You play as a Dragonkindt, a race often unwelcome in the human realm. To navigate interactions with strangers, you need to adopt an alternate persona.
To start, you will create this alternate identity. You can choose from three races - Human, Elf, or Dwarf. These choices are purely cosmetic and do not provide any traits or bonuses. The significant decision lies in selecting one of five classes: Rogue, Mage, Sentinel, Paladin, or Cleric. Customization of these classes is accomplished through skill trees. However, each class provides only a limited number of skill trees, which may allow players to max them all out by the end of the game. Furthermore, some skill trees are not exclusive to a particular class; for example, both the mage and the rogue share two skill trees, including one focused on picking locks and setting traps. Finally, you will distribute your attribute points across seven attributes. You can either let the game randomly generate your attributes and distribute 3 points freely, or you can manually allocate 28 points. There are no specific requirements for particular classes or races. Each attribute must be at least 8, but there is virtually no upper limit. For example, you can create a Mage with the attributes 8/8/8/36/8/8/8 if you choose. At this stage of the game, there are no skills or talents to select.
No surprises during character creation.
Your parents were murdered, and you are determined to find the culprit. You begin your investigation in the Gatehouse, where you will soon meet your first companion. From your very first interaction, it becomes clear that this companion's role is to provide backstory and guide you toward your next objective. Throughout the game, you will add two more companions, resulting in a total party of four. You do not have the option to choose your adventuring buddies; instead, you will have three pre-determined choices. All three companions share the same role as narrators and quest markers. However, this often feels unnatural and clunky, as one of your traveling companions will always seem to have a crucial insight to share at just the right moment.
Your ever insightful companion is ready to share her stories.
If none of your companions provide insights, the rest of the story is primarily conveyed through your father's journals. As you read these entries, it's clear that significant care and thought went into crafting an interesting, unique world. Although the plot may not be particularly original, it develops well and consistently provides the party with reasons to advance, while also enriching the surrounding world. However, the issue lies in the fact that this narrative unfolds almost entirely through text, which ultimately fails to create any meaningful engagement.
Retracing your father's steps takes you down memory lane.
You are retracing your father's steps, starting from the Gatehouse, in an effort to unravel the mystery surrounding your parents' deaths. While the Gatehouse initially appears to be a typical, peaceful residential building, it is actually teeming with monsters. After battling through the Gatehouse and its cellar, you use a teleporter to reach the Family Chapel. Naturally, one would expect a serene environment, a priest to heal your wounds, and a bed to rest in—but instead, you find yet another dungeon filled with monsters. In addition to this surprise, you are introduced to another hallmark of this game: excessively bloated levels. The so-called Chapel consists of over 20 rooms in a sprawling mega-complex.
The Family's Chapel and Shrine
Combat in this game is real-time with pause. You can choose a basic attack, allowing your character to automatically and relentlessly attack, limited only by the combat animation. Alternatively, you can select a melee skill or magic spell, in which case you will be limited by either Mana or Stamina as resources. Before entering combat, the game recommends that you configure your combat options. There are two available styles: melee and magic. For each style, you can choose from various settings, such as the stroke of your melee attack (Thrust, Slash, or Cut) or the phrasing speed of your spellcasting. These settings affect several factors, including attack speed, damage, and armor class. You can customize the settings for each character or let the game select them automatically for you. However, the automatically selected settings may not always be optimal, as different enemies have unique weaknesses to these settings. Using the wrong options can result in your characters frequently missing their attacks. As you engage in more battles, the bestiary fills with detailed information about these weaknesses. In theory, choosing the right combat options is crucial; for example, aiming high to kill spiders will often lead to missed attacks. In practice, though, I found that using medium settings for all fights worked just as well.
Another interesting feature is the ability to individually select the aggressiveness and maximum attack distance for each character. Although this setting is intended to enable a more automated combat approach, characters frequently refuse to attack, even when set to the most aggressive levels and when enemies are within striking distance.
