality.
Players reported overall enjoyment due to fun gameplay, interesting map design, and balanced difficulty, creating a pleasant and immersive experience. The game provided a positive experience for both new players and fans of similar genres, offering a rewarding world to explore.
Joy was experienced through fun and engaging exploration, soothing music, and the overall positive flow of the game, making it an 'absolute blast' to play. The ability to continue adventures from the demo and witness the game's development and release also contributed to this feeling of happiness.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 95% · Negative 5%. Score: 5 / 100
Positives:
- Players find the gameplay solid, fun, and well-made, adapting classic mechanics to modern times. The game offers numerous playstyles and build experimentation, contributing to high replayability and a good difficulty balance, consistently described as highly enjoyable.
- The game strongly evokes the King's Field atmosphere and gameplay, appealing to fans of old-school first-person RPGs. Many consider it the closest and most satisfying modern interpretation of the genre, blending classic DNA with quality-of-life elements.
- Players find the combat system engaging and rewarding, described as smooth and simple to understand yet hard to master. Its depth allows skill to compensate for character level, leading to a satisfying melee experience.
- The game successfully captures the essence of a dark fantasy dungeon crawler, reminiscent of titles like Lunacid and King's Field. Players appreciate its sense of exploration and adventure, noting it avoids artificial complications sometimes found in other Souls-like games.
- Exploration is highlighted as a core and highly enjoyable aspect of the game, consistently rewarded with numerous hidden secrets and abundant content. It is described as intense and encourages thorough investigation.
Negatives:
- Feedback indicates a wide range of issues with combat balance, from specific attacks feeling weak (sift, magic) or strong (heavy weapons) to problematic hitboxes and critical chance design. The overall difficulty is perceived as inconsistent, with some areas being too easy, others frustratingly hard (e.g., spike traps, specific bosses), and general combat feeling simplistic.
- Players frequently report that the user interface, including inventory management and equipment screens, is confusing and needs an overhaul. Navigating menus and understanding how to upgrade stats is often cumbersome, detracting from the gameplay experience.
- Many players feel the game suffers from a general lack of polish, leading to broken immersion and a 'project-like' feel. Specific issues include amateurish artistic aspects (textures, architecture), poorly adjusted lighting/shadows, problematic bloom effects, and a non-functional retro filter. Furthermore, technical issues like resolution settings not saving and general bugs contribute to frustration.
- Players report several frustrating core mechanics. These include instant death from falling, which combined with an old-school manual save system leads to annoyance. Other concerns are a perceived lack of character mobility, strange jump physics, and basic overall mechanics, including enemy design with attacks from obscured positions.
- Players noted that both side quests and certain main story choices or events often lack clarity. This makes it difficult for players to understand objectives or the implications of their decisions, potentially hindering progression or immersion.
Gameplay:
- The game lacks a dedicated dodge or dash mechanic, instead requiring players to rely on strategic movement, jumping, and understanding enemy attack patterns to avoid damage. Techniques like rushing past attacks or temporarily unequipping weapons for speed are key to evasion.
- Both weapon attacks and magic spells fundamentally utilize a charge-up mechanic. Players must hold the respective button to charge, releasing at maximum to inflict critical hits or cast powerful spells, as uncharged attacks are significantly weaker.
- Players acquire an arsenal of weapons and magical rings essential for survival, which can be enhanced through upgrades using increasingly rare Revium stones. Character statistics significantly influence various combat attributes, and certain gear requires specific minimum stat levels, with New Game+ offering further character leveling opportunities.
- The game intentionally omits common navigation aids like a quest log, map, or quest markers, encouraging players to explore freely, even into areas beyond their current progress. Success in navigation and quest progression relies heavily on paying close attention to environmental hints and remembering routes.
- The game is identified as a first-person dungeon crawler, a genre where comparable titles like King's Field often feature stamina management. However, this game notably omits a stamina bar, altering the resource management dynamics within combat.
Performance:
- -
No data available
Recommendations:
- Players express overwhelming positive sentiment, strongly recommending the game. Factors like positive first impressions, high perceived value, accessible pricing, and full Chinese language support contribute to its status as a must-buy for many.
- The game is highly recommended for enthusiasts of dark fantasy RPGs, drawing direct comparisons to beloved titles like Lunacid, King's Field, Dread Delusion, Shadow Tower, and Dark Souls. This indicates it successfully caters to a specific niche.
- The inclusion of secrets within the game is expected to significantly enhance its replay value. This suggests a well-designed world with hidden content that encourages multiple playthroughs.
- Players suggest trying the game's demo if there is any hesitation before purchasing. This implies the demo effectively represents the game and helps potential buyers make an informed decision.
Miscellaneous:
- Many players expressed strong enjoyment and engagement with the game's demo, playing it extensively, achieving milestones, and noting its smooth performance on platforms like the Steam Deck. This indicates a successful and positive initial player experience.
- The game effectively taps into nostalgia, with players drawing comparisons to classic RPGs like King's Field or Lunacid. This design choice resonates well with fans seeking an atmospheric, old-school gaming experience.
- Players expressed a clear desire for future updates and additional content, specifically mentioning new character roles such as a summoner or gunslinger. This indicates a strong appetite for continued development and expanded gameplay options.
- Some players noted minor issues such as needing to adjust dialogue volume for better immersion or inadvertently missing entire zones during their first playthrough. This suggests small opportunities to refine audio mixing or level design clarity.
- A specific, actionable suggestion was made to apply a crunchy bitcrush effect to character voices. This is intended to better blend the vocal audio with the game's retro visual filter, enhancing overall aesthetic consistency.
