Vagrus The Riven Realms - open world RPG, fantasy post-apocalyptic caravan master

Games
21

I just tried it, playing the tutorial scenario for about 90 minutes before quitting and refunding.

I would love to give it more of a chance, but playing distant from a big screen, I found the UI almost unusable, and it has no scaling options. With 20/10 vision, I could read the tiny text okay, but so much of the UI consists of teeny tiny icons that by the time I was 90 minutes in, I could see that playing would be simply painful.

Oddly, to me, there is a single text scaling option, which fails to scale most of the actual text. It scales event text, which is larger than most of the UI text already, and does not scale UI text at all.

Shame . . . but this is one of very few games I have found to be unplayable. For reference, I play around 2 meters distant from a 55 inch screen.

22

I have been dreading that. I was so enamoured with the game’s promise originally that the disappointment still hurts.

Vagrus has a lot of awesome aspects but I actively hated many of its design decisions, especially concerning trade and the economy in general, unit combat, caravan combat and handling of failures.
While there is a chance at least some of them were notably changed and improved my gaming soul can’t risk such a fall again.
…yet.

23

Well don’t put yourself through that on my account. Sounds painful.

I guess I’ll try the more linear prologue for free to see.

The full release is still getting very positive reviews, so it has found some kinda audience.

Well, that’s no good .

24

Woof. Too many words. The wrong words, too. Things like “corpulent” instead of “fat.”

It’s okay to be a bad writer. It’s especially okay to be a bad writer and a good game developer. The very best game developers fit that description.

But… know your strengths, and then use them. Make a good game without many words. I’ll be delighted to play it.

If you want to be a better writer, practice a lot privately before trying to sell a lot of words for $30.

(Step 1: read. Books, that is.)

25

I’m curious whether anyone else is playing Vagrus at this point.

I have been trying it the past couple days, and it is making a good first impression on me. (Not the tutorial/on rails story – I played that just long enough to learn the interface. It’s the open world game that I am playing, as an adventurer) Not sure how much the game has changed in updates, since the negative reactions of last fall.

It is a lot of reading, which I don’t mind. And although I would never say the quality of writing approaches that of a good novel, I feel it compares favorably to most CRPGs.

Of course, I am not far enough in to be sure, but it seems to fit what I am looking for. Less about killing a thousand weak enemies and a few bosses, to gain XP and level up. More about getting along in an interesting and dangerous world.

There is fighting, and you can choose to make it a life of killing stuff, but that is not the sole way of advancing the game, and, in fact, I get the impression that unless you do a lot of save scumming, continual battles will destroy you, even if you manage to survive the battles themselves.

It is also less of a trading game than I had imagined. Profit margins are very tight, sometimes non-existent when you factor in the cost of travel supplies. But the tasks you take on for various factions provide profit and insight (what serves as XP here) allowing you to raise your reputation and your ability to deal with danger, while gradually exposing you to all kinds of stuff you might want to take part is.

As I say, it is early, and I may yet join the negative views I see from last fall, but at this point the game feels far more like an adventure and less like a “min-max your build and go kill mobs of evil strangers so you can kill more mobs of bigger evil strangers” kind of game. The fantasy world is nothing like The Hobbit, but the pacing and the sense of going strange places and encountering a lot of new stuff is reminiscent of that.

26

I own it and agree with you here. Unfortunately, other game have prevented me from returning to it, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve experienced thus far!

27

I looked at this and it’s right up my alley, but I hate it when developers tout difficulty like it’s a feature that would get me to buy a game. Make your game, and if it’s a challenge that’s fine I’ll try to get better at the game’s mechanics and do some research, but when they proudly declare “this game is difficult!” like so many games in this genre like to do for some reason, it’s kind of a turn off. Where is my cool indie, RPG party adventure that isn’t so difficult I’ll never get past the early game? Battle Brothers, Darkest Dungeon, and so many more are super cool games I like to play, but I’m resigned that I’ll never have the decision making or big-picture tactical mind to see them through.

28

I agree, although I think it bothers me less in the advertising, and more within the game itself. Like the now popular game design where the game is openly impossible to win until you have lost many times, but through the losses pick up the tools necessary to win.

Or when a game contains levels that it would be extremely unlikely to win, unless you did something pretty unlikely. So the expectation is that you replay the level repeatedly until you figure out what that secret thing is.

Extremely high difficulty is not a plus at all in my book. But I think that the claim that a game is extremely difficult is kind of a preemptive counterattack to the common problem that once a gamer has done a little reverse engineering of the game, the game will lack any tension at all, and the only remaining entertainment to be obtained is through weird stuff, often documented as “achievements” which actually scream “This game is no longer worth my attention as a straight competitive venture.”

I think it’s tough for game designers to navigate all this. A game that offers a solid but not overwhelming challenge for a gamer who just picks it up and plays, ends up being rather easy for the gamer who hears ahead of time that ranged attacks are super powerful but stealth is nerfed. And of trivial difficulty for the gamer who researches and follows an expert build for his character. But make the game difficult for that gamer, and it’s impossible for the gamer who just picks up the game and plays it.

