Commissar SFLUFAN Posted June 3 Share Posted June 3 A new throwback RPG is so good, it's won praise from Larian boss Swen Vincke: 'I’m flying to LA next week and plan to play it the entire flight' | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM Skald: Against the Black Priory is really winning us over. Quote Retro-style RPG Skald: Against the Black Priory is a game that's almost snuck up on us with how good it is. Its VGA-style color palette and pixel art graphics harken back to an earlier age of CRPG history—one even earlier than the late '90s Fallout/Baldur's Gate heyday that continues to define the genre—and it pays homage to the oft-forgotten Ultima series. Skald is a niche product to be sure, but it's also found an advocate in one of the most prominent figures in gaming: Larian CEO Swen Vincke. "This is one I’ve been waiting for," Vincke wrote on Twitter while sharing a trailer for Skald. "I have nothing but respect for the ambitions here and I love how it looks." Expanding on his interest via email, Vincke said that while he hasn't had the time to dive deep into Skald yet, "The little I’ve seen already fills me with a deep respect for what Anders and his team have accomplished. "It feels right from the get go—which for an RPG like this is quite the accomplishment. I’m flying to LA next week and plan to play it the entire flight. My play time is limited so that’s probably the biggest compliment I can give." The best thing about this retro fantasy RPG is that I keep forgetting it's actually Lovecraftian horror | PC Gamer WWW.PCGAMER.COM Skald: Against the Black Priory is a brilliantly unsettling blend of genres. Quote Everything about Skald: Against the Black Priory feels crafted to lull me into a false sense of security. With its wonderfully garish retro RPG visuals, familiar classes and character options, and simple turn-based combat, I keep being lured into thinking I'm just on a typical fantasy adventure. That only makes it all the more disturbing when I'm reminded that it's not. The game starts with a very well-worn RPG trope: you're shipwrecked on an island with nothing but the clothes on your back and an important quest to fulfil (in this case locating a childhood friend who's mysteriously gone missing). But all is not well here on Idra—a curse has befallen the island, transforming the wildlife into monsters and infecting the people with madness and plague. I'm yet to discover the source of this darkness (though I have my suspicions), but the result is plain: the land is suffused with Lovecraftian horror. Save 10% on SKALD: Against the Black Priory on Steam STORE.STEAMPOWERED.COM SKALD:Against the Black Priory is a retro-style party-based RPG set in a grim-dark fantasy world of tragic heroes, violent deaths and Lovecraftian horror. Take a chance and roll the dice as you embark on a compelling story filled with deadly creatures, branching story and tactical, turn-based combat Quote SKALD:Against the Black Priory is a retro-style party-based RPG set in a grim-dark fantasy world of tragic heroes, violent deaths and Lovecraftian horror. Take a chance and roll the dice as you embark on a compelling story filled with deadly creatures, branching story and tactical, turn-based combat 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr.Vic20 Posted June 3 Share Posted June 3 I'm very much onboard for this! Unfortunately, I won't be getting to this gem for a few more weeks, due to other obligations. It looks amazing and I had a great time with the prologue, so I am very much interested in diving in. That said, by the time I am free to dig in to this game, Elden Ring DLC will have dropped so... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Commissar SFLUFAN Posted June 4 Author Share Posted June 4 Reviews: Skald: Against the Black Priory review - a robust but inessential throwback to the RPG's primordial era WWW.EUROGAMER.NET Eurogamer's review of Skald: Against the Black Priory, a propulsive throwback RPG with grisly character but a little too much adherance to tradition. Quote Skald: Against the Black Priory is without question the retro-est game I have played. The recent spate of boomer shooters and PS1-era survival horrors are mere whippersnappers in this 8-bit RPGs eyes, cosplay Roman soldiers marching under the shadows of its artificially ancient Pyramids. High North Studios dark fantasy adventure is a devoted recreation of role-playing from the primordial days of home computing. If it threw back much further, you'd need to visit a university to play it. Skald is a good game. I want to say that up front and unambiguously. It's a tightly crafted, moodily written RPG that makes atmospheric use of its Commodore 64 aesthetic. But it also had me questioning the value of digging up this part of the past, as Skald's self-imposed restrictions make it tough to recommend in a genre that has burned so brightly in recent years. Quote Alongside these harder problems is that question – what exactly does Skald bring back from the nostalgia mine? For context, I'm a big fan of retro-shooters, but the reason I like them is not just because I grew up in the 90s and have a weird gore fixation. It's because they reinstate ideas of design, particularly level design, that modern shooters have for the most part lost interest in. Each of them plays with 3D space in imaginative ways unique to its designer, and they demonstrate how much potential remains in that style of virtual architecture. There are examples of this retrieving of lost design ideas in the RPG space too. Baldur's Gate 3 is essentially a modern Ultima, taking that "anything goes" style of RPG design and spinning it out to its logical extreme. That's an unreasonable game to compare Skald to, however, so a fairer example would be Legend of Grimrock, which resurrects the old-school 3D dungeon crawler. That's a highly specific style of RPG, with unique game mechanics, level and puzzle design that were lost to time. In bringing them back, Legend of Grimrock demonstrated the specific appeal of that design, and showed how it can be explored in new ways. I'm not sure that Skald can make the same claim, because it's drawing from an era where the big innovation was simply getting an RPG to work on a computer. It replicates that era well, but that also prevents it from bringing much to the table that you can't get from other, frankly better RPGs. Its most distinctive quality is how it uses its 8-bit aesthetic to create a moody, dark fantasy world, which it does effectively and, for the most part, enjoyably. But is that enough for me to declare Skald a game you must play? Ultimately, no. Then again, if you have exhausted the higher echelons of fantasy RPGs, then there is an adventure worth having here, doubly so if you hold a candle for the Commodore 64. Skald might pray to the blighted altar of Lovecraft, but it has more in common with the work of Robert E. Howard, a grisly, propulsive fantasy adventure unpretentious in its aspirations and unyielding in its focus. Its ideas might not be especially radical, but they are the foundation upon which entire worlds were built, and in returning to them, Skald proves those foundations to be as robust as ever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haya Dune Posted June 4 Share Posted June 4 I saw this. Looks great. I wish-listed it yesterday, but right now I have too much on my gaming agenda to justify an immediate purchase. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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