The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes was released on Steam June 9th of this year. The game was developed by Random Potion Oy and was published by Wild River Games. It is a fantasy role-playing RPG game that allows players to choose their own adventures and multiplayer co-op parties. This game stems from the original game, The Dark Eye, which is a German RPG created in 1984 by Ulrich Kiesow. Other features of the original game, such as the fictional world of Adventuria, have made their way into other PC games and novels. As stated by Wild River Games on their official website, The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes has a “plethora of well-known places, characters and enemies from The Dark Eye universe.”
As mentioned before, The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes takes place in the fictional fantasy world Adventuria, home to dwarves, elves, orcs, and more popular creatures of the fantasy genre. Like most fantasy games, there is a lot of interesting lore that helps carry any adventure found in the game. The game starts off by letting players choose which species they would like to be out of the four options: dwarves, elves, half-elves, and humans. Each species comes with certain physical attributes that are meant to affect your character’s physical capabilities in the game play. From there, players go on to build their characters even more by choosing things like their back story, trauma, and ambitions. I found building the character to be the most enjoyable part of my play through because of how thoroughly thought out some of the options were and the number of options provided.
The style of the game in terms of graphics and design is very true to the classic (but maybe outdated) RPG adventure game style. I did not particularly like the character designs or dungeon designs for this reason. I don’t have anything against going for the classic style, but for me, it did not work in The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes due to other problems with the game play that I will discuss below. The dungeons were not very interesting to look at and were kept very simple with repetitive features. A major problem that I had with this game was my overall lack of interest in my adventure and what I was doing. Initially, when I chose the adventure, I was excited to see what was to come with the quest and story. However, once it came to playing it, it felt as if the game was missing something, or several things, that would have made it more fun to play. It felt disorganized and as if there wasn’t enough time spent getting the story ready for play.
Aside from the graphics feeling outdated, the controls and features of the actual game play were also lacking in modernity. It is a game that can be played with friends and still has some of the endearing characters of fantasy RPG games; however, unless you already have a liking for other games of this style (think Dungeons and Dragons) in their oldest and most classic forms, you will probably not enjoy The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes very much.
6/10
Check Out the The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes Trailer:
The Dark Eye: Book of Heroes is available for PC via Steam for $29.99.
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Steam Review
I am an aspiring writer particularly interested in helping write video game storylines and scripts. I prefer games that aim to strike a balance between compelling stories with character development and fun and immersive gameplay. Some of my favorite games include Until Dawn, Detroit Become Human, and both the Call of Duty and Resident Evil game series.
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