I bought this game blindly because the art was amazing, plus I needed something to take my mind off of while my son is in the PICU hospital. It runs pretty well on steam deck, it is pretty easy to get lost into. It is such an awesome time killer and offers a lot of content. it has a challenge, a plethora of side quests, gear, etc. pretty solid stuff!

Do you like Dark Souls games? Do you like Diablo type games? Can you imagine the mix of these 2 genres (Soulslike and Action RPG) with graphics from Old Baldurs Gate but enhanced? That is literally Alaloth.

The game is not perfect and made by a small company, but I think it is really fun and challenging having played all the big Souls Like (Elden Ring, Dark Souls, Bloodbourne, NIOH, Sekiro, etc.) and ARPGs (Diablo, Path of Exile, etc.)

Story telling
- I can see that there is amazing lore about a war between gods and demons, and there are 4 factions/races in the worldmap. I dont know what the end story will look like, but so far I like what I read since it is about a world that is in danger and races that dont like each other or trust each other, but all have a common enemy.
- The story is told by small chats with NPCs. There are no voices, so you will have to read. But instead of reading 1 huge piece of text you get smaller textboxes to read when you talk with NPCS, which I really like.

Dungeons
- It is not like Diablo or Path of Exile where you go into a dungeon and start killing 100s of enemies with 1-2 attacks. I really get bored of these ARPGs to be honest.
- Every dungeon you need to prepare and often time you cannot fight more than 1-3 enemies at the same time, which is the "Souls Like" genre. If you play Souls Like games, then you know that you cannot fight more than 3 enemies at the same time.
- Dungeons give loot at the end (IF you finish it). However, if you die you loose all! I love this feature, because once again, this is "Souls like genre". Extremely punishing and extremely rewarding.
- I love the combat system. Just like in Souls Like games you need to: Understand your enemies, their patterns, their attacks, their weaknesses and then block, parry, dodge, use talents, heavy attacks and talents to overcome the dungeon.
- You will die a lot! But thats the point! The point of dying in Souls like games is that you use your brain, think about how to overcome a challenge, learn of your mistakes, come back and defeat your enemies.

Progression
- You do not level! Love it again. This time I will compare it with Outward (an amazing survival action RPG).
- What makes this cool is that you cannot level up like crazy and then avoid the challenges of dungeons by just entering Overpowered and 2-shot enemies. No, you need to finish dungeons to be able to level up. Outward had something similar, where you use currency to get stronger skills and you cannot level up. It works very well.
- You get better loot by dungeons, roaming enemies in the world, crafting, quest rewards or buying it from vendors. And this is another way how to get stronger in the game.
- You have a pretty interesting talent three with skills, proficiencies, stats and unique talents. You cannot choose all of them as you have a leveling cap, so you really need to build your way or playing way in advance. You can respec with a special orb, so that is cool.

Graphics
- They are perfectly fine for 2024/2025 games. Look the game up at Youtube and judge for yourself

To conclude, this is not a AAA Game, but it definitely gives you the value for 35 USD/Euro if you love the mix of genre between ARPG, Souls like and RPG Storytelling.

I would give it a 8,5/10 and can recommend the game.

This is an interesting game that tries to do a lot of new things, most of which work. First of all this can be best described as an isometric rpg with souls-like combat. What I mean by that is that combat involves dodge, block and perfect parry mechanics as well as the ability to break the enemy's posture/defense and leave them vulnerable, so it's far more skill based than most ARPGs where you just build up stats and facetank enemies or spam skills from range. Weapons also have different characteristics, dual daggers is very fast attacking and doesn't drain stamina much but has far less stagger, while halberds have long reach and their heavy attacks can stagger enemies in just a couple hits, but will drain your stamina really fast.

The other thing this game does that is new is the leveling system, you don't actually gain experience in this game, you level up after completing fighting areas (this game's equivalent of dungeons). These are ranked on difficulty and spread between the game's 4 regions, if you complete one you level up and get a mix of stat, trait, perk and skill points you can then allocate to level up your character. So you can farm enemies in the open world all day, and complete as many quests as you want, but those will only give gold and loot, not level ups (granted, loot is a very strong determiner in your overall power level as well).

Finally, there are a variety of skills and perks you can choose from, I'd say melee is the most fleshed out but there is a good number of magic spells, some which have limited numbers of use per combat, others which have a stamina/cooldown that limits them. These include a variety of melee skills like charges and rogue blink+backstab attacks, to magic attack spells, buffs and summons. Your gear determines how often you can use spells as light robes and magic staves improves their effectiveness while heavier armor and weapons lengthen's the cooldown, meaning you can still use them but far less often. There is also bows/throwing daggers for ranged combat but that has the fewest skills asociated with it (it is pretty effective though).

There are companions you can get, they are restricted based on your alignment, personally I prefer the good companions as one of them has an area effect healing spell which is fantastic to use in between enemy groups as you are limited on how many potions/consumables you can bring into a fight, and all healing spells have limited number of uses in a fight. So having an extra heal, that you can even use at the end of the fighting area to top off your health before leaving is really a good quality of life thing, at least for your initial run when you are learning the game.

Finally, I will say there has been a lot of effort put into this game from a relatively small team, the art and environments is very good, the combat generally feels good although it can definitely be hard to get a handle on at first, and there is even a competitive mode where there are other rival champions also trying to reach the same goal as you, but they will also complete quests and fighting areas themselves (denying you their rewards, even the level up rewards) so I would NOT recommend it for a first run, only something to challenge yourself if you finish a single player run and want a more hardcore experience. I think the game is worth trying out, although whether it's worth the price point is up to you, perhaps wait for a sale if you think it's a bit pricey.