Dread Delusion
Over the past few years, a bunch of talented developers had risen up and revitalized new energy to the stale first-person shooter genre through a sub-genre that is often meme’d as Boomer Shooters. The Boomer Shooter uprising or Retro FPS Renaissance (if you’re a man of culture) is here to stay. Among the sub-genres that followed the trend of rising back from the dead, retro first-person RPGs are the latest to hit the market. This brings me to the featured game of today. Featuring PS1-era wobbly-warping aesthetics and an oppressive and alien world to explore, Dread Delusion is trying its best to single-handedly revive the glory days of King’s Field, Morrowind and Ultima Underworld. But is it actually good though?
Developed by Lovely Hellplace and published by DreadXP, Dread Delusion is a retro horror RPG that features PS1-era visuals and gameplay inspired by classic RPGs of the time. The game was released on Steam Early Access on 16 June 2022 where it will stay for a period of 6-9 months.
Living up to the Name
There’s quite something about RPGs that drops the player straight into a strange, alien land filled with uneasiness, and dread and populated with weird characters with “questionable” ideologies. Games like Gothic, Arx Fatalis, Planescape: Torment and the aforementioned Morrowing and King’s Field evoke this sense of dread and macabre curiosity as you explore strange lands inhabited by stranger things. The premise of the game is familiar but is coated in interesting lore. For some reason, the surface world is deemed inhospitable and what remains of civilizations cling on to floating islands in the sky. The islands are filled with deadly flora and fauna, environmental hazards (like literally falling down from the sky) and an ongoing feud between two factions – the Apostatic Union of atheists who has banned deity worship and the Wikkan believers who…believe in deity worship. Between all of the chaos, people struggle to survive.
Dread Delusion scores an A+ in my book for nailing this atmosphere thanks to the unique art style, usage of a striking color palette, intriguing lore, weird world and sound design. As a love letter to games of yore, you play as an unnamed prisoner who has been tasked by an Apostatic inquisitor to track down and kill Vela Callose, a dangerous outlaw in return for your freedom. After character creation and a very brief tutorial, you’re completely free to do whatever you want and go wherever you want to go – a far cry from the annoying handholding and padding seen in modern RPGs. Sure, there’s the main quest to follow but you can very well go off on your own. The islands are filled with interesting locations to explore, a small town to visit, shops to peruse or steal from, quests to stumble upon, factions to join, enemies to slay, lore to read up on and skills to level up. I absolutely adore the amount of flavor text used for item descriptions. It’s just one more little touch to feel free to make yourself home.
A Stranger in Strange Lands
While Dread Delusion scores a home run in terms of atmosphere and freedom of choice, being an indie project has its drawbacks. For starters, the current version of the game is severely unbalanced. The game makes it clear that you can play as the archetypical fighter, mage or smooth talker. However, I found the first two roles to be completely trivial as the game rewards non-combat skills by a huge margin. For starters, the default player speed is so fast that you can effortlessly run past all encounters without consequence. Combine that with the Haste spell and you’re literally Flash.
Problem number two, combat doesn’t reward the player with experience in Dread Delusion. The way you level up your character in the game is by collecting Delusions, which are like XP pickups scattered all over the world. So, there’s not much incentive in engaging in combat other than to horde up on HP and mana potions.
The third problem is that combat is just not fun. The action-based combat is so shallow and devoid of any feedback. Combine that with the braindead AI and high player mobility, you got a combat system that is so exploitable to the point that it just becomes a chore. That being said, the developers are planning to make changes to the combat in the future, so there’s that. They’re also pretty active on Steam Forums, noting down feedback and generally being wholesome folks – a quality that’s much appreciated. Speaking of changes, I’d also love some more ambient background tracks to help in this perilous adventure. The stuff that’s currently present is pretty sombre and fits the tone perfectly but it loops so much that I had to turn the music volume all the way down.
Real Talk
Dread Delusion, despite being in Early Access offers so much for the buck you pay for it. From the fantastic atmosphere to the unique visuals to the intriguing lore, the game is shaping up to be a fine indie gem. Hopefully, the developers will try to introduce some much-needed balance changes in combat and polish the rough edges out.
INTITIAL RATING: RECOMMENDED
