Age of Reforging:The Freelands Reviews

I am really liking the game for its open world aspect and RPG elements. Originally picked this up on a previous sale and only started playing recently but have been enjoying the game although the fights are quite steep. I encountered extreme difficulty with just a two person party with addressing wounds and barely eeking a living off small repeatable quests. It would be nice to have some sort of difficulty notice on quests. Income was hard to come by until I started looking for merchant bands being attacked by either bandits or monsters on the overworld map then joining in. It took a while to form a party of 3 and was still pretty challenging until I could sufficiently build up my Mage to have a summon for additional tanking ability/aggro. The Mercs for hire have unique variation but are pretty overpriced and it would have been nice to have a scale of expertise that goes up in price similar to Battle Brothers or Wartales. For example, a farmer or fugitive with no experience would be cheap but weak, but would allow to fill the party more. The game is worth a try and I encourage the developers to keep up with your vision. Lastly, not sure if I am still pretty early on the game, but it would be nice to have Unique Strongholds like in Baldurs Gate 2 that can be claimed after a questline, or like the Keep in Neverwinter Nights. There are houses in the game, along with warehouses and your own caravan, but also a home base we can claim would feel more custom and earned.

I heard this game compared to Mount and Blade and WarTales so I went and played WarTales. This game allows for faster movement and combat. As a tradeoff the combat feels a bit out of control, even at slower speeds. This game feels like it is early access. Quests break, translation is poor, dead bodies stand like they are alive. I'd suggest giving them a year or so to clean it up.

my recommendation comes with quite some caviat some people compare this game with Kenshi which i find kinda wild. the only things both games have in common are a sanbox setting 3D grafics and some rpg elements that consist of leveling up certain character statistics via doing AoR is very Unity frankly the Unity logo could be taken out and people would still now asap that this is a Unity game if you know you know it runs (atleast on my nigh high end rig) pretty smooth and i had no crashes during my short time why was my time short? at first glance this could be a great sandbox. you can fight, sneak, steal; there is even an overworld map reminding one of some bigger mediaval games where armies, monsters, critters and people are represented via toon and on contact you get transported to the "normal" ingame map (usualy) unless you manage to avoid an encounter via statistics check. in towns you can do jobs either from a job board which mean bringing something from one town to another (or from one villager to another) killing stuff, collecting stuff or you can do jobs in establishments like do alchemy stuff at the doctor or work in a pub, which is a screen-affair. you chose parameters on a screen, your skills go up, maybe your checks are positiv and you earn cash, and your survival statistics go down. and there is the issue: you don't only have HP, SP (stamina basicaly) and mana no you got moral, hunger, sleep and health (yes, there is your HP and a stat called health) which decrease over time and depending on your actions...and need you to sleep, eat or get to a doctor or use pub-services (later camps) move out of town and pretty much everything will nuke you (spoiler) you lose your 1 companion after the tutorial and are told to not venture forth alone...good there are mercenaries for hire..which cost all more money you will have at that point...but wait there is more: they cost wages aswell. so you either work in town or run away from every encounter (which will not make progress anything but agility which you level by moving...or str/end when moving with heavy load) and i could go on and on...find an abondend farm early on...meet a friendly npc (which can join you) and agree to help her in her quest which leads you into a cave where she herself will die in seconds..nevermind your char. what i'm trying to say is unlike a game like Kenshi this game got on paper a lot to offer, but none of it feels thought out, designed or polished (nevermind balanced) the thing about challenge and challenge in sandbox is that you need to understand the carrot and stick thing so yeah: on paper this is a very expansive sandbox rpg with tons of content (especialy for the price) and ideas but frankly less is sometimes more...and then spend time polishing the less before trying you probably wouldn't believe how unbalanced and unpolished this game feels

"Age of Reforging: The Freelands" drops you into a sprawling medieval fantasy world, and right from the start, its open-world, free-roaming design is what truly shines. If you're someone who loves to explore at your own pace and carve out your own legend, this game delivers. The sense of freedom is palpable, letting you wander vast landscapes and discover secrets without feeling railroaded by a rigid main quest. The character customization options are also a big win, allowing for a deep dive into personalizing your hero's appearance and abilities, which is crucial in an RPG of this scale. Beyond the initial immersion, I really appreciate how the game handles progression. The crafting abilities offer a satisfying layer of depth, letting you create essential gear and items as you venture forth. What's even better is the freedom to improve your skills without relying solely on experience points. This system encourages organic gameplay, where doing something repeatedly genuinely makes you better at it, fostering a more natural and engaging sense of character development. However, no game is perfect, and "Age of Reforging" has a few rough edges. My main gripe revolves around the camera views. They can often feel clunky, making navigation and combat less intuitive than they should be. It's particularly frustrating when the game doesn't remember your camera settings after a death and reload, forcing you to readjust every time you respawn. Another missed opportunity, in my opinion, is the lack of racial traits during character creation. In a rich fantasy setting, this could have added another layer of role-playing and strategic depth. Lastly, while the world is vast, I found myself wishing for more diverse ways to obtain materials in the wild. Gathering often felt limited, which can slow down the otherwise engaging crafting loop. Despite these minor frustrations, "Age of Reforging: The Freelands" offers a compelling experience for players who value freedom, deep customization, and a robust skill progression system in a medieval fantasy setting. If you can look past some camera quirks and a few resource gathering limitations, there's a lot to love and countless hours to lose in its expansive world.

