Drova: Forsaken Kin Deep Look

The land of Drova is a realm of broken promises, lost hope, and squandered potential, which makes for an interesting place to traverse.

I shall be honest here. The Switch version of Drova: Forsaken Kin did little to impress me in its pre-release beta build.

To the contrary, there were graphical stuttering issues, unreadable signposts, counterintuitive control setups that had me canceling out of textboxes or disarming myself more often than not, and half a dozen crashes at the entrance to the woodcutters’ camp. Most notable was the incident where all of space and time outside of the Remnants’ encampment was lost to a bright pink liminal space with random, nonsensical elements of scenery, a Twilight-Zone-esque digital limbo that soon removed all NPCs (but not their gear) from existence and leaving just one enemy in a far-off corner for me to find and then die to. Following that demise, the auto-save left me stuck in a fixed position in a nearby encampment, unable to use thirteen of the game’s fourteen mapped button choices (the skill-swap button; completely useless). I was stuck that way, my character file effectively bricked, for three whole real-life days until the release date arrived with a first-day maintenance patch that freed my dude from the living limbo simulation.

So, setting aside the near-terminal case of beta-build hiccups, how does the game play now?

To start with the positives, the setup and setting are quite fine. The land of Drova is a realm of broken promises, lost hope, and squandered potential, which makes for an interesting place to traverse. Upon crossing through the divinely accursed mists, the player’s personalized character must venture bravely, make deals and alliances, break their word on occasion, and generally survive where nobody really trusts anyone else. There is a great deal to see, do, and explore, and the world is strangely vivid in spite of its often drab choice of color palette.

Fetch the stick, pupper.

It’s also the kind of game where it’s easy to get lost off the beaten path, at which point the main character is likely to get slaughtered. This is not a game that eases one into the adventure; rather, it’s sink-or-swim from the get-go. Ugly dire puppers or monstrous murder chickens may not be too difficult one-on-one, once their attack patterns are better known, but they frequently group up in packs of three to five voracious varmints. Otherwise quotidian encounters end up feeling more like boss battles, and players will be seeing the Retry menu often.

The actual combat holds up quite well, once one is used to the controls. The Switch version does its best to manage the number of buttons and hot keys necessary to play the game as intended. It no longer maps as a default B to accept and A to cancel, but the buttons in combat are still tragicomically easy to mix up, such as stowing a weapon instead of dodging. Still, in order to fight anything the player must first press X or R to bring out a weapon, Y to toggle between different equipment loadouts, spam R repeatedly to attack while running around, and occasionally dash out of the way by pressing B (not A). Offhand weapons, shields, or ammo loading require the L button. It takes some getting used to.

There is a wide variety of weapon types to work with, plus all manner of tricks, traps, and devices. Sadly, indirect murder of monsters, e.g. luring them into running through thorn bushes or otherwise letting bleed damage and poison do their work, does not earn the player experience points, but it’s a necessary price to pay to eliminate some obstacles.

Tales told ’round the fire’s friendly flame

Drova uses a focus-based system for its skills and spells. As the player’s character deals out damage, their focus gauge builds. It goes down if they’re hit, and if a few seconds go by without any action then it resets to a base level. But if it rises to an appropriate amount, it enables the use of the current special skill assigned to the ZR button. These can be specific weapon skills learned from NPCs, runic skills gained from magic stones, or one-time spells on scrolls. In addition, raising ability levels in a weapon type gains the player bonuses like dealing bleed damage or poison on critical hits.

As you might guess, I was not predisposed to giving Drova a fulsome review. This Deep Look serves as a testament to my willingness to push past that three-day stint in bricked limbo and learn to appreciate dying a lot more. There is a certain satisfaction in finally taking down a pack of dire puppers or luring a dozen murder chickens individually within range of an NPC so as to stand a chance of survival, and I imagine I’ll be back again sometime to finish fomenting that workers’ revolt in the silver mine. Luckily, my tales of suffering and success have prompted at least two of our local Eurojank enthusiasts to wishlist this game, so I shall leave it to them to potentially give it the review it deserves. Because Drova: Forsaken Kin is not a bad game. It might even be a great game, for someone coming with the right attitude and a stable game build. It just wasn’t the best of experiences for me.

 

Disclosure: This article is based on a copy of the game provided by the publisher.

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