This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
Blend game with a little bit of fun in it.
Battlepaths is an Indie “RPG” hack and slash game and a quite boring one. This is mainly because of the way it looks and plays. It has the ultimate grind mechanics and achievements, is really short and does not offer that much.
The story is blend and cliché, hunt down the big bad Chaos Overlord and save the world. Nothing more to it. You got three realms to explore but they all feel the same. Sure, one is a forest, the other one a desert and the last one an evil, volcano landscape sort of thing, but it is just not that special. There are some challenge rooms and bonus fights, but they are recycled sprites, put in rooms, for you to beat again.
The graphics are ugly. I know that it is a cartoon style 2D Indie game, but even then, it looks like my little niece drew the characters, cut them out and glued them on my screen. The fact that nothing has any animation in this game is also disappointing. If the cartoon cardboard cutouts at least did something to let you know that you hit something or they hit you, then it would not be that bad. There is no blood, no corpses, just cardboard. Also, when you equip a freaking Doomslayer Sword, ripped straight of the corpse of the Chaos Overlord himself, you still hold a little knife in your hand. There is no dressing up in Battlepaths, so lazy.
The sound is terrible. There are no ambient sounds, no footsteps, nothing. The only thing you hear is the combat and that consists of *kling*, *klang*, *kling* etc., its repetitive and boring. Music that plays in the background is generic and offers nothing special.
The combat mechanics are quite unique, for me at least. Enemies do not move when you do not move. It is turn based but you and the enemy move at the same time. Attacking is done in turns. When enemies almost die, their paper figurines will flash red. The controls, however, feel very stiff. This is because you move in squares, one at a time. This makes the game slow as a constipated sloth and I sometimes fell asleep when I was in a “glorious battle” with four goblins.
The gear all feels kind of pointless and personally, I cannot feel any difference when upgrading to a better helmet or harness. The weapons on the other hand, are more balanced.
The enemies level with you when you get further in the game, offering you enough experience throughout the game, until you hit the strongest enemy types, then the game becomes a chore to level. Speaking of enemies, there is nice variation in the enemy types and every region has its own foes. However, this becomes stale and boring soon enough, because of all the thing mentioned earlier. I have to say that the reactions of the villagers (and your crush/girlfriend thingy), that change when you get higher levels and complete more quests is nicely done. In the beginning people ask you who you are, and when you did some leveling and completed some quests, you are being called a hero.
The main downfall with the game is the grind mechanics. Yes, this is an RPG (or tries to be), so it makes sense, but Battlepaths takes it to a whole new level. You got three weapon types that you can master, swords, bludgeoning weapons and axes. To get one of those to level twenty, takes hours and hours and hours. If you want to complete the game (getting all achievements that is), you need to get them all to level twenty. Then you have the “collect five hundred thousand gold” ones and the worst of all, kill five thousand monsters, in a game where you encounter eight monsters max at the same time. This takes the fun away because you do the same thing over and over again, just to get your skills maxed out. It takes many hours of grinding and for me, it was not worth it.
In the end, I do not recommend Battlepaths. It is just way too basic, lazy and blend.… Expand
