I really, really wanted to give this game five stars. I was so looking forward to giving this game five stars. But it let me down in the end. I’ll start with why I enjoyed it so much.

As a longtime D&D player, this is the game I wish Baldurs Gate 1&2 had been. Real time combat isn’t true to the source material. This game doesn’t follow D&D rules but it’s clearly heavily inspired by it and does it with turn based combat. This works so much better in my opinion; cast spells or use skills when appropriate, not in a giant mash of action where you’re trying to track multiple characters and enemies positioning and actions.

As for the gameplay itself, you control a party of four players following the traditional RPG balance; fighter/tank, archer, mage, and cleric. The only rogue skill is picking locks and that’s a ‘party’ skill where every character’s combined skill creates the attribute. Spells and combat skills can be learned and improved in a variety of ways; training can be purchased in towns and spellbooks and scrolls that provide free training and scattered throughout the world. The world is very large which stands out because of the world design.

The premise of the game is that you’re a group of exiles, banished from the empire that controls the world to the a series of caves below the surface. It turns out that the titular Pit, as the caves are called, is a blossoming world of intelligent races, including previously banished humans, building societies and competing (or occasionally cooperating) to survive and even thrive. This explains well the need for exploration that is such a central part of every RPG. Most games just assume the player is ignorant of the world but this game actually parks the player in a place they knew nothing about. The size of the world only increases as switchback caves and hidden passageways are revealed.

One feature that some people may consider a drawback is the lack of music. I actually really enjoyed that part. There is launch menu music but nothing in game. Instead, the audio consists of sound effects (water drips echoing through a cavern, background noise of people talking in towns, enemies groaning as they die, etc.) which I felt added to the atmosphere of the game as being lost in endless caverns.

Now, the reason why I gave this 4 instead of 5 stars. As I said, the quests reward exploration and there’s enough to explore that I never really needed a walkthrough. Right up until the game ending quest. The game is designed so that you have three ending quests and you can do just one or all three if you wish. I chose the one that seemed most fitting with what I imagined motivated my party based on the game choices. I quickly discovered that forward progress in the final quest is very convoluted. You have to travel to location A, speak with a specific NPC and ask specific questions then, and only then, travel to location B and play the same dialogue game there with a new NPC. You have to play this dialogue game to unlock access to relics and passwords you need to finish the final quest. Some of the NPCs you need to speak to are in out of the way corners of towns you wouldn’t normally visit or notice them if you did. I ended up needing to use a walkthrough to work through the complex steps needed to complete it. Only to make it through the gauntlet of end stages to find that I had missed some dialogue option. I’d done everything the walkthrough listed and still the final stage wouldn’t load. Very frustrating. I can’t tell if there’s some small feature I’m missing that isn’t mentioned in the walkthrough since the game provides no hint. Or is it a bug? Either way, I just deleted the game and figure I’ll move on.

I do intend to play 2 & 3 since I enjoyed the game so much. I just hope those games are finishable.