Drova - Forsaken Kin Steam Charts & Stats

It's good. Combat is punishing at first, but not overly so once you figure it out and gear up. Story is interesting, and I would like to see how things go with the RPG and decision elements. There's a bit of metroidvania level design, but with like, 50%, less opening shortcuts which adds to a bit of frustration to the game. Maybe shouldn't go exploring?... maybe I just haven't gotten there in the game yet.

Great game that shows even greater potential of the team behind it. Story is great (although there are parts that I do not like). Combat is challenging and sometimes unfair (especially humanoid enemies) but it has enough depth to playaround trying different things. Exploration is fun and there are a lot of things to discover around the world. The story is basically told by exploration and it is done good. I will definitely be watching for the next games of Just2D!

This was actually very enjoyable. It's tough at first. The game doesn't hold your hand. Everything can kill you and you need to be careful and use your resources as best you can. The story that it tells is an interesting one. You slowly come to grips with the mechanics and the rules of the game and you can gradually become a powerful warrior. A few gripes. The soundtrack could've been better, there's moments where the silence works brilliantly and it becomes scary, but it would be nice to have some uplifting music in safe places. Also it became hard to keep track of who was who and where I had to go. More than a few times I consulted guides because I had forgotten where I was supposed to go. The world is small and many places will be etched in your memory but it would be nice to have my character take some notes and not just me who has to keep a compendium. For me it's a one and done kind of game but I am interested to see what this studio does next! 7.4/10

In summary this is a fine game, but keep in mind that: * this is a Gothic-like game and it may be really hard in the beginning * this is quiet big project that was done by indie developer - it has rough edges, a lot of them If you accept these two, especially the second one the game can be quiet enjoyable. Pros: * Gothic-style progression system - it does work * Quests - some of the quests are actually interesting and require some brain involvement. Of course, it is RPG game, so don't expect rocket science but still... Sometimes quest story telling does fail to work and you need to run around, but before doing it worth to stop and think a little bit. * Exploration - game rewards you with some extra story pieces, gear, interesting places. Cons. This is an indie game. And it is big. A lot of rough edges: * You'll often find yourself in situations when loot protected by difficult monsters is no longer needed when you realistically can beat these monsters. * You'll notice that combat while initially interesting has some execution problems like invulnerability phase ending BEFORE the animation ends, poorly communicating the state. * The map design has drawbacks - the map is sort of a maze with a lot of dead ends and while it is interesting during initial exploration it becomes very irritating when you're just doing quests, ending up going in the wrong direction and having to backtrack. Having shortcuts in next acts would have been really beneficial. Also, sometimes even small obstacles like fallen trees can only be traversed from the one side - also annoying. * No teleportation in the later acts. I know that it breaks immersion and that technically there are trading carts, but look at Gothic 2, it simply had teleportation and that's all. Just to spare players nerves. * Some quests like about Talisman require some thinking and intellectual search, but others are just plain running to find person/location with very little clues. Not that it happens often, but annoying. Also absence of markers is good, but e.g. marking locations where you found some important items would actually be good. It technically possible with a map, but not really convenient. And so on.

It really is just 2D Gothic and it does a hell of a job at capturing that. Biggest flaws are enemies seemingly having less limits to how frequently they can attack or cast (slow/snare effects are especially overtuned) and everywhere feeling labyrinthine and annoying to get around. The latter is probably necessary for proper gating since the landmass is relatively small and so dense with secrets, upgrades etc. but it still feels bad frequently. You can go places you shouldn’t be and explore well over half the game in the first chapter if you want, which feels good. The world/theme is put together well but extremely generic. Interesting quests and story all the way through for me, though. If you want to go the path of magic you’ll get punished with an even harder first half of the game, or you can respec, but I do like that equip requirements are the sum of all your stats. Enemies and items don’t respawn but some get added between chapters. There are more than enough resources to do everything you’d want. Overall, I think Drova did exactly what it set out to do.

