The Lantern of the Laughless Saint

furrowind

I'll put it simply, first: Did you like Morrowind? Did you like Morrowind despite (or because of!) its weirdness and jank? Then you will like Lantern of the Laughless Saint and you should buy it. This is a worthy successor to TESIII--or it will be once the bugs get fixed. Less simply: This game is a passion project by some people who are clearly BIG fans of the Elder Scrolls franchise but have been disappointed with where it's gone lately and thought they could do better, which is itself pretty awesome. It plays like if Morrowind was set in the Shivering Isles, with a good number of modernizations bolted on. Mechanics-wise it feels very familiar to anyone who's played a TES game. If you've completed Morrowind, Oblivion, or Skyrim, you'll feel comfortable with how it all works right away. People who haven't played a TES game might have a bit of a harder time understanding how everything works, but there's nothing overly complicated under the hood here--the learning curve is pretty gentle when it comes to the actual gameplay, and there are plenty of low-level areas to explore before the 'training wheels' come off. And there's co-op! That by itself would probably be enough to get my recommendation. Finally, there's the world, characters, and plot. I haven't done much in the main quest yet, but so far the world design has been top notch. The NPCs run in a nice spectrum from 'kinda rude' to 'totally unhinged,' and there's voiced dialogue, which is actually more than I expected from a smaller project like this. A lot of work was put into designing a world that feels strange and alien, and it shows. Also, I found a bag of edible snakes, which I thought should be mentioned. Now let's talk about the downsides. Bugs! Bugs everywhere! My co-op partner has fallen through the world more times than I can count. Until yesterday there was a HUGE bug that caused all of your quests to disappear from your log if you loaded an autosave. The game is seriously janky, so don't buy it if you can't put up with some of that in exchange for your fun. I should mention here, though, that the devs seem to be hard at work patching and fixing the game. In the short time since launch there have been no fewer than 11 patches and hotfixes, some of them adding major content/rebalancing, some just fixing bugs as they're reported. So, I'm pretty confident that someone reading this review a month from now will go 'hey! they already fixed that!' In conclusion: If you've ever said the words 'man, they just don't make games like Morrowind anymore,' buy this game immediately. If you like first person action RPGs and/or weird-on-purpose games, strongly consider buying this game. But, if you have a low tolerance for jank? Maybe wait a little while and check back later.