2.5/5 ★ – Kalle_Deimos's review of SKALD: Against the Black Priory.

TLDR: Lure em in with the first two acts, and then BAM. 3rd act lame as hell. Overwhelmingly Positive reviews already in, refunds can't be granted. Genius plan. Gameplay: I don't really feel like I'm making real choices. Any choice I make both gameplay wise and story feel like the only choice I'd ever make. Usually in RPG's I have many opportunities to make different choices that will have either short-term or long-term effects down the line but I have found none. I think about two quests have genuine choices for how you want to go about doing them, and it was good! It needs more of that. Act I and Act II are interesting and actually pretty fun. But once you get to the final island you can tell that the game's finale was rushed and bare bones. Let's move onto the combat. The combat certainly lacks some cohesion. It can go really smoothly, it can go horribly. And I don't really know why that is. A big contributor of this is that the range of damage you can do is massive. Roland could do between 22 and 2 damage. That's fucking ridiculous. It can feel like your enemies are getting stronger while you're staying stagnant. Skald greatly benefits from using certain tactics to get through encounters based on the classes you have available. Master-At-Arms can 1v1 anyone. Thieves can move around easily and backstab for absurd damage. Guild-Magos cast devastating spells, run out of mana and become useless. Rangers do nothing. Hospitaller's provide buffs and debuffs that feel negligible. Champion's do that but are slightly stronger. The discrepencies between classes are very apparent, and you can probably dominate the game with a party full of Thieves and Master-At-Arms. Some battles can be absolutely grueling. Especially against enemies who are resistant to physical damage since other damage types are very rare. I get they were trying to go for a "low-magic" kind of setting but I feel like it didnt do the game any favors. Magic either needed to be buffed and re-do how to acquire attunement, or give the other classes more options in combat not related to their magic. Also the Vitality and Wounds system feels wrong. Your characters have a lot of Vitality as their main HP, and when that is used up they start taking Wound damage, which is much smaller. Taking wound damage can give you debuffs in the form of injuries. The problem is once you take Wound damage you're likely to just die, and this goes for the enemies as well. So wounds basically means little to nothing in terms of gameplay. I would have preferred wounds to be your big health pool and vitality to be your small health pool and then techniques and spells and such can target specefic body parts like VATS in order to debuff the enemy to your liking. But that didnt happen. So yah, the gameplay wildly fluctuates between really fun and tumorous. Story: It's fine until the end. SKALD has an over-arching story which is decently interesting but the best bits are in the smaller sections. *SPOILERS* Welp. That was one of the worst endings I've ever seen. Genuinely can't believe the final section of the game. Incredibly underwhelming and didn't even have you face the Dragon, the big bad that's been being built up the whole game, before the game decided to end. It's like when I'm writing a story and decide I'm done with it and just end it as fast a possible. No pay off for the conflicts or characters you've met, just a short story section that says "Everyone is dead. Go fuck yourself." So many things introduced at the very end and you're just told to accept it and move on. Absolutely no cohesion in that ending. They have the visuals of a Dark Lovecraftian story down, but none of the spirit and tone. It feels like a bunch of confusing shit was written in the guise of it being "cosmic" but it does not stick the landing at all. No build-up to the conclusion, it feels like I was robbed of a finale. Graphics: Love the graphics. A big reason why the game caught my eye. The use of old-school CRPG color palette. Heavy use of black. The pixel art CG's are very detailed and interesting. The sprites are good and change appearance depending on your equipment. It's lovely. Sound: The music fits perfectly with the game. There's not a lot of tunes that are catchy or anything but the songs all fit the tone that the game is going for. I love the sound used when an enemy is killed. Very satisfying. Extra: There is a handful of sidequests which are decentely fun. SKALD could have used many more of them. Favorite Thing: Roland my beloved. Not My Favorite Thing: The Forest Hag's baby stalking you through the woods and you never get any closure on that entire section. Also the ending.