The dialogue is awful. Either the characters ought to be realistic, with hidden motives and desires, or theatrical, with a bombastic, lyrical quality of speech. Instead, characters are singular and one-dimensional, leaning more towards hating or trusting the lead character for no reason. The actual prose is sloppy and fake; if you speak aloud the worst offending lines, it becomes abundantly clear the writing staff never bothered to do so themselves. Metaphors are mixed and inelegant. Quests are ludicrously hamfisted; oh, I retrieved apples from a storage container for someone, and there's some missing, the quest-giver waxes aloud that there must be a thief in the camp. Never mind that I just rolled in and am an unknown figure in the camp, I couldn't possibly have just kept some of the apples myself. Then the quest just left-turns into the lack of apples being no problem at all, just get some berries instead. if the writing is this consistently disappointing in the first 60 minutes, it's a hard pass.

[h2] Drova - Forsaken Kin is an engrossing pixel art action/adventure game sprawling across a detailed and living world, IF you survive the worst initial 5/6 hours in the whole industry. [/h2] I've seen many reviews mentioning the Gothic inspiration and homage, quite frankly I can't comment on that as I've never played that series. But Drova stands on its own two legs as a excellent and competent adventure, full of many characters with their own agenda and (often) associated quests, great exploration that rewards curiosity and observation, and cool puzzles. The game is full of off the beaten path areas that will lead to interesting dungeons, caves, fights, loot... And best of all, the world is evolving according to your decisions, and the events unfolding over the story. Allegiances will change, characters will die, or move across the maps, the environments will change... It is very organic and helps immersion a ton. The quests often offer branched paths and choices, and the dialogue is consistently well written. As for the art style, the longer I played, the more I appreciated it, however the soundscape of the game is terrible. It barely has any music, and when it does it is completly unremarkable. As for sounds, they could get borderline annoying with certain enemy cries and shouts. Combat is fun, allows for choosing a playstyle, and has enough enemy variety to not become boring. It is heavily skill based, but also math based. Your gear in particular doing most of the heavy lifting. This leads me with the biggest problem I've had with this game, the early game. Drova is one of those games where you can go everywhere from the start, 90% of the map is open from minute 1. Except all the enemies besides a few select areas for beginners will dumpster you, and there is nothing you can do about it because without good gear, you don't stand a chance, and all the armors are tied to progressing the story. For players like me who like to explore when given a chance, this just resulted in me going somewhere, getting clapped, going somewhere else, getting clapped, repeat that for 4/5 hours before I almost uninstalled the game and finally resigned myself to just attempt where the main story was telling me to go. If you play the game, I HIGHLY recommend you just follow the main story until you get a decent armor and set of weapons, then go your merry way exploring freely. This early game freedom associated with poor balancing of early player strength almost cost me my willingness to continue the playthrough, and that would have been a shame because I really like what came after.

I was convinced to buy this because of all the reviews comparing this to the Gothic games, which are among my all time favorite action RPGs. And while Drova is obviously heavily influenced by those, the overall package didn't really do it for me. Good: - The skill and leveling system is pretty motivating at first. It works like it does in the Gothic games: You get learning points for every level you gain - and you can spend those at other characters that are able to teach you something. Not everybody can teach you everything. You have to find the right people for the right skills. And some of them ask you for something in return. That's cool. - The overall art style is also pretty nice. Not so good: - Combat got boring for me pretty fast. It is not bad but it also doesn't offer much variety. Either that or I picked the wrong class, I don't know. I leveled up my melee skill tree several times and each perk said something about improved fighting stance or something like that - but I never really noticed anything. You get stronger and do more damage, yes... but that's it. Since the Gothic games were an ovious influence here: Those games do it way better. - The map is... meh. Forests, ruins and swamps. - You don't get that much freedom to "do what you want" in this game. Example: In the Gothic games, you could always ignore a guard's command to "Step back!" and just pass through an important gate anyway. Of course you get attacked but that's a consequence you may or may not be equipped to deal with. In Drova, you always get put back a few meters when a character tells you to turn back. You get no choice. - The two factions are very disappointing. This was one of the best features in the Gothic games... you wanna represent the city guard? Or you wanna be with the mercenaries who don't give a damn about law and order? Or you wanna become a mage and join the monestary? HUGE differences. Here you get to pick dirty camp A or slightly prettier camp B. But they pretty much all treat you the same and offer the same fetch quests. I didn't care about either of those factions at all after several hours of gameplay. - There are WAY too many characters and conversations. I get it: It's an RPG and you talk to people. But here there is SO MUCH talking, I ended up just skipping through all the dialogue. All the important details and quest notes end up in your journal anyway. I think one big problem is that none of the characters seem really important. You barely care about any of them. Maybe less quest-relevant NPCs but with deeper interactions would have done it. If I care about the situation, the character and the consequences of what happens then I'm willing to read through some dialogue. But here it's alyways the same. Boring. - Immersion is ruined by some very weird design choices in this game. People talk a lot about DEI and woke games these days... and I never cared that much. But THIS game goes way too far with this. The story takes place in a viking/celtic inspired world but for some reason, most of the characters look like they're from central Africa. Also, most peole in important positions you encounter here are... of course... women. Know those annyoing wannabe tough guys you encounter in these games that won't let you through and are way stronger than you so you really look forward to when you finally become strong enough to kick their ass? In this game, pretty much all these positions were apparently given to generic looking women. Arena fights? Of course half the super-strong, impressive warriors are ladies. Meeting threatening-looking characters camped out in the wild? Women. Characters doing hard working jobs like building bridges and stuff? Women. Oh but I found an erotic depiction of a character on a piece of paper! (You know, like that one funny quest in Gothic 2 where you get to decide what to do with a painting of a naked lady)... and of course it's a nude dude. Obviously. It's the 2020s after all, duh. All this looked so over-the-top that I wasn't even sure whether the devs tried to make fun of this whole concept. So I checked their website. And gutess what they shove in your face there: Their pronouns. No further questions. So yeah, while there are some redeeming factors about this game, there are just too many things that bug me and killed my motivation to level up further. Boring characters, generic quests, monotonous landscapes... plus the high level of cringe with the design choices. Can't recommend it.

