Stoneshard Reviews

Honestly, there is a fun core to this game but it has some critical design errors that cause it a lot of trouble. Saving opportunities are infrequent and just walking around the overworld is extremely dangerous. It's not weird at all to walk onto a tile and find yourself in the middle of 4-5 enemies who you have absolutely 0 hope of defeating. So you run off the map and find there are enemies on that map too and the enemies chase you from map to map. You will die many times due to things which you had no influence over and lose an hour of progress. Moving the camp helps with this, but you will either be constantly moving it or walking long distances in the wilderness. As it stands, I can't really recommend stoneshard. It is definitely very unfinished and the lukewarm highs of the game do little to offset its vicious lows. It puts its best foot forward, the demo and even the first hour or so of the game is much more story centric than the hours of grinding contracts in locations you've already cleared which the game is actually composed of.

First two weeks I played this I put in 120 hours. The art is incredible, the combat feels good, the stat and skill system has a lot to it. I'd recommend it to those who like spending time reading and perfecting their builds. The story and setting so far is pretty cool, I can't wait to see it completed. Some people say the save system is too punishing and annoying. I don't really get it since you have a lot of different options on how you want to save. All you have to do to not have a bad time is to remember to save before you do something risky. The game even has built in boosts and effects to sleeping/saving so you really want be doing it often. About it being too hard. I didn't really find it that hard but I have a lot of experience with similar turn based games. I've heard people say that the devs don't care about the game. I don't know about before but I bought the game during the caravan update. They've been updating the game regularly since then.

The game is hard. Especially without mods, you will feel like you lost your time due to what feels like unfair deaths. The best way to mitigate this is by learning the game with meta info (info from outside the game). The main lesson this game teaches through its gameplay is that confidence is an insidious killer: You will be killed because you thought you were safer than you actually were. That being said, the game is really good. Has really good mechanics and balancing, lots of builds, good degree of freedom. The fights are intense; you will have your very close wins and will face roll in a somewhat of a rollercoaster difficulty - which I personally find very close to the difficulty curve of souls games. I don't feel like it has great replayability yet, I only felt like playing twice on different updates, which did net me around 150 hours of gameplay total in ~2 years. I have hundreds of hours on Divinity 2, XCom games, Battle Brothers, The Last Spell and many turn and tactical based games. I still find it a great value for its price, and deem this game's experience as very unique.

Unlike the game's competitor, Doors of Trithius, this still doesn't have a complete campaign yet. However, the amount of content currently is more than enough to keep you occupied, and it's fairly fun. However, it's not very replayable in my opinion due to the amount of grind it takes for you character to get on their feet.

If I die one more time losing 2+ hours of progress I WILL DELETE THIS GAME Why can I not save anywhere, portable beds are expensive, gear is expensive, levelling takes too long, making mobs hard to approach to get better gear. If you throw away a quest contract or letter you pretty much lose the entire playthrough, wish I knew this 10 hours ago. Frustrating and unsatisfying game

There's a lot to enjoy about this game, but trekking across the same terrain, over and over and over, because you died to the same pack of mooks, isn't one of them. The way retreating works, every space you move, your enemies get to do the same, and also take a swing as you retreat. In essence, this makes it impossible to get out of a bad situation. You can't cut your losses and come back for another go. This wouldn't be such a problem, but the restrictive save system means you have to redo the same walk out, the same clearing half a dungeon, over and over. If sleeping rolls were plentiful, even if they still took up almost half your inventory space, it could be manageable. As it is, you can't exit a dungeon and save, you have to go all the way to your nearest town, often a solid 15-20 minutes of clicking or tapping, to pay, rest and then repeat back out to the location. Kingdom Come: Deliverance at least had Saviour Schnapps, so you could save on the go with a bit of forethough, but Stoneshard doesn't reward skill, it doesn't reward forethought, it just punishes you because your opponent got one crit off and now you're half-dead. As mentioned before, you can't back off, re-up and try again - you just die. I've tried to come back to this game over and over, and sometimes you get a good run that lasts a few hours and you're having fun, but it's just not worth it. I can't refund because I -have- had a few good hours, but it's not worth it. Save yourself hours of frustration.

i can't recommend the game to new players currently. recent changes have made an enjoyably difficult game into an unbearably punishing experience. players with hundreds or thousands of hours played will write essays about how the reworked morale and sanity systems are manageable with proper play, but fail to consider that those hundreds or thousands of hours of experience with the game are what make that possible. i loved the morale and sanity systems before this rework, as they created all sorts of cool stories and involved an appropriate amount of management from the player. in the new system, you must spend 70% of your playtime nursing a dozen different meters in order to be allowed to have very short bursts of experiencing the entire rest of the game, before you have to go back to nursing the meters yet again. i think it is fixable, but i can't recommend it until then.

This game is only fun with mods to either add quicksaving or to speed up walking. Dying and having to walk 6 map tiles taking a minute each tile is excruciatingly boring and frustrating. Otherwise the game is good.

Honestly I am just waiting for the custom character to come out before I play the game again.

Stoneshard is easily top 5 best RPGs on Steam. A brutally honest, complex, and masterfully crafted dark medieval fantasy that does not care about your feelings. This game will frustrate you, it will punish your mistakes, it won’t hold your hand, offer you mercy, or give you any kind of modern gaming comfort. If you’re used to casual, brain-dead games where the UI plays for you, walk away. Stoneshard is a dark and unforgiving RPG made for grown-ass people who enjoy suffering their way into greatness. Every dungeon you beat feels like a personal triumph, every death, a lesson. The atmosphere is incredible, the combat system is deep, and the build diversity is insane. I’ve put over 200 hours into this game, tested every possible build, and reached the endgame with all of them. They all work. The game is shockingly well-balanced for something this flexible. Now for the flaws: It’s SLOW. Like, painfully slow. I refuse to play this game without speedhack, 3x or even 5x, enabled through Cheat Engine. It's not even optional at this point, it’s mandatory. The devs need to add native speed control, because right now it's a joke how sluggish the pacing is. It's been in Early Access since forever. Five years and counting, and no 1.0 in sight. The scope keeps expanding, the roadmap keeps stretching, and it’s starting to feel like this game will be in EA until humanity goes extinct. Personally, I don’t mind, because each major update is a content bomb that always brings me back, but still, don’t expect closure anytime soon. Despite that, Stoneshard remains one of the most hardcore, rewarding, and intelligently designed RPGs I’ve ever played. Come for the suffering, stay for the dopamine. Score: 9.5/10