Scarmonde Steam Charts & Stats

Another great indie game I found somehow

If you're at the point where you're reading reviews, go ahead and buy the game. I personally guarantee this is the sort of thing you want to play. I'm not one for long-winded reviews, but: level design is easily digestible. World is mostly linear except for the few open-world sections, and those are limited enough that there's no worry about getting overwhelmed or lost. What really shines about this game is character customizability. You start out picking 4 of 16 classes, but don't worry about it - you can spec your existing characters into the other classes as you go along, leading to infinite permutations of abilities. Your mage too squishy? Give them a knight subclass and equip heavy armor. Your mage too weak? Give them a sage subclass and get AoE magic + 25% magic damage up. Past classes, there's the wide variety of equipment. Most equipment in the mid-late game isn't strictly better or worse than other gear as far as damage or defense goes - rather, what you're looking at are extra attributes like counter percentage, evasion percentage, status effects, and so on. Keep everything you find, because you might find yourself needing to change up your strategy for a tough boss, and you'll need the perfect set of equipment to do it. Very charming. Highly recommend.

A 20ish hr rpg in the vein of old nes FF, but with QOL for modern times, Scarmonde is light on the story, with more focus on the characters and really fleshing them out. Each of the four I've started with, the warrior, thief, wht and blk mage classic starter pack :) they all feel very useful beyond the usual atk, steal, heal, aoe. The game is simple, yet has much going for it with regard to customizing your characters. There are 12 classes to pick your 4 heroes, and then it plays out to begin with a home base that you dungeon dive from, but expands into a greater world. It feels, plays and sounds like the 8bit era, but with polish of modern times.

If you like final fantasy 1 then you will like this. You may want to look at the class guide in the community for your class. I went in blind and have enjoyed it but the last parts of the game has been really hard because of it.

The amount of customization in this game is just nuts. You would think that makes a few loopholes, or some sort of crazy cheese strategy ... but no. My glass cannon sage is insanely powerful, but the cost is that he often goes last and has some ailment vulnerabilities (on top of the physical weakness). A buffed up knight can hit hard and keep aggro well, but when a spell comes through that reduces his aggro to 0 ... things get wild. That's one of the things I loved about this game. You may have some strategies ready, but creative enemy and boss encounters will throw a wrench in the mix. Similar to the Megaten games, ailments in this game REALLY matter, and boy do the enemies love to use them. I like games that make you consider this. You don't always need to stack offense. If you fight a boss that is charming your team, you need to find a relic to stop that. A late game boss was just chewing through my tank's HP, but I saw that he had a fire vulnerability, so I added a few relics to counter that and fared much better. Again, that's what is so brilliant about this game. There's always something you can do to help the encounter (if you explore and find the equipment or build up your skills to do so), yet the encounters are STILL interesting, because they will often throw in an ability or spell that nukes your strategy. Yes, that sometimes causes a wipe, but you have to dust yourself off and try again. I'll say this ... I've definitely played easier games. You can't just blindly wander through later encounters in this game, especially in the post game. A KO vulnerability will spell (quite literally) instant death for your team, and a surprise by the wrong group of enemies could be a rough time. Even after saying all this ... I don't think the game is TOO challenging. It can be challenging at times, yes, but it's still fair. If something is not working for you, it's almost always because your build needs addressing, though I guess it IS possible to be severely under-leveled or not have the proper team. Needless to say, I would recommend playing this if you enjoy interesting combat mechanics, amazing party and equipment customization, and fun exploration, all in a retro style. The music is pretty great, too. I couldn't believe how many cools music tracks were stuffed into this one. The only complaint I have with this game is that I feel like I robbed the development team by only paying $13 for it. The amount of content and enjoyment I got out of it was surely worth more, but I thank the team regardless for such a good game.

RPG fun and can get really rude at times. Was able to do some very fun power tripping at times.

This is the first JRPG I've been able to sit through to completion in over a decade. Simply amazing. Completed my first run in 19 hours.