Dread Delusion

Great atmosphere and story. Combat is very lacking, but the overall experience isn't limited by that.

I had Dread Delusion sitting on my wishlist for the past couple of months. I decided to pick it up on the most recent sale, and it really did shock me with its quality. The first thing that got me was the art style. Obviously it's very in-your-face PS1-y. Wobbly, pixelated, messy, colourful, but charming as ♥♥♥♥. I typically am not a fan of the modern day "PS1 aesthetic", but it works here. It fits the vibe of the game perfectly. The world is overwhelming and hard to understand, and so is the art. At first it almost feels ugly, but the more time you spend in it, the more it starts to click. The second thing that got me invested was the writing. It's really reminiscent of golden-age Bethesda, Obsidian and other industry heavyweights. Despite having little to no voice acting throughout the game, the characters are all bursting with personality thanks to some fantastic writing. The writing does a lot of heavy lifting in this game, but it absolutely earns it. The world is bizarre, confusing and unlike anything else I've played, yet after a while it starts to feel strangely familiar and comforting. It's hard to explain. You slowly start understanding the world's logic, its history and its people, and before long you're completely absorbed in it. Combat is probably the weakest part of the game. It's very basic and mostly just serves as filler between exploration and dialogue. Weirdly though... I don't really see that as a huge negative. Games like this often struggle with scope, and I'd much rather have a simple but functional combat system than some bloated, confused mess that steals development time away from what actually makes the game special. It does its job and gets out of the way. The RPG systems themselves are also fairly shallow. Crafting never really evolves into anything particularly interesting, and skill checks are pretty straightforward. End game skill checks become just swapping armour or rings for a buff to a certain skill, which is really unengaging. If you're expecting some incredibly deep CRPG with dozens of interconnected mechanics, this isn't really that game. The strength of Dread Delusion isn't in its systems, it's in the world it asks you to explore. Speaking of exploration... it's both one of the game's biggest strengths and one of its biggest frustrations. Walking around can become tedious as ♥♥♥♥, especially when quests have you running back and forth between locations. There were definitely moments where I wished for faster movement options or less backtracking. You do end up getting an air ship, but by the time you get it, I feel like its almost completely too late to have any meaningful impact on the player. It almost feels tacked on with how lackluster that system was. I would have preferred a fast travel option akin to Fallout or Skyrim honestly, I just dont think the travelling is respectful of time. The soundtrack deserves a mention too. The music is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ incredible. It fits the atmosphere of the game perfectly and helps sell the strange dreamlike feeling of the world. Unfortunately... there's just nowhere near enough of it. Each major area only seems to have one or two tracks, and if you're like me and spend ages combing through every corner of the map, you'll hear the same song loop over and over. It honestly became pretty grating by the end. It sounds like a minor criticism, but another track or two per region would've gone such a long way. Then I have to mention the clockwork kingdom. Honestly, this might be one of my favourite locations in any RPG. Maybe my favourite. Unravelling the mystery behind this isolated, mechanically magical floating island was an absolute treat. The environmental storytelling, world building, characters and atmosphere genuinely rival some of the biggest RPGs in the industry. I was completely immersed from start to finish and satisfied with the payoff. It felt like the true main story of the game to me. Dread Delusion isn't perfect. The combat is simplistic, the RPG mechanics are fairly light, and the amount of walking can wear on you. But none of those things stopped me from falling in love with it. This is one of those rare games where the world itself is the main character. If you enjoy getting completely lost in strange fantasy settings, reading fantastic dialogue, uncovering bizarre mysteries and exploring a world that feels genuinely unique, I can't recommend it enough. It's rough around the edges, but it's rough in all the right ways. A STRONG 7.5/10

мама факап дед нига

Dread Delusion starts off disarmingly small before gradually drawing back the curtain and showing you a much larger world than you expected. There is some great writing and worldbuilding happening here. The adventure takes you to some truly unique places with some memorable story beats. I particularly enjoyed the Clockwork Kingdom and the multiple ways you could discover the larger machinations at work. The presentation is simple and the systems are pared down from what you'd see in a game with more modern style. This really only holds the game back when it comes to combat. While there is a large variety of enemies their attack patterns are basic and the combat tends toward the easier end. Difficulty cannot be changed after you begin so you may want to try the higher difficulty. I only died a few times and all of them were due to falling off the world during exploration. It's a good time and worth trying but do not expect much in the way of mechanical challenge. This games thrives on the vibes of the setting and the story it is telling.

Amazing writing, great world-building, and enchanting lore. This is one of those rare games that forces you to put a lot of thought into your choices and consider all the possible consequences. I would even as far as stating that the moral dilemmas in "Dread Delusion" are on par with games such as "Dragon Age Origins" and "The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt". Sadly, the combat in this game is overly primitive, but this is truly my only gripe. Everything else is truly incredible, especially the lore, the music, and the overall atmosphere. A solid 8/10.

I wanted to like this game but it seems like it is at war with itself and the developers were too ambitious with what they wanted to include into the game. From a narrative/world building perspective, big floating islands, dead(ish) gods coming back, funky magic land. Cool initial presentation, however, it is in service of a kinda lame plot. You're a prisoner sent to track down a pirate queen who is about to go all punished snake outer heaven with some magical whatever. Why are you doing this? Because the people who released you told you to do it and yeah that's about it. I assume the strength is in the world building but all I got was a series of lore dumps from random people that all sounded very impressive but could have used an editor. The game is very much "telling" rather than "showing" me all the impressive junk. The world itself is quite interesting at first glance and I appreciate the work that went into the presentation, however, it's very very empty. All NPC interaction is basically limited to variants of fetch / kill things quests, lore dumps through an extremely basic dialog system, or buying things. The enemy type is also extremely limited and the combat is painfully dull and laughably easy. I'm not expecting soul-like combat but if you're going to put combat in the game it has to have some sort of engagement. Most of your time is going to be spent exploring, which is tied to the leveling system (you only get experience through completing quests or finding floating blue skulls in out of the way places), which would be fine if it wasn't just rudementary traveseral puzzels and boring combat. The leveling system is also pretty whatever, 4 stats that proceed linearly, some of which offer some narrative/exploration bonuses but that's about it. There is a lockpicking mechanic that is basically just a 1d6+stat bonus that is checked against the door's difficulty, only way not to burn through your lockpicks is to hunt skulls or quest (which there are limited amounts of both). Oh and they implemented a stamina/rest system into the game to force you to return to town to rest because they thought that forceably interrupting the game was a good idea? There are potions to account for it but why? Its not punishing enough to really do anything interesting other than be a random annoyance early in the game. The biggest gripe I have is that it takes so long to do anything in this game and it does not respect your time. Its really too bad as there is some real creativity and interesting ideas that went into this, but I find myself just being bored by the actual gameplay. Yes I get that this is a very small indy game and they had lofty aims, but they went too broad imo and should have focused in on one aspect rather than slap a bunch of shallow systems on to the game that pad out the time.

Great game. If you like the weird-worldbuilding and exploration of Morrowind, you'll probably like this.