Old School RPG is a solo project released in 2024 with little fanfare. It is a party-based, turn-based, first-person dungeon crawler heavily influenced by classic games such as Might & Magic, Wizardry, and The Bard's Tale. While it generally delivers what it promises, it is held back by numerous bugs and a lack of content.
Fresh off the ship, we are ready to embark on our adventure.
The game begins in Waters Edge, a small fishing town located on the Island of Three Towers. You are assigned the task of defeating an undead uprising by the arch mage. To accomplish this, you must obtain a red crystal that is located on a flying island. However, in order to reach the flying island, you must first repair a teleporter.
As the game progresses, the story takes you on a series of treasure hunts to collect items that are necessary to gain access to the next island. First, you need to explore three dungeons to find three crystals. Next, you are sent into three more dungeons on the hunt for three crafting materials. The story is not a major focus of the game and primarily serves to guide the player from one island to another.
But, before we can actually start slaying our first undead, we need to create our party of 4. The game offers three options: a default party; manually create a custom party; or a "random but balanced" party. If you chose to create your own heroes, you have choices among 14 classes and 13 races. Generally, the game itself does not offer many details about classes or races besides the skill groups each class can master. During character creation, this can be quite frustrating because you simply lack important information to make informed choices for your heroes. For instance, the Warlock has Arcane and Fire Magic at his disposal, while a Mage can also cast Divine, Air, Earth and Water spells. The downside of that increased pool of spells remain unclear. This is, until you consult the manual.
The manual contains a list of all spells unlockable for every class, allowing for a much more informed choice during character creation. The same is true for the 8 Attributes. The game does not tell you during character creation what skills are affected by what attributes; for that you will again need to read the manual which I would consider mandatory for custom party creation.
Your class choices are conveniently presented along with suggested roles.
Following your first steps on land you engage in conversations with some villagers, picking up simple side quests of the fetch/kill variety, and browsing through the local merchants' stocks. However, the moment you step outside the village boundaries, the first skeletons attack.
The combat in the game is turn-based. One thing to note is that you don't have the option to position your party, but there appears to be a favored enemy system in place. This means that tanky characters are more frequently targeted by melee attacks. During your turn, you have the usual choices of attacking, defending, using consumables, or using support skills. However, the game is again lacking in terms of information provided. While you do receive some general information about each skill, it doesn't go into much detail.
For example, the skill Berzerking greatly increases attack power but comes with a small hit chance penalty. Unfortunately, no specific numbers are provided. The same is true for enemies – you only see their hitpoints without any information about resistances. This can be quite frustrating, especially when an enemy resists an attack and you're left wondering if they are immune or if you were just unlucky with your roll against their resistance.
One of the many boss fights in the game.
A nice touch is the presence of a few synergies, although they are quite limited in numbers. Lightning attacks deal bonus damage to wet targets, while fire abilities can remove the wet status and few others. These synergies are mentioned in the manual and should be studied and pre-planned before character creation to ensure that your four heroes complement each other perfectly.
There are also limited items that you can use during combat - no scrolls, wands, or traps, and only a few options for potions for recovery and to increase your Strength or Quickness abilities. If your class does not come with a certain buff or debuff skill, it's unlikely that you will be able to cast it using any other means. For example, if you don't have any skill to remove burning, you will have to endure a 10% HP loss for a set number of rounds.[/color]
The turn order is primarily influenced by the Quickness ability, which has only this one use. Every round, the turn order is refreshed, but unfortunately, you cannot see the turn order of the following round in advance[/color]. Typically, my Paladin would go last, allowing me to decide whether to heal the most needy character at the end of each round. Should I heal my Necromancer or take a gamble that he will go first and heal himself via Drain Life? It's a blind decision, and I would have preferred either keeping the order consistent throughout the whole encounter or at least showing me the order for the next round so I can plan accordingly.
After achieving victory in battle, you collect every item from the enemy mob, resulting in hauling around 88 shields and 60 long swords after a few battles. With merchants who have infinite deep pockets, you'll never run out of money. Although there isn't much to buy, you'll discover the best equipment while exploring, along with plenty of potions to keep you alive.
Itemization in this game is quite lacking. New equipment items only make you stronger, and even Magic items only come with randomly generated modifications to certain abilities. However, later in the game, a few items are introduced that provide additional skills or resistances which can potentially alter your approach to combat.
Plenty of loot, but mostly junk to sell.
