Long Gone Days Review Summary

Last updated: 2025-07-07
  • Captivating, immersive story and realistic war depiction.
  • Stunning visuals, art style, and atmospheric sound.
  • Enjoyable combat system with accessible RPG mechanics.
  • Unique language barrier mechanic enhances immersion.
  • Combat can be slow, simple, and tedious.
  • Story and characters are sometimes weak.
Long Gone Days header

Emotions

What players like:

Common complaints:

Gameplay feedback:

Performance notes:

Recommendations:

Other player notes:

Review evidence

Why players say this

What players like

Captivating & Immersive Story: The game's plot is consistently praised for being intriguing, deep, and emotionally impactful. Its compelling narrative and realistic script effectively immerse players, keeping them hooked from beginning to end.

Realistic War Depiction: The game is praised for its mature narrative that realistically depicts the atmosphere and impact of war. It skillfully balances warm moments with the crushing realities and brutality of conflict, making players reflect.

Stunning Visuals & Art Style: Reviewers consistently praise the game's beautiful pixel art, detailed character portraits, exquisite CGs, and overall visually appealing aesthetic, highlighting it as a major strength.

Enjoyable Combat System: The combat system is described as fluid, dynamic, and easy to understand, providing an engaging experience without being cumbersome. It offers a good balance, being neither too difficult nor too easy.

Accessible RPG Mechanics: The game offers simple yet engaging RPG elements that are easy to learn and not intrusive, allowing players to focus on the story. Its unique concept as a modern military tactical RPG is also highlighted.

Common complaints

Slow, Simple, Tedious Combat: Combat is widely criticized for its slow pace, repetitive nature, and lack of strategic depth, often feeling like a chore. This tedium is exacerbated by slow UI notifications for buffs/debuffs and overall low difficulty, rendering many mechanics like body part targeting pointless.

Weak Story & Characters: The narrative is criticized for being rushed, predictable, and inconsistent, failing to deliver on its premise or themes. Characters are often underdeveloped, unnatural, or lack complexity, leading to a lack of emotional investment, compounded by poor, padded, and unskippable dialogue.

Confusing Morale System: The morale system is unclear in its effects and feedback, making it difficult for players to understand how to raise it or what its impact is. Its mechanics, such as skill usage reducing morale, are perceived as contradictory and half-baked.

Missing Combat UI Info: Players desire more in-game information during combat, such as enemy HP, detailed buff/debuff effects, hit chances, and clear stat explanations. The current UI lacks these crucial details, hindering strategic decision-making and overall player understanding.

Unintuitive Controls & UI: The game's controls are described as uncomfortable and clunky, making character movement difficult and leading to finger cramps. The menu interface is tedious to navigate, and there's a notable lack of full controller support.

Gameplay and performance

Turn-based JRPG Combat: The game features a standard turn-based combat system, often described as JRPG-style. While some players find it straightforward and simple, others note it can be tedious or lack tactical depth.

Protagonist & Core Lore: The narrative centers on Rourke, a sniper from 'The Core,' a secret underground military organization that manipulates global conflicts. The plot follows Rourke's journey as he uncovers the truth about The Core and seeks to stop them, recruiting allies along the way.

Game Length & Side Quests: The game offers a decent length, typically 10-13 hours, with additional content provided by numerous side quests. While some side quests are noted for being confusing or having convenience issues, they often expand the game's lore and provide rewards.

Unique Language Barrier: The game features an innovative language barrier mechanic where characters speak their native languages (Russian, German, Polish). Players need a translator character to understand conversations, enhancing immersion and reflecting the game's real-world settings.

Morale System Mechanics: The game incorporates a 'Morale' system, which functions similarly to magic points in JRPGs, used to activate special abilities. Morale can be gained through combat rewards, side quests, and dialogue choices, impacting combat efficiency and character cohesion.

Minimal bugs, high stability: Players reported experiencing very few or no significant bugs or crashes, indicating a high level of game stability and polish.

Strong performance, low requirements: Reviewers consistently praised the game's smooth and solid performance, noting that it runs well even without requiring a high-end computer, which enhances its accessibility.

Recommendations

Engaging Story & Characters: The game is highly recommended for its compelling narrative, well-developed characters, and unique art style, which often compensate for other aspects. It particularly appeals to fans of story-driven RPGs with themes of war and social commentary.

Best on Sale: While generally recommended, many reviewers suggest purchasing the game during a sale. This is often due to its perceived short playtime or basic gameplay, offering better value for money.

Desire for Sequel: Players expressed a strong desire for a continuation of the story or a new series from the developers. This indicates high satisfaction with the game's world and characters, encouraging future development.

Gameplay Strategy Tips: Reviewers provided specific advice for new players, including thoroughly exploring the map, finding weapon upgrades, and completing all subquests. They also suggested using paralysis items in boss fights and avoiding the "Buff STR/DEF/AGI" skill.

High Review Scores: Several reviewers assigned very high numerical scores, such as 9/10 or 10/10. This indicates strong overall satisfaction with the game.

Other review notes

Well-Developed Characters: The game features interesting, humane, and well-written characters, including the protagonist Rourke, who evolve with unique traits, flaws, and moral compasses. While some found the teenage protagonists susceptible to doubt or character personalities occasionally too serious, the overall character art and emotional depth were highly praised.

Compelling Story & Premise: The game features a stunning and engaging story with a well-written premise and lore that captivates players. While some felt the story's full potential wasn't always realized or had minor hiccups, its narrative focus, moral exploration, and unique genre blend were highly praised.

Distinct Modern War RPG: The game stands out as an RPG with a rare modern and military setting, blending sci-fi, alt-history, and dystopian themes. It's described as an electronic novel or visual novel presented as an RPG, featuring an anime aesthetic without typical anime tropes.

Satisfying Playtime & Value: Reviewers found the game's length appropriate and engaging, with some dedicating significant hours to completion. It offers a substantial experience without mandatory filler content, respecting player time.

Immersive Language System: The game uniquely incorporates language barriers as a smart and immersive gameplay element. Characters speak their native languages, requiring translation or specific language knowledge, which adds believability to the turbulent international society depicted.