Despite the unpolished nature of this game, there is definitely something here, I might be speaking in intangibles, but there is a sense of adventure and discovery that when combined with the systems in place offer an experience that compels me to keep at it. Some fella called this fantasy Kenshi, and he's mostly bang on. There's a sense of getting better, a sense of progression, and a sense of strength in numbers. Despite the not quite pristine english, and the very rough nature of this game, I want to keep at it, and it's not something I feel like saying often these days. Guess these guys have done something right, after all.

Ok clunk aside. This game is huge like huge huge. Its super fun and the start of the game is brutal until you power scale.

I'd like to give a thumb up but i can't. The game has a lot of grammar errors and typos, the dev didn't bother with a corrector at all, but that's a trivial issue compared to the rest. It's a fully released game with many bad bugs, such as guards seeing and talking to you through walls when you are wanted, if you initiate attack on those you lose favor but it doesn't start the fight... That is until you find out that later on if you return in town the guard will actually go hostile and the whole town will be after you, potentially ruining the game. Some buildings are buggy as well, in Brea, the starting town, there are doors which has the open option, but the doors does not open. There is also a guard tower where if you try to go up in the tower, it is unfinished, there is a door leading nowhere and a stairway you cannot click even though it is interactable. It is very common to find NPCs stacking unto each others, from 2 to 4, all into each others, sometimes it make enemy pulls very tedious. On a reload, NPCs goes crazy, your stealth is turned off too, saved close to a guard even after intimidating him? Tough luck, he's gonna accost you again and this time you cannot get out of it without jail or fighting or paying. Some narratives also does not make sense later on, for instance i went to a castle later on and while talking to an NPC, the narrator made a character that isn't with me speak to my character. But all these isn't what killed my whole going, it's save file damage, i quick loaded from a fight and suddenly, the whole save file is damaged, no previous load files will work, the whole thing doesn't work anymore, this is just unacceptable.

A large open world and there's even things to do inside it. I'm around 20 hours in as of posting this and so far I'm enjoying it. Mainly I enjoy the freedom this game offers in how you face the world and what you do inside it. Sometimes I just wanna spend a few days learning alchemy and doing busy work, and other times I want to actually go on an adventure. It's a tiny bit buggy in some places and slightly unpolished, but so far I haven't found anything that breaks the game or destroys saves. So we're all good.

This is my second strange game discovery this year. The game is clearly rough around the edges, but it's an unusual and intriguing mix of story-driven CRPG and sandbox gameplay. You get large open-area maps with both main and side quests, often with choices and consequences, but you can also freely roam the world, take on random quests from towns, fight monsters, and clear dungeons. You can build reputation with factions, cities, or even individual NPCs — and that's great. The concept is fantastic, even if there's still a lot of work to be done. The combat system and character progression are surprisingly deep and well thought out — I love it. It’s a mix of spending experience points to unlock skills and stats, while also improving weapon proficiencies and attributes through use. Combat and character attacks rely on physical hitboxes, a bit like Kenshi. It's not perfect, but the underlying design is impressive. You can customize tactics for each character — choosing fighting styles (like aggressive or defensive), setting up automatic skill usage, controlling attack direction, and adjusting how close or far they stay from enemies in combat. There's so much depth here. The variety of monsters is also amazing. Of course, the game looks and runs pretty clunky. A lot of the assets seem to come from the Unity Asset Store, and there are plenty of bugs — but the developers are actively working on fixes. I was 100% hooked — I played for 74 hours in the first week alone. So if you enjoy sandbox RPGs and CRPG-style systems, give it a try. Maybe wait for a few more updates, but this game is a hidden gem — not for its visuals or performance, but for the brilliant ideas at its core.

The game has a concept that fits my tastes, it felt like Kenshi but in a medieval-fantasy setting. However, it lacks that magical element that keeps me engaged, like Kenshi does. The design choices regarding the setting, transitions between areas, quest, mini quest and the graphic style made me lose interest in the game rather quickly. One thing I didn’t find while playing this game is its own ‘philosophy.’ For me, that’s very important, because a game’s philosophy defines what it’s truly about. For example, Civilization has the iconic motto “one more turn,” Dwarf Fortress embraces “losing is fun,” and Kenshi, I’d say, carries the idea of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” These philosophies drive the gameplay and give the experience a unique identity, something felt was missing here. I understand that making a game is hard — and creating something on this scale is even more challenging, especially without ample resources, funding, or a large team to get everything done well. I gave the game a thumbs down in my review, but it wasn’t meant to discourage the developers. I truly wish you and your team the best with this project, and I hope you continue to gain experience and learn the "how-to’s" of game development along the way. That said, in the game industry, every game is subject to likes and dislikes because not everyone is going to enjoy the same dish you’ve cooked, no matter how much effort went into it.