Anvil Saga is a RPG management simulator, by developer Pirozhok Studio and publisher HeroCraft PC, where your choices matter and change the game as you go. You play as Arthur, a blacksmith’s son who wants to make his late father proud by continuing his blacksmith business. Even though his father taught him a lot about the craft, he will still need help along the way if he wishes to rise in ranks to win the love of a girl. Not only will you have to manage your smithy and its resources, but you will have to make some hard decisions that impact the game as a whole. Will you be a good and honest person like your father raised you or will you be deceitful in order to gain a few more coins along the way?
When you first start the game, you see a smithy stand and a small house; at this point, you play as Oscar who is Arthur’s father. You are told the basics of the management system of creating items for customers as well as expanding your house. After that, there is a time skip to when Arthur is older and Oscar is teaching him how to blacksmith at their stand in a local fair. Along the way, you meet a few other characters including Jean who is a rival blacksmith and Oliva who is a merchant’s daughter and Arthur’s love interest. At this point, you are taught some of the RPG elements including the choice system, each choice has a success rate, some with higher risks but also higher reward. What I really like about the success rate system is that while it can be annoying if you pick a higher success rate option and still fail it also means that if you want to go for the long shot with a low success rate you can still succeed, which I find really fun. The choice system overall adds replayability and is a nice addition to the management simulator format. After the fair and some beginning choices, there is another time skip where your father dies and it is now your job to run the smithy. You must hone your skills and become a great blacksmith in order to fulfill your dreams and make your father proud. Now is when the management sim really starts to pick up, smelting ore, gathering resources, expanding and upgrading all the while fulfilling customer orders and making decisions that will impact your game. You can hire staff to help you run the smithy, but you have to make sure they are well taken care of or they won’t do the job correctly, as well as your choices may make your staff want to leave. Overall, there is a lot to explore in this game with all of its choices, there is always stuff to do even if it gets a bit grindy in the beginning.
There are not many problems I found in the game, I mentioned it getting to a point where you are just grinding in order to upgrade and expand. But that is to be expected in management sims like this. One thing that was a little annoying was that even early in the game I was getting orders from people where I didn’t have the means or knowledge to complete the order. In order to learn new skills, you have to upgrade your smithy so you can add a library but that can take some time so you just end up losing out on money and lowering your prestige. I feel that maybe the chance of receiving those types of orders should be decreased a bit more at the very beginning of the game. Other than that, there were a few times where the instructions were unclear on how to complete a few of the special orders as well as upgrading your smithy. Overall, however, these were issues that did not really negatively impact my gameplay, especially being in Early Access.
Anvil Saga is a management simulator game that employs RPG elements including choices that impact your gameplay. There is a lot to do as you play through the story and you can replay the game to make different choices that will set you on a different path than before. The management of your smithy is fun and behaves much like other management games where you have to juggle tasks and make sure your shop is running smoothly. There are a few issues with orders including not having the means to create some orders early in the game as well as unclear instructions for some special orders. But even then nothing that is too much of a hassle to work around. Anvil Saga is a solid and interesting game that I really enjoyed playing.
Anvil Saga is available for $13.99 for PC via Steam Early Access.
Related: Reviews by Brianna Keller
I enjoy a wide variety of games from intricate survival/adventure games to simple platformers. I am also a sucker for a good story game.
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