This set of combat options appears more tactical than they truly are.
Once you are engaged in an encounter, you will have the typical options of melee attack, magic, or support. In this game, skills and magic spells function similarly; they consume mana or stamina and have cooldowns. Most skills or spells you can learn are actively used, with the majority being damage-oriented. However, the game only allows you to equip four skills or spells at a time, which significantly limits your flexibility in combat unless you are willing to manually swap them frequently.
While this limitation is puzzling, I didn't feel particularly restricted during my playthrough. My melee fighters performed well with basic attacks, and I found myself using the same spells repeatedly for my mage. Although a variety of elemental spells are available, there are no elemental resistances in the game. Ultimately, using area of effect damage with lightning or fire didn’t seem to make much difference, so I stuck with my initial spell choices all the way to the endgame.
Combat in this game tends to feel automatic, with most encounters concluding in just a few seconds. The lack of positioning and crowd control options causes all characters, both good and evil, to be lumped together, making it difficult to understand what is happening on screen. I typically found myself sending my four characters directly into the enemy mob and letting them handle the situation on their own, including boss fights.
I'm not entirely sure why, but once again, I find myself victorious.
There is no need to worry about your defense either, as there appears to be no backstabbing, disengagement, range penalties, or other factors to consider. Although the game provides numerous consumables and spells to remove various status effects, you probably won't get hit with your first debuff until the late game.
Another poor design choice is the use of consumables. Players can use any potion or herb without penalty and as many as they like during pauses. Additionally, these items can be shared across different characters. This essentially makes your party unkillable, as you can pause the game and continuously use healing potions until your health is fully restored.
And you will have plenty of those in this game, as there is no shortage of any loot. The mega mansion levels mentioned earlier are actually rather sparsely populated with monsters. Much of your time will be spent searching a ridiculous amount of crates, shelves, flowers, pictures and so much more in otherwise empty rooms.
An average room for this game.
Most of the loot consists of junk, including consumables that you will likely never use. Even magical equipment does not significantly improve from the very first starter level. The one exception to this are equipment sets, which are scattered throughout the levels. Be sure to check every chair and bed for parts, as these sets are far superior to anything else you can buy or find.
You can sell your loot and make purchases at various stores. However, most of these stores are only accessible through a city map and cannot be found while adventuring. There are no settlements or non-hostile areas apart from individual shops, which means there are likely only around 10 NPCs in the game with whom you can interact.
Unfortunately, you are unable to freely explore the only city in this game.
Overall, the world feels strangely lifeless. I've lost count of the number of deserted taverns I've discovered. At one point, I even stumbled upon a large underground city, complete with typical buildings. However, you cannot enter most of the buildings, and the entire city is a ghost town, populated only by a few monsters.
This feeling of emptiness is exacerbated by the uninspired presentation. It resembles an asset dump, where developers have indiscriminately placed numerous assets in each level without any underlying concept or design. Although some individual elements are visually appealing, they rarely come together to create a cohesive level that I found enjoyable to explore.
The background music does little to enhance the atmosphere. Each level features a single track that plays on a relentless loop. There is no battle music, and even during moments when the game pauses for your character to reflect on their memories, the music continues unabated. This can be distracting and even irritating. Additionally, the few sound effects that do break the monotony often feel out of place; for example, in the only outdoor level, your footsteps sound as though you’re walking on wood despite the fact that you’re traversing grass.
These buildings are merely a facade and cannot be entered.
Passageway of the Ancients is a unique game, but not for the right reasons. It claims to draw inspiration from classic titles of the 90s and early 2000s, yet I find myself questioning which elements in this game truly reflect those eras. It's unfortunate, as the story and world show potential and are well-written. However, the game fails to create an engaging experience, with many design choices falling flat. Ultimately, you'll spend the majority of your time navigating vast dungeons in search of the exit while resisting the urge to loot every single container.