I know, offering various difficulty levels helps some, but usually ends up being a rather blunt instrument.

All of which is to say, I too react negatively to the typical schemes to make games ridiculously difficult. But I also have some sympathy for game designers who need to please a lot of gamers if they are to make a go of it.

As to where Vagrus fits in, I don’t know how I feel yet. It’s clearly a game where you are not supposed to be firmly in control of things, but at this point, the only thing that has struck me as obnoxiously rigged against me is that you really need to get in good with at least one or two of those factions, yet it takes an obnoxiously large number of missions to accomplish. And it seems there aren’t enough such missions on the map. Need more rep to get more missions, need more missions to get more rep. But maybe this is just a time gate that works fine overall?

29

I’ve found the game interesting and need to play it more, but so far I can’t quite recommend it. It’s like Sunless Sea/Skies but without editorial control, both in the writing and in the systems.

The game does some notable things to stick to theme of its world:

  • One of the cruelest tutorials I’ve ever played. Every time it introduces you to a mechanic it doesn’t give you enough resources and has that mechanic constrain you. I think you can lose during the tutorial.
  • Being “good” in this world is mostly a handicap – unlike “evil world” RPGs like Tyranny there’s very little mechanical benefit to being moral. If you commit to playing morally the game does acknowledge it in the writing, but the economy doesn’t reward you.
30

Played it some more and I really like this game. Just keep in mind that where the Sunless games are designed so you can’t/shouldn’t grind trade missions, this game pretty much requires it. Expect to put up with some repetitive gameplay.

31

This was the only thing I picked up during the Steam sale. I knew what I was getting into both from reading this thread and playing the Prologue. I know I’ll lose interest once the tedium sets in, but the setting and willingness to do its own thing both appeal to me. The Sunless Seas/Skies comparisons are appropriate for sure, but I think the game feels less purposely obtuse than Sunless Seas did, although I think a sequel taking in the lessons of the first would yield as big of an improvement on gameplay enjoyability as Failbetter achieved with Sunless Skies. I do love the sense of going on a journey and needing to prepare for travel. On top of that, not being able to zoom the main screen out as far as I might like contributes to the sense of distance across this desolate waste. But yes, that starts to feel really tedious and I’m not sure how you fix that without losing the immersion, although I should probably start using the quick camp option really soon.

32

I know I’m late to the party on this one, but Vagrus has consumed most of my weekend. I’m probably moving too slowly to actually “win” but it’s really fun just as a trading sim. Figuring out what routes I want to do to build faction rep, looking through my price history to decide where else I might want to stop, slowly building up to carry more and participate in harder fights. Sure there are two half-baked combat systems rather than one fully baked system, but fighting is rare enough that I don’t care. Feels like I’ve probably hit the profitability point where I can supply expeditions to places that are further off the main trade routes. I’ve a lot to explore yet and I’m kind of terrified to do it. Too many ways a poorly planned expedition can go wrong. But that level of cost/risk for doing that really adds to the appeal here.

33

I’m enjoying your posts on this because the reviews (the real ones, anyway…Steam is absolutely plagued with worthless, garbage one-line “reviews”) on this are pretty middling, and the price point has kept me from jumping in regardless of that. Still, I am really interested in this one, so keep giving impressions as you get further, please.

34

It has a demo on Steam(separate title, called Vagrus - The Riven Realms: Prologue). Playing that a year ago put the game onto my wishlist and made it tempting every sale that rolled around. I can see how people would bounce off of this much like lots of people bounced off the Sunless games. But for me it has the same magic that made the Sunless games work for me. And along with that magic comes the same slowness and hostility towards the player. I kind of think it has to have some of that to sell the world, but I also totally understand why people can’t get past it. The writing isn’t going to live up to Failbetter, and you’ll be reading a lot of it, but I’ve found it works well enough to sell an interesting and seemingly deep setting. And I think the basic caravan management and heavier trade focus more interesting than either of the Sunless games. But I’ll let you know how things go as I continue on and if the magic fizzles.

35

Like Kolbex, I’m also interested in keeping up to date with your progress. I’m super intrigued by 1) the designers attempt to warn people away, and 2) the comparisons to Sunless Sea/Skies. While I don’t imagine I’ll dive into this anytime soon, I would definitely consider putting it in the backlog. So keep the posts coming as you’re playing!

36

Hell yeah, more Vagrus in a few months.

37

Nice! I kind of fell off playing as I started hitting the limits of the map and as off-road excursions started feeling like big money/supply sinks without huge benefit. There was a long way for me to go so I’m sure I was just missing lots of narrative in those out-of-the-way settlements but it just didn’t feel like there was enough to find out there. I think also that was right before we left for vacation so that probably contributed to my stopping too.

Anyway, is that a beetle beast of burden I see?

38

Insects are in the main game but they’re locked behind a quest. They’re better than mammals or lizards for most uses but are very expensive to set up.

39

Ooooh, that kind of thing makes me want to play more. I had plenty of money built up after spending a long time trading back and forth along the primary routes. Do you happen to remember where/how you get those?

40

Yeah, develop a good relationship with the hive embassy in Larnak, the city that’s built inside a cenote.