Besides loot, you gain experience after victory, distributed evenly among all survivors. You can solo or create a smaller party to level up more quickly. Additionally, you can choose to dismiss a character during your playthrough. This can be advantageous if you feel you have mishandled that character or cannot find a suitable purpose for them. Unfortunately, you can only dismiss characters in the reverse order of their creation, which greatly undermines this otherwise good idea. You are even able to replace the dismissed character with a newly created one. However, the new character will always start at level 1, and gained experience is not scaled to their level. As a result, this potentially useful feature is only theoretical.
Generally you only gain experience via combat and for completing quests. Each level you have skill and attribute points to allocate. There is no skill tree or any other means of choosing skills, they are unlocked at a certain level for each particular class. You will find an overview of that in the manual. What exactly an increase in a certain skill does is mostly unclear. The game tells you that this particular skill is getting more effective but in what way remains a mystery. My Necromancer was additionally skilled in Water Magic, with at some point 24 vs. 8 levels respectively. Yet, I cannot say that spells of these certain class felt much different in power or hit rate.
In addition to level-ups, you will also come across numerous random attribute points throughout your adventures. This gives you the flexibility to redirect your character if you feel that your initial plan is not working out. This feature is particularly useful since the game does not offer any respec options.
Meet Umpip Puddletrick, Level 14 Necromancer.
You will explore the islands in real time, with free movement and mouse look. In total you will visit four different islands. However, it's worth noting that these islands all share a striking similarity in terms of their appearance and atmosphere. Additionally, these islands are relatively small in size. There is no need for a minimap, as you can consult your fullscreen map, follow the compass, and soon you will spot your destination. There are a few hidden things to uncover off the main path, and exploring a new island is generally enjoyable.
There is always something to discover in eyesight.
You will also have the opportunity to explore numerous dungeons, which become progressively more complex. These dungeons are filled with an enjoyable mix of traps, hidden doors, puzzles, and, of course, plenty of monsters. The traps are not only deadly but are often strategically placed, requiring careful exploration of the dungeon. On the other hand, the puzzles add flavor to the experience rather than being substantial challenges. Many of them are quite similar, and even if you come across a new type of puzzle, the solution is usually immediately obvious. The same holds true for "hidden" passageways - at least you won't need to go on a pixel hunt.
Most puzzles are indeed that obvious.
While it's generally fun to crawl through dungeons in search of your next quest item, these dungeons lack diversity. Most of them use the exact same presets and placables - the same walls, same decoration, they absolutely look identical - differing only in layout, monsters, and loot. It reaches a point where even finding a new bookshelf becomes exciting simply because it offers something different to look at.
One reason for this is likely the developer's ambition. The game looks fantastic for its scale. Besides the human models, monsters, dungeons, vegetation, and placables all look very detailed and, more importantly, consistent throughout the game. Everything fits convincingly together and feels like one cohesive world. The music enhances this sentiment as well. It's not overpowering, but also not memorable; it's simply there to underscore the atmosphere. However, there are some issues with certain sounds. Monsters growling from the void, sound effects on loop, and annoying party banter even while you are busy leveling up.
Furthermore, the experience is weakened by the UI. A lot of actions require too many clicks to achieve, although the developer has fixed some of these issues with recent updates. Additionally, the switch between vertical and horizontal menus is confusing. Ultimately, the UI is serviceable but certainly not convenient.
Your average dungeon in this game.
Lastly, let's address the numerous bugs present in the game. While the starter island feels fine, issues arise with mistakes in the dialogue that sends you off. The performance deteriorates, there are numerous mistakes in texts, enemies are pre-damaged, chests refill, monsters spawn on top of each other, skills do not work as advertised, and there are even game-ending bugs. However, to give credit to the developer, he has promptly addressed these bugs within hours of them being reported, either on the Steam forums or in our HQ thread. Nevertheless, in its current state, the game feels more like an Early Access title at best.
In conclusion, it's fun to browse the manual, plan your party, and see how it all plays out. The combat lacks some information, but it's satisfying when your plan works. And even if the game throws you a curveball, there's often a way to save the day. It's not the deepest system, but for a short game like this, it's enjoyable enough. It took me about 18 hours to beat the game on the recommended difficulty settings. It might take a bit longer on harder settings, but it should still be beatable within 20 hours. Even that feels stretched at times - the dungeons and islands almost seem procedurally generated because they're so similar. That's a shame because the exploration is small-scaled but fun. You're always on the lookout for traps, treasures, and unmarked adventures. This game, as it is, should have been an Early Access title with only 2 islands to iron out more bugs and gain more time and funding to create something fresh for the second half of the game.
If you enjoyed some of the often low-budget first-person dungeon crawlers from the past years, but wished there were more turn-based options available, then this game is for you. However, if you are not interested in this particular sub-genre, this game does not offer anything that will turn you into a fan.