The End of Dyeus Reviews

The End of Dyeus is a open world, Zelda and King's Field inspired game with no hand holding. Its worth checking it out. Once you start you can go in any direction you want and fight bosses in any order. There is no map you can carry and you have to navigate by landmark and compass. It strongly encourages you to explore every inch to solve puzzles and find items and weapons to survive. Item shops can be found with merchants selling three items like Zelda games. Everywhere you go, you can find something that will help you. The only maps are ones at camps marking a few locations with you needing to rely on your memory. The plot is hidden in various notes and books that can be found in the game world that helps explain the world events and why things are the way they are. It's great being able to explore and use your head to learn and discover. It captures the old school vibe of the late 80s early 90's games of having to map and write things down your self and use your intuition rather then objective markers. if something is too challenging, you can look for better gear before returning. This has to the feeling of exploring a huge limitless world thanks the the fog obscuring the distance enough. With a second quest challenge along with other challenges, Dyeus can be as short or as long as you want it. The music is pretty simple midi tune with a few midi soundtracks that capture an old console vibe and tone. From the over world capturing a oppressive fantasy feeling, to the boss music sounding like a Turok 1 theme. The music will get repetitive as it doesn't last too long before looping. The weapon balance is bad half way through the game as weapons don't get better for the most part with enemies becoming faster with more range and damage, making most you get worthless. Swords become worthless fast when you have to constantly go in your inventory to switch weapons rather than just sticking with the halibred which has longer range and some enemies later on have that range or are vulnerable only at that range. Monster latter on can move and attack faster than you making fighting with swords to be very risky and often not worth it. You can only switch between two weapons at once which isn't practical when fighting enemies and their are no hotkeys for items. Most melee weapons have a really short range. Bow and arrows will be the common long range weapon to use as crossbow is too weak. It is possible to miss a weapon as they are generally hidden or hidden far away place. Enemies are another problem with them later on taking many hits while being able to attack fast or block a lot, making them harder to deal with. They become more numerous latter on which makes traversing the map more tedious. The players slow movement can't keep up with enemies and the devs realized this when they give you a dodge item near the end. Best way to mitigate it is to use arrows when enemies are to trouble some. Environments can be a hit or miss with a lot of forest and plain like environments. these are not bad, but they can be a bit too similar to one another at times. The boss area's also from having too similar of a layout with them being a straight line to the corner where the boss lies. This is fine for the swamp, but the desert and especially the dead lands could have a more varied layout. Maybe make the dead lands more like a maze of cliffs and mountains paths. Something to change the pace and also help with enemy congestion. Its not that there isn't effort in trying to make the area's in the game unique, but I feel like more could be done. The End of Dyeus shows you can still make a good old school like game without modern hand holdings. Its not easy game and it has it's balancing issues, but the exploration is fun and you will feel more skilled to be able to handle games that are like it. We need more old school games like this to challenge and push us to think and explore game systems independently. Its a game that is worth checking out.