DROD RPG: Tendry's Tale Reviews

I just want to say that this game is great. But before you buy the game, know that you WILL have to restart from the beginning. Multiple times. People in negative reviews seem to describe the game as "trial and error" - which I disagree with. Nothing in this game needs trial and error, with the exception of needing to walk into rooms in order to know what's in them, which is dumb but map progress stays between restarts thankfully. Some custom holds (yes, those exist!) will fix this issue for you which is nice. This entire game is [b]fully deterministic[/b], so any progress you will make past previous runs you've done will be solely through better play. Optimal decisions can be somewhat ridiculous to calculate, too - so there's almost always room to improve the order in which you make actions far, FAR beyond just beating the hold. For example, [spoiler]it's actually optimal to skip the first shield in the base game, which is very counter-intuitive and the game will actually ridicule you if you don't get it.[/spoiler] Overall, this game is great - but you need a lot of mental fortitude if you want to get anywhere in it. You'll get irrecoverably stuck many times and need to replay the whole game (or at least half of it) again.

DROD RPG is a really fun and unique optimization game. It's a concept that seems like it would be tough to make work - essentially a single puzzle that spans many hours and hundreds of rooms. However, the game is very well designed to generally keep things challenging without forcing you to go back and repeat a ton of content - at most you'll need to go back a few rooms, maybe to the start of your current floor. Generally, even if you scrape through a boss with only a little bit of health left and most of your keys gone, you'll be able to beat the next floor still with careful decision making.

It's a good RPG and a great side story to DROD that shows how things are on the side of one of Beethro's enemies. I love Tendry's Tale for that, and I hope that they can maybe give something else like this in the future

DROD RPG is a terrific and unique puzzle game revolves around the management of health, attack, keys, special one-use items, and more. Choices are obvious at first (fight a roach and take five damage or a wraith and take twenty? hmmm), but options widen with each new encounter and room, leading to a truly staggering number of choices and routes throughout the game. Each route has its advantages and disadvantage, but only a few will leave you with enough health to complete the final challenges and hardest bosses. It can be frustrating in early stages as you learn the game's "language", that is to say the nature of tradeoffs from each decision and what it truly costs in terms of health or keys to pick up an item or leave it behind, but once you get into the swing of things it makes for an extremely intense and satisfying puzzle experience. The base game is also split into two halves, with the first half serving partially as a tutorial but also having a completely distinct design style, resulting in both halves of the game being uniquely challenging. On top of this, there are many officially approved expansions freely available from the Caravel Games forums, some of which have even more sadistically precise challenges than the main campaign.

I like puzzles and I like RPG games, so I thought I might like this one. I was wrong. The game is a resource optimization game, where the resource to optimize is your hit points. The combat is entirely deterministic, with tooltips telling you how much HP you will lose fighting the monsters. So if you see a 15HP health potion behind a wraithwing that will take 23 health to kill, optimal strategy is to ignore it until you have better weapon and/or ATK and/or defense. So far so good -- but now suppose the wraithwing is guarding a door which will cost a yellow key to enter. Is it worth paying a net 7 HP plus a yellow key just to see what's on the other side? You can't tell except by trial-and-error. In my ~1 hour of play I managed to get into a situation where I didn't have enough hitpoints to kill anything else, so game over, start from the beginning and play better this time. The intended playstyle seems to be (1) learn where the good pickups are (2) use your knowledge to plan an optimal route (3) win. But that's not the gameplay I was expecting -- to me trial-and-error is the antithesis of puzzle games and redo-from-start is the antithesis of RPG games. So a "no" from me. Play the other DRODs instead, they are pure puzzle.

Don't be fooled by the name: this game is not an RPG. It is first and foremost a puzzle game. The title isn't misleading though: DROD has become synonymous with excellency in puzzle games, and RPG means it will appeal to every fan of min-maxing or theorycrafting one can usually find in RPGs. This is a numbers game wrapped in a pleasant interface, an original soundtrack and a deep backstory sprinkled over all the DROD games. This game is story heavy for a puzzle game, but story light for an RPG: there is no complex story to read or numerous anecdotes and side-quests. The story elements are delivered through voice acting and will make you love Tendry for is panache ! The game is best enjoyed with at least two playthroughs. Saving often and backtracking is an inherent part of the gameplay. You have to strike a balance between going forth to gain knowledge of level layout and going back to better optimize your road. The DROD series is user content friendly and DROD RPG is no exception: if you liked the game, you can get more ! I highly suggests you visit the official website caravelgames for additional content... including FREE games !

Fun concept, however you've got a resource you must carefully manage the whole game: your health. Screw up with health management in the first half of the game, and it becomes impossible to beat when you're expected to tank certain damage to continue. This is what happened to me and I played as carefully as I could. I avoided what enemies I could, and made sure to always get the first hit. Then I got to Rule 6, did everything I could, and found I didn't have the health to tank the boss and continue. I'm not starting all over. The game would have been so much better if it was redesigned to be linear with each Rule (level) giving you a set amount of health. Mess up and can't beat it? Simply restart the Rule. Of course this means you can't backtrack. If the idea of being almost certainly forced to restart the game halfway through to better optimize early gameplay sounds fun, and the style of game sounds fun, then check this out.

This is a game where you have to use your noggin' to make choices. If you enjoy using judgement and logic to conserve resources effectively, this is a game you will enjoy. If you enjoy optimizing mathematical puzzles under the veil of stat-based RPG, this is a game you will enjoy. This game is like a grid based dungeon crawler, not totally unlike Desktop Dungeons (except not random at all), or Legend of Grimrock (except completely turn-based, with no reflexes required). It's obvious inspiration is Tower of the Sorcerer. You find stuff, stab baddies like goblins and evil brains with a big pointy sword, get stronger, and try to make to the end alive. It's brimming with secrets and you are generally rewarded for not acting rashly, despite the personality of the protagonist. If you have heard of DROD before, be warned that this game is utterly unlike most entires into the DROD franchise. It's a puzzle game of a different sort, but that's not a bad thing. Less pure logic and more judicial logic. It's a slow burner, but a good game, and it's pretty cheap for how long it'll take you to make it to the end alive. Give it a shot!

I loved all the DROD puzzle games, but this is a single puzzle spread over multiple levels and hours of play where your first attempts will likely end in unwinnable states requiring a complete restart. Playing correctly requires foreknowlege of the levels. For someone who hates repetition, this is a crime against game design.

One of the things I really liked about the first 2 DROD games was that each puzzle presented you a simple screen with all of the information needed to solve it. When you finished a room it was really finished and you felt good. This game, and the most recent DROD installments, are missing this feeling. You aren't solving rooms anymore you're solving whole levels. I got to Rule 6 and just got too frustrated to keep playing; I was no longer solving a puzzle I was going through trial and error. The difference between the two makes or breaks a puzzle game. I want to state for the record though that I have bought every DROD game to date and that DROD II is one of my favorite games of all time so I hope people don't take my critique of this game too hashly.