Vagrus - The Riven Realms

I am very back and forth on this game. On one hand, I really enjoy the mechanics and wondering each day if I can justify marching, need to buy more fighters, etc. On the other hand, the game does a lot of world-building, but the story doesn't have a cohesive narrative. You follow certain quests, decide whether to be good or bad, and move on. Once I figured out how to stay alive (pro-tip...keep morale on 9, find delivery quests between two cities like Deven and Sun Rock, just go back and forth until you're comfortable enough to go out and face endless trouble), it became somewhat boring. I really like the world, but there is nothing engaging about the "narrative." Skill progression is, in my opinion, lackluster. You are essentially building up the ability to manage a growing comitatus. You will likely lose a companion or two from your choices, unless you micromanage their happiness with gifts (pay attention to cooldowns for gifting). Like I said, I *enjoy* a good deal of the game. The novelty wore off once I figured out how to survive and realized that the narrative did not engage me. TLDR? I'm giving it a thumbs down because most reviews are positive. I think it needs some balance so that the legitimate concerns are seen. Good - world, characters, management system (at first), decision-making for resources Decent - Combat Bad - Narrative (i.e. the reason to keep playing once you can survive)

Incredible game, truly unique, but probably very hit-or-miss. If it hits, it can easily become one of your favorite games and give you an unrepeatable experience. But for the majority of people, it is likely to be a miss. Because of that, you should absolutely watch trailer and play a free demo to understand if it is your cup of tea. Also, if you played Sunless Seas/Skies (really the only game I know that offers a kinda similar experience) and thought, "Man, this game is amazing, but I wish it had consistent lore" you probably should buy this game. About the game itself: it is a mix of trade simulator, text RPG, and turn-based combat. The first 2 parts are the most important, because although combat is good, I can imagine people enjoying this game without focusing on it, but you have to enjoy both reading a LOT and maximizing your trade profit to see your coins go up! The text RPG part is about paving your way in a very well-written dark fantasy world. Quests are good, but the most amazing part is world-building — a huge world that exists by itself and feels very real. By overall vibe, I'd say Glen Cook's "The Black Company" is the closest reference point I know. The trading part is focused on finding profitable routes, planning your route, and thinking ahead so you can increase your gains. I think that part may be a little problematic for some players, because the worse you do, the smaller your profits and the more repetitive and tiresome your game loop will become. Minuses: UI is a little clunky, and some of the storylines aren't finished yet (probably because the devs felt the endings of those storylines would have to significantly change the world, so they delayed them until DLC). Overall the game is great, binge-played it 160 hours in a month (almost botched my performance review at work, lol). Easily my best player experience in the last year and the first of my 290 games for which I left a review more than 2 sentences. It that good! :)

Pros + Addictive + Interesting world with plenty of lore + Strong "one more quest" feeling + Companion storylines Cons - Repetitive - Exploring is punished - Mediocre combat - Some glaring fails in quality of life - So much things should have been done better - Evasive enemies My verdict: 80%, great potential, lots of little annoyances There are games I want to love, but can't. This is the opposite - I really want to hate it. There are so many things that irk me and would be so easy to improve... and yet, 77 hours in about two weeks. It is a good game. The core is typical business strategy - travel from place to place, buy low, sell high, get rich, do "bring X to Y" quests during your travels. Quests in these games are generally not super complex and you would be done with them in a few hours, but you need to focus the trade, which pads the game to much longer time. My initial feeling from this one was, that devs took this a bit too far - making profit solely on trading is seriously difficult, because the margins between prices are rather realistic (= small). The game warns you about that, guiding you towards lugging around goods for factions that give a set profit. It works fine, is not super exciting, but finishing several deliveries at once is satisfying. What irks me is, there's a world full of interesting things and quests with really compelling stories... but exploring randomly is way to bankrupcy and following a quest slowly saps your savings, so eventually it's back to "let's carry cargo back and forth so I can return to the story". It's realistic, but rather annoying. Again, to be fair, the game offers low difficulty mode, but I'd really like something in between. There's a lot of little QoL quirks that drive me mad. The game meticulously marks delivery destinations into the map. Since deliveries are time sensitive, one generally chooses a city he wants to go to right now and goes there right now. But if you want to know what quests have steps in a given city, open journal and get clicking. You get a warning when taking a "contraband" delivery, even though your chance to smuggle it in soon reaches 100%, but no warning when you're selling cargo that belongs to your client. Finding a proffitable comodity means manually comparing sale and buy price of about fourty goods. Counting price of a bulk sale to a faction vs. average individual price has to be done manually. During an event, one can apparaise percentage of local price, but there's no chance to open price chart, so I don't know if I'm buying for 80% of super overpriced. Either the game doesn't want me to trade, or wants to give me a "real" experience of a caravan trader :) Combat is... ok. Battles of armies are largely automatic, there's going to be a lot of fighting with companions. Once you get full roster, the later becomes fairly easy and a main way to sway the army battles in your favor. Each companion has four abilities. One is default, one occasionally useful, remaining two are useless (which is unfortunate stanard of the genre). I HATE fights against opponents with high evasion, because they are endless. They usually don't do meaningful damage, but keep bouncing around the battlefield, so it takes forever. I suspected it's what "trap abilities" that trigger when enemy enters a tile are for, but either I didn't figure out how they work, or they are bugged and simply don't trigger. So I've given a game 80% and then kept listing the things I don't like, right? Thing is, the core gameplay loop is incredibly addictive and keeps me up till late night. Now if I make this delivery, I can turn in this quest here and then I go here and buy obsidian to bolster defences in this city... The highlight of the game are unfolding stories of your companions that manage to hide the you're actually running circles among four major cities over and over again. Addictive, warmly recommended.