Whoa… what a game. You’ve probably heard Drova: Forsaken Kin described as a spiritual successor to Gothic and Gothic II. It’s not just about sharing a dark, hopeless with a hopeless dying world you are set to save; it’s also about the way the game plays, how its mechanics work, and how its world is built and presented. I’m happy to report that, while Drova borrows many of the strengths of Piranha Bytes’ games, it’s more polished - easier to control, and far less buggy, keeping the good while leaving out the bad. Combat is challenging yet fair. Once you learn enemy attack patterns, you can beat them even when you’re underleveled. Gear matters more than levels, since it’s the primary source of your stats - especially durability. Every time you swap to a new weapon or armor, the difference is immediately noticeable. On top of that, unique items are worth hunting down, as they often grant special abilities, spells, or even permanent stat boosts. I’ve always enjoyed RPGs where loot feels meaningful, and Drova nails that. Like Gothic, Drova doesn’t lean on endlessly respawning monsters or infinite resources. Herbs, ores, bandits, and enemies, once gathered/killed, remain such (corpses even progressively decay between chapters!), with only some respawning between each act. Some players may find this restrictive, but I enjoy the feel of completely clearing an area - knowing there’s nothing left to fight or gather. The story isn’t Drova’s strongest point, though it’s serviceable, with the lore carrying much of the weight. Choices are sparse, with the most significant one appearing in Chapter 1, and another near the finale in Chapter 5. If you enjoy gloomy, atmospheric RPGs that reward careful play and exploration, Drova is absolutely worth your time.

One of the best games I have ever played. Its hard to not describe it as 2D Gothic. The great: Combat is challenging for the most part of the game (besides the last 10 % of the game, where you just SLAP). Exploration is absolutely god-tier. The map is not that big, but there is almost zero wasted space and is full of secrets. Progression is one of the best I have ever experienced. From the start, you are completely useless and with more exploration and quest completion, you get progressively better equipment and you just feel how you become stronger. I love there is no durability of items (it would add complexity, but also would be really annoying), unlimited inventory (just collect everything) and the variety of enemies. The only downside is that I didnt care enough about the main story. It started strong but after doing the first 20 side quests, I have completely forgotten about it and just ignored it. It is more "me" problem, but I just didnt like the general "I need to get out of here by collecting X items" plotline. It didnt ruin my experience, but its a shame. Also I think I would care more about the story if there was some voiceover, atleast in main missions. Also, I had ZERO bugs and crashes. In almost 30 hours of gameplay. And I tried several really obscure things Overall its almost 10/10 game.