Shards of Feyra aims, in the indie field, to follow in the footsteps of a genre that, after having ended up a bit in the shadows downstream of the 90s, is becoming quite fashionable again in recent times. Fantasy RPGs with turn-based tactical combat. The premise (indeed promise) interesting is that it provides the possibility for two players to play in co-op, each commanding a team of two characters. The game has two independent small scenarios (campaigns) that are both accessible from the start.
Version tested: PC
Premise
Each game must be evaluated in its context. In this case, we're not talking about a triple-A production that took 12 years to wait amid aggressive marketing and bombastic promises about what the game would offer. It is about an indie game produced by a small and not very famous team, for which the expectations were not extremely high, nor the evaluation criteria too stringent. Despite this, it can be said fairly confidently that Shards of Feyra constitutes an excellent paradigm how to NOT make a video game today. Let's see why.
Game design
The game concept is vaguely interesting: Turn-Based Tactical RPG with different classes of characters to choose from, the two that will make up our team and two scenarios (mini-campaigns) to face. It is about a pretty poor offer, which at best would allow the game to offer a few hours of fun; however, in general, nothing would prohibit the possibility of expanding this offer with subsequent updates.
The problems, however, are conceptual from almost the beginning. The game it doesn't even have an introduction that makes us understand the context a little (in an RPG it would be essential) let alone a tutorial to introduce us to the game mechanics. No. Whatever the choice we make we are already catapulted into the middle of the action, without knowing who we are, what we are doing and what our abilities or capabilities are.
We will have to find out everything on the way, reading the descriptions of the abilities in badly made squares and learning the "narrative" context through rather silly dialogues with some NPCs encountered. Not exactly the best to favor identification: and to say that the latter is precisely what many indie games are betting on. In fact, by leveraging a well-told and thought-out plot, one can compensate for the inevitable graphic or technical deficiencies that a low-budget production faces.
The lack of information is total also with regard to skills and combat dynamics. We will have to rely solely on the descriptions in the boxes and a meager, albeit intuitive synthesis of the characteristics of a character or enemy that is pitted in front of us when we select it.
Technical aspects
As already mentioned, the technical aspect of the game is deeply lacking. In graphic terms it seems to be in front of a game of the PS1 generation. Simple polygonal models that can be mildly appreciated in drawing and animation, but which are still rather crude, as much as the approximate scenarios of the game. The latter reproduce in a rudimentary way locations of exteriors, dungeons and dungeons, but with a fairly banal and dated style.
The interface has a poor visual appearance: the boxes for the skills and powers of the heroes are incomprehensibly transparent (and the content is difficult to read), while the menus have a questionable appearance, as well as being as bare and minimal as is the visual sector in general. To aggravate the situation, there is no inventory of any kind, even if every now and then we are told that "we collect an object, so we can sell it later". To make what, money? And where are they? And where is it that you could buy something? Mystery.
The music practically shrinks to a single track that, although it is vaguely pleasant and in theme with the fight, it is too short to be repeated indefinitely without tiring.
A completely broken game
But what really leaves you stunned Shards of Feyra is the huge amount of unsolved bugs scattered around the game, as well as the severity of the same. We are talking about a huge variety of things that don't work, some of which are very serious because they compromise the very completion of the scenarios and the usability of the title at 360 °.
It goes from key objects that do not work, even if the interaction with them is fundamental to advance the scenario, to situations where a given action leads the game to freeze entirely, to the point where the only way out is to press Alt + F4. Needless to say there are no bailouts, so we will have to start all over again.
Once a game is over, there is no way to restart another one other than by closing and reopening the game. The camera freezes when it "impacts" against walls and objects in the scenario: if we want to see what happens in another room, we will have to "go through" the doors or stairs even with our "invisible eye".
I was able to see only two of the eight types of characters proposed. This is because, even though the game allows you to select the character classes to make up the team with (for example Paladin and Warrior) after ignore our choices, always offering us the same combination (Maga and Death Knight). Just like it's a demo instead of a full game.
More than a game, almost a paid demo
From here to go down, you could fill an entire manual with the endless list of problems, inaccuracies, obvious programming errors that afflict Shards of Feyra. And all of them are so amazing they literally leave the player speechless. Among the many, it is worth mentioning again only a bug in the coop, which in some cases it prevents the same access to the only thing that could give a breath of originality and peculiarity to this title. It could ... if it weren't as bad as everything else.
It's simply an embarrassing sight. And while we appreciate that the developer is working on the issues, releasing new updates all the time to try and fix them, it's clear that a game does not appear on the market in these conditions. Not even remotely.
Final comment
There is really nothing, in good conscience, that would prompt anyone to recommend the purchase of Shards of Feyra in the state in which it is found. A game that presents some interesting ideas in the concept, but which turns out to be missing at all levels in the implementation. Both as regards the incomprehensible design choices on the gameplay and on the interface that for the bad programming, virtually affected by errors and bugs in every relevant aspect of the game. One wonders if it is only the result of a hasty realization or if even with more time available there would not have remained a - at best - mediocre game.
In any case, we prefer to recommend to those who want to live a fantasy adventure with a nice tactical combat Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin or even the same Lords of Xulima. By the way, we told you that a new Dragon Age has to come out?