I would highly recommend this game to everyone who has enjoyed Sunless Sea/Skies [due to the gamestyle], Age of Decadence [due to the setting of roman-postapo] and has read gamebooks [is this even a thing nowadays?] . I don't have experience with PnP, but I guess these types of players would enjoy the game also. After 110 hours, I've finished the game in one go with knowledge's ambition without touching paid DLC content, so it is not necessary to have DLCs to fully enjoy the game. If you are afraid of game mechanics DLCs spam, it is definitely not the case with this game - it seems they are standalone stories. Tutorial itself is a very enjoyable and well-made prequel story. The setting and in-game stories are awesome, and I hope that developers will keep their momentum going to continue expanding their game. They definitely put their own soul into the game, and it is seen and felt.

It's fair to say that only a subset of people will like this game. If you miss old-school pen and paper RPGs and don't mind a hefty dose of trading sim, you should give this a look. Oh, and reading. Lots and lots of reading. Sorry not sorry, GenZ. Your reward will be a genuinely interesting and unique world to explore, lore by the bucketload and truly excellent writing. Take your time with it. Supporting these developers means adding even more to an already packed world, and I really hope they get to realise their full dream.

Highly recommend this game to people who live visual novels and like reading combined with trade management + tactical combat. It is a great game for players who like that style of games. It is not for everyone but in its category it is one of the top 10 games you will find.

I believe this a very good rpg , tactical game. It has a feeling of Dark Sun&Planescape combined, but still has a unique flavor. I firmly recommend for those player who like role playing games, but also have vein for some small micromanagement, grinding money, good fighting, character development, grinding xp and having good adventure. So play it, read it and enjoy it.

Vagrus - The Riven Realms is the most interesting text forward game I have played since Sunless Sea. As with that title, this game centers on going from one location to another in pursuit of further snippets of lore. As these come together a more vivid picture of the setting is painted for the player. The setting itself is a crapsacharian world abandoned by its gods in a calamitous event. This releases eldritch horrors and turns the continent into a blasted waste. You play as a Vagrus, the leader of a trading caravan who explores the land while conveying goods and people from one distinctive location to the next. Inventory management and resource acquisition is the games core. Taking tasks from factions is one of the better ways to build up reputation and wealth at game start in order to start exploring the setting. Once some money is built up your comitatus can afford to be a bit more adventurous. This allows one to pursue questlines that may not have strictly financial rewards but give greater insight into the setting. If you enjoy reading and dark settings filled with difficult decisions this game is for you. Being fond of making numbers go up as you trade your way to fortune doesn't hurt either.

I love this game so much, it is an incredibly rich adventure game with great writing.

"The game is very hard." When they tell you that, believe it. It will write you out of the book of the living and then punch you in the nuts just for laughs. Therefore, for me, the game's a big NO. But since they very plainly warned me, I have to admit that they lived up to their promise. Five out of five.

Its flavorful and brutal, with some absolutely TERRIBLE UX/UI decisions. There's always something that annoys me about the interface and keybinds every play session and I am pretty confident that won't be changing.

Definitely enjoying it more than I expected. If you want to make some good money early keep transporting goods for the factions from city to city to get you going.

Steep learning curve but very rewarding. This is low key my favorite game right now. The closest thing I can compare it too is the old "King of Dragon Pass" text based game. I cant stop mining salt and heading west to trade my riches.

I find, trying to keep my band alive and gain prosperity in this game completely consumes me. I will start playing and a few minutes later look up to see hours have passed.

i liked the worldbuilding elements, pretty unique setting and i think its cool but the actual 'gameplay' of the turn-based combat and exploration is pretty lackluster. i spent $15 (50% sale) and even that i felt was a bit overpriced for what this game is. i would definitely not spend $30 on it frankly. its completely possible that this specific iteration of gameplay for an RPG just isn't suited to me, i was expecting something more along the lines of pathfinder - wrath of the righteous as far as the caravan combat goes i guess. but it feels even more swingy than kingmaker at higher difficulties which just isn't fun. if *you* like a game that is very unforgiving then yeah sure you'd probably like it, but the part that is supposed to be hard feels unpolished.

Immersive, well written and detailed story and the right level of complexity (a lot). Love it! Brings back the old Dark Sun table top memories :) Kőszőnőm!

One of the best game i have ever played in my life. For me the closest comparable experience is Space Rangers 2, lots of gameplay similarities in this game's despite its different lore but still The story of the game has lots of hints and references to other gaming universes like warhammer, fallout, dnd. Dark story and great characters that align perfectly to it, all this make it a really decent experience. I cant say "game is VERY hard" like other people claim it is. Game difficulty is fair, and quiet enjoyable. Also game has lots of content, lots of certain gameplay layers you will encounter later in game and a good replayability value on top of that. Thank you developers for this extraordinary experience!

Absolute banger of a game, but I had to skip all text except UI labels.

Great, innovative game system!

Money hungry developer.

Awesome game

Good stuff

Great game

Port Royale x 1000