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Review
Just for the sake of transparency: I only played the demo version of the game, so I’m voicing my opinions about the demo version of the game and not the full one. Keep that in mind while you read. The review may contain untagged spoilers.
Good gods, I miss my TTRPG sessions. That’s why I was kind of intrigued when it comes to The Sword of Voldiir, which is based on a homebrew DnD campaign. It’s got all that you need: character creation, stat rolling, turn-based combat. I love turn-based combat.
Character creation is rather simple: your race (out of three options, which are human, half-elf, and siren; each with their own strengths and stat bonuses), your gender and pronouns, your weapons, your stats (which can be either rolled or chosen manually; I opted for rolling and managed to get really decent numbers), and your sexuality (one of the companions will shift their gender according to your preference). “Visual” customization comes later in the story, which I’m completely fine with.
The game focuses on the band of four mercenaries: Lorelei of Running Waters (a siren woman), Aenwyn Rolen (who in my playthrough happened to be a half-elf man, as I exercised my bisexual right to not choose a preference), Cassian Winterluff (a human man), and of course, the main character (in this case, half-elf nonbinary disaster, Aaran Alvierni). You are all tasked with retrieving the titular Sword of Voldiir, which has great magical capabilities… or maybe anti-magical capabilities, as it seems it’s most prominent feature is magic immunity. The sword rests in a cave, you go to the cave, retrieve the sword, and… get robbed immediately the moment you leave. Absolutely classic hook: your MacGuffin gets stolen, you have to get it back or else bad things will happen.
Along the way you pass various checks and talk to your companions to raise your relationship (and flirtation, if you want to) points. The demo also contains two combat encounters: one with the bandit who stole the sword, one with a chimera which guards the sword at a rich nobleman’s house. During combat encounters you can choose between using magic and using your weapon that you’ve chosen earlier – unfortunately, you can’t switch back and forth between weapons and magic during one combat and you get locked into using one or the other but you can choose between three spells if you’re stuck with magic, so I guess at least that. Don’t be scared of failing a combat encounter, you can reset the encounter if you end up being unlucky… like me. Oops. There’s not a lot of strategy in those encounters, unless you end up using spells which sometimes deal AOE damage instead of single target damage. I don’t mind it at all because my strategy is usually “the enemy can’t kill you if you kill them first” anyway.
Before I go into the “general enjoyment” section, I need to mention some unfortunate technical things. There was a section in which the <<if>> statement broke. In another, Aenwyn’s pronouns weren’t rendered as they should be (showing only $ahimself). I’m willing to look the other way when that happens, especially if I can just continue playing regardless. The game clearly didn’t break in those passages so I simply continued and it didn’t impact a lot to me. What did impact my gameplay were the color schemes used for the game. I played it entirely in dark mode (as I tend to do) and contrast between certain colors, especially the dark background and red links, makes them hard to read. The red works great for light mode but I don’t use light mode, so, yeah.
To come back to the story: I will be honest with you, it’s not the type of story I enjoy… and that’s completely okay. If the game’s goal was to emulate a feeling of sitting by the DnD table as the Dungeon Master gives you short and quick descriptions of things, it definitely succeeded. It’s not what I want to read in my IF but if all you’re searching for is good old “You’re in a cave. There are three paths ahead of you. What do you do?”, it might just be for you. So, important question: did I have fun? Not really. But you might and I think that’s awesome.
