The Lantern of the Laughless Saint

ITS A GOOD TIME.

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I like it.

Got deep into the first dungeon and fought a boss pair, drank a acrobatic potion that caused me to jump to the ceiling and dive into a lake nearby. Very fun.

Solid experience throughout. World design is interesting and enjoyable, cool spells, and fun to explore. I was compelled to keep coming back and checking different nooks and crannies and still most certainly missed quite a bit, I think this is an overall well done but definitely still early access game. I would love to see a few changes before this is fully released, but I think this is an easy recommend in current state for the price point. Recommendations for devs: 1. Differentiate humanoid enemies by how they interact with you and the world. Right now there are basically three options, spell-slinger, archer, and melee. The spell slinger runs and shoots spells at you, the archer runs and shoots but switches to melee if you get close and they have a weapon, the melee runs straight at you swinging. Combat becomes repetitive because different creatures follow these same pre-determined patterns so it just feels like you are fighting the same reskinned three. Vultrilla and some of the more formidable enemies are outliers and are appreciated for this. 2. Further develop the ruins around the map. Most ruined towns/settlements feature the same patterned buildings/structure in similar colors. This makes them feel like the same location rather than separate ones. In addition, some of the setups feel less like towns than walls copy and pasted. They don't feel like they were ever livable spaces. Restructuring them and recoloring them to give the ruins a more unique identity I think would go a long way. 3. The difficulty curve needs an adjustment. After around level 20 as long as you found or murdered your way to a decent set of equipment, nearly all encounters feel very easy. I basically bulldozed my way through 25 levels of gameplay with a lot of armor and a two-handed weapon, rarely really needing to swap out either. Spells I tried did not feel as impactful as just beating everything to death and coupling that with invisibility. Adjusting AI behavior for species differentiating them or making higher level stuff more threatening with the tools they have access to would also help with this.

This game is fantastic

They say a wizard is never late nor is he early, he arrives exactly when he means to. Well, this wizard should have taken the scenic route home. So why do I recommend this to other players? Because this game has really great bones and we're still in early access. I have followed The Holy Fool on TikTok for a long time now, so this game has been on my radar. I bought it as soon as it was available because I believe in the project and want it to succeed. In that spirit, here's my review of the game after just under 20 hours of playtime. -User Interface As I stated, this game has great bones and the UI is a good representation of that. There's a lot of work needing to be done, but it works as it should. It seems to be inspired by SkyUI, so seasoned Skyrim modders will find their way around very quickly. Everything is responsive, especially after the first update. It used to freeze on certain screens for extended periods of time, but that has been thankfully fixed. No more sitting in a merchant's barter menu for ten minutes to sell two items. I don't have much else to add here. -Combat Being inspired by Elder Scrolls, this game follows a lot of those games' design. However, it needs a lot of polishing. The game is trivial if you equip a shield. All you need to do is block and strike when the enemy isn't actively attacking, and you will destroy everything. I've dropped fully armored knights and giant beasts that were four times my level because of this. Enemies seem to be stuck in the same single-attack/pause loop that makes their movements predictable. Block, strike, strike, strike, block. You'll do great. The difficulty slider behaves like an ES game as well, so it's honestly better to leave it low, or else the game will be too grindy. Magic users are more annoying than they are challenging, as they have strange kiting patterns that even cause them to miss a lot of their spells. Using spells yourself can be slightly irritating, because it feels like casting in Morrowind, but enemies aren't stuck on a four-way axis like they were in that game, so you'll need to lead your shots a lot. Enemies run on more than my sentences. -Environment/World This is where the game really shines. The development team behind this have a passion and you can see it in their world. Even with the dated graphics, I find myself walking around and gawking at ♥♥♥♥. It's either an amazing set piece, or something completely unexpected that took me off guard. The Holy Fool on TikTok has a video series covering a lot of this game's lore and environments, and it's been a real treat seeing these come to life. I feel like I was there throughout the entire process. I can't praise this part of the game enough and I can't wait to see what they do with it next. -Graphics/Fidelity I can deal with the environment's art style, in fact I clearly like it. The characters and equipment however need a lot of TLC. The phrase and the group. The character design is like putting WoW characters in a PS1 powered blender. The equipment like armor and clothing look like they are painted on. This also shows up in the inventory menu, and sometimes if it wasn't for the detailed item descriptions I wouldn't know what I'm looking at or wearing. When it comes to graphical fidelity, this is where the team needs to spend most of its time. -Questing/Journal My biggest gripe with the game so far. Tip: make sure you keep a piece of paper and writing instrument with you when doing quests in this game. Mark down not only who you're speaking to, enter the map and mark down where you're at as well. My questing experience so far has been doing them ASAP in the same sitting, or risk getting a quest and never seeing that person again. I have about six quests in my log that I can't finish because I can't find who to turn them in to. Like Elder Scrolls games, you can start quests halfway through or towards the end because you're out exploring. This is a problem without quest markers. Markers are in games for a reason (yes you should be able to turn them off), just like the yellow paint. Accessibility features aren't just for "filthy casuals". I for example don't need yellow paint in games, but I do like quest markers. It's one of the very few reason Elden Ring isn't a 10/10 for me, it's too easy to lose track of NPCs and questlines. Lantern of The Laughless Saint follows the Morrowind quest philosophy. The difference is Morrowind has a detailed journal complete with a glossary you can fill out by talking to NPCs. This game should add that function or quest markers. I would be happy with either. -Audio I don't have a lot to say about the sound profile of this game. Everything for the most part sounds fine. I would like the menu sounds to fit better with a fantasy RPG instead of space sim, and I believe every game should have a footstep volume meter (like Morrowind by the way). Otherwise it sounds fine. -TL;DR Game is good. Game still needs work. Support developers.