Chronicles of Taldun: The Remainder Expanded Edition Review for Steam

10/10

Chronicles of Taldun: The Remainder Expanded Edition, developed and published by Square Weasel Studio, is… so good! But be sure to schedule an extra appointment with your therapist after your playthrough.

I am not exaggerating; this visual novel is a deeply emotional experience that demands patience, reflection and a little bit of courage.

Story

The premise is deceptively straightforward. The main player character (Vyn, but players can change their name) wakes up facing a fate worse than death and no memory of how they got there. The story is a slow burn, but it is clear early on that there is much for Vyn and the players to uncover.

Things really go off the wall if Vyn/Players choose to follow the cat creature, Fuzzpants. At this point, I lost all sense of where the story was taking me.

The best part of the whole story is not even the story itself, it’s the developers. I’ve been reviewing games for a little while now, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve said something like, “The game is great; I just wished the developers had spent more time on the story,” or “I hope the dev team remembers to pay attention to the story while they’re working through the early access/beta kinks.” The developers at Square Weasel Studio loved their story so much that they returned to it and expanded it so it would fully realize their vision a la Georgie Lucas.

For that, xers, I salute you.

I haven’t played the original Chronicles of Taldun: The Remainder, so I can’t speak to the expansion from personal experience. Still, I did find a game guide that makes me think the devs added three more storylines to the game, each adding dozens more branching choices.

As mentioned, you might want to have your therapist on speed dial for this game, which explores themes of love, guilt, and obsession. The game forces players to confront brutal choices, facing death, depression, and despair.

Interestingly, death is not a punishment; rather, it is a gateway to unlocking the truth.

Gameplay

Chronicles of Taldun: The Remainder Expanded Edition is a visual novel and has the basic gameplay experience of any ol’ run-of-the-mill visual novel, but, like the story, the gameplay mechanics aren’t as straightforward as they appear.

First, Chronicles doesn’t just have players click on a choice. Players will also have to physically type into a dialogue box at several points in the game. Players can type whatever their heart imagines. They can be serious, silly, snarky, or they can be sly enough to enter information they learned on failed playthroughs and possibly unlock even more story branches.

I want to fully own that I did not figure this out on my own. I had to dig through the developer notes, updates, Discords, and game guides to see that if I was to write a certain phrase into the text box when Ilar asks me to remember their name, it might or might not lead to one of the hundreds of ways a player can die in the game.

Second, something I haven’t experienced in a visual novel before is that players actually need to die in order to get the story’s one true ending. There is literally no way a player can stumble into the ending on the first try, they must experiment, explore, and embrace failure in order to progress.

Lucky for players, you can die in the first four or so choices of the game, so they can start working on failure immediately.

Overall

10/10

A true feast for the senses, The Chronicles of Taldun: The Remainder is a breathtaking and atmospheric creation made with love to break your heart.

Dark, layered, and compelling, this game is a must-play for anyone who read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and thought, yeah, I want more of that.

Chronicles of Taldun: The Remainder Expanded Edition is available for PC via Steam.

Related: Reviews by Michelle Jones

Michelle Jones

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I'm a completionist gamer who just needs to find that one last object and clear that final dungeon. I love all video games, from open world sandboxes on a console to a mindless match three on my phone. In addition to gaming and writing, I am a graduate student working on a thesis about the ancient Icelandic Sagas. Feel free to ask me anything about Vikings.