Recent reviews by Sorcha The Wise

genuinely phenomenal game. the experience of delving deeper into a story is represented mechanically through more challenging puzzles, atmospherically through progressively eerier locations, married with immersive worldbuilding. just a genuinely unmatched experience.

I would recommend playing with a friend - I think my experience was improved tremendously by playing through the game with my housemate by my side - logging all the ciphers and codes we could find, and brainstorming through the tougher puzzles

not to be controversial, but this game is a souls-like imho

I am a habitual "second monitor" gamer. Movies, Documentaries, TV Shows, Video essays, Lets Plays, Livestreams - I'vs got unmedicated ADHD and I just can't focus.

This game was a single monitor game. From start to finish I was hooked.

Fantastically realized world.
Fun dialogue.
Engaging plot.
Poignant character moments.
Straightforward but inventive gameplay.
Striking visual art style.
Memorable setpieces.
Compact and brimming with content in every corner.

I will be thinking about Small Sage for a long time.

My only criticism was that the combat ended up too easy for me. This likely wont be true for every player, but if you tend to be quick to finding best gear paths and movesets you will not find any challenge here. But despite that, despite my tendency towards "git gud" style grindy games - this game truly enraptured me.

A 9/10, and a stand out game for the year, in a year of stand outs.

is big

i would argue that this game is probably a souls-like

I've now played for 16 hours and lean toward the positive opinion end of the spectrum.

That's not to say I don't see flaws. There's a lot of 'em. Here's my suggestions that I wrote down as I played, ranging from quality of life to essential. (There'll be a tl;dr at the bottom)

- Skills & Artifacts -
Wollay is trying to do something quite new and fresh here. I respect that, however, if your progression feels *too temporary* then its fundamentally flawed. I really like the idea of a staggered progression, you conquer an area to make you better equipped to conquer the next. Artifacts are not that. Artifacts are insult to the dedication you put into a region. I propose that we don't change your level to an "artifact counter" like people are suggesting but instead, buff the effects of artifacts slightly, and also reward the player with a single skill point to be spent on an upgrade that works in a larger region much like the +gear; this could be an attack or a stat or a skill of some kind. Allowing a genuine sense of progression while avoiding the "God Feeling" that Wollay seems to want to avoid as much as possible based off the design choices he's made.

- Better Dialogue -
I think this speaks for itself. The banter with NPCs is fine at times but most of my 16 hours I felt like I was just spamming E trying to get to the good stuff. Add general lore and hints to treasure to banter dialogue and give markers to NPCs that have essential dialogue in villages.

- Region Borders -
Legit just add an option to turn on region borders for the minimap oh my God its so frustrating.

- Tutorial -
We need it. There are some things that are particularly unusual in this game and people just aren't going to get. I don't want certain mysteries explained away bluntly, but I also don't think its a good idea for players to feel as lost as they do. There are natural ways to introduce concepts and mechanics. The option to run through a tutorial when creating a new character would be nice, stuff like "There's lots of history in these lands, explore the historical sites and try to piece together the past to find treasures" or something that's better written and is actually given thought. It doesn't outright say "Find lots of monuments until you reach a lore level of 40% for a faction and then it will show you the way on a map" but it points you in a bloody direction like.

- The Mini Map -
Sometimes I love the map, it's my best friend. I love zooming in to see the details and sometimes spotting things that look interesting. But sometimes I'm in a village and I literally can't tell which shop is which so i have to move the camera so that I'm looking at the ground just to try and orient myself. Give me the option to lock my minimap to a birds-eye view. Please.

- Enemy Scaling -
I really like this "open world, careful who you bump into" style. It worked fantastically well for BOTW, you could get yourself in serious trouble for going into the wrong areas too soon. But BOTW had a lot more craftsmanship going into the placement of weak and strong enemies. Why are white-tier enemies often as rare as gold ones?? It makes no sense to me. It makes starting off near impossible. Lower the drop rates on white mobs but increase their spawn rates.

- Movement Options -
The disappearing boat is beyond frustrating. As well as the reins and the hang glider. I propose that these 3 items come default, but by exploring a region you can upgrade them so that they're better in that region. That way I'm not going to fall out of the sky by accidentally crossing an invisible border.

- Dual Wield Interface Improvement -
This is very specific but bare with me. When I'm dual wielding it actually feels like I'm doing it via a glitch because there is no indication of it in my inventory "Item recommendation space" for lack of a better word. The same applies to rings. If I have two purple tier rings equipped, and pick up a third, when I look at the new one in my inventory, I would expect it to be compared to both rings, not just the one in my "primary hand". It becomes very cumbersome in the endgame of a region to try calculate which of your equipment is better when the interface seems custom made to frustrate.

- More Structure -
There are many points where I've felt at a wall because the game refused to function in the way that I needed it to. For example, in my first region there are 2 sky islands and a petrified village. None of which I've been able to properly engage with. There is seemingly no sky whistle and no NPC to tell me where to go and lift the curse. I talked to 6 different NPCs on the island with the petrified villagers and all of them just wanted to compliment my gear or talk about pets. It was frankly surreal. It feels like the game isn't even aware of what elements are in itself, it doesn't know to give me the curse lifting dialogue, it doesn't recognize that I need a sky whistle to access the sky islands, it feels like things have just been thrown in regardless of whether mandatory paired elements are present. Frustrating.

- More Character Customization -
Some of the enemies look cooler than I ever can and that's not allowed >:(((((

- Better Shop Item Values -
When I reluctantly sell an item to a shopkeep, hurting my poor materialistic heart, I want to feel like I got my money's worth. It doesn't feel good when you sell your first gold tier item for a measly 7 gold. I can get that from stealing their veg in a couple seconds. Gold pretty much just boils down to your initial items in a region and flightmaster points. It wouldn't unbalance the game atrociously if the shopkeep was a little more generous with his pricing.

- Some Kind Of Incentive To Craft -
I have literally crafted nothing. I have never needed to. It's a waste of time and energy. I will have full gold gear by the time I collect all the crafting supplies and the crafting book for purple tier items. Its worthless. Especially since I can only use that gear in the one area. ARGUABLY I can bring those materials into the next region ~ but I Still have to get the crafting book for those recipes, which are guarded by mobs that I cant fight until I get better gear. The core game design doesn't allow for the current crafting system and to be quite honest, I'm not sure how to fix it. Something needs to be done about it anyways. Harder recipes but you can craft +Gear? But that could easily ruin the flow of the game :/

- Guild Master -
Would love to see additional features surrounding the village guild master. Mostly little things like training dummies or description of specializations when you're choosing one. But I also think it feels very void. Like something else should be there. Its such a huge space for something you'll likely use at most, 3 times. Maybe some kind of interaction with the factions of the region? Maybe somewhere to check the lore you've collected? I'm not entirely sure.

[tl;dr]
- Artifacts give you a skill point for permanent upgrades
- More efficient dialogue.
- Region Borders on minimap.
- Some kind of tutorial.
- More minimap options, eg, perspective locking.
- Better early game, more white tier enemies.
- Boats, hang-gliders, and reins should have region locked upgrades, but be permanent items.
- Dual Wield compatible inventory item comparison.
- Better structure to the games encounters, structures and events (difficult to tl;dr).
- I like character customization okay.
- Better shops.
- Crafting overhaul that makes it actually worthwhile.
- More uses to the guild master

And that's a wrap folks, thanks for reading. Might add more as I play more, the only other fixes I can think of at the moment are just bugs. Despite the overwhelming critiques and tweaks I've written on the game I still really enjoy it and have looked forward to coming home to play it after college every day.

Good ♥♥♥♥.