Overall, I really enjoyed this game. The world is bleak, otherworldly, and full of secrets and surprises. The PS1-esque graphics add a lot of charm and add to the cosmic horror style of the game by letting your imagination fill in visual gaps left by the low-polygon models. Plus the shifting textures give add to the weirdness of the world.

Your choices matter, both narratively and from a gameplay perspective, though you'll find most choices don't have a big effect on the world during your playthrough. Big choices mostly have an effect on the ending and the story but only make small changes to the world itself. Gameplay-wise, choices usually just dictate which rewards you get, which might sound like a small thing, but when the rewards are unique items and permanent upgrades, it's important to know you could be locking yourself out of some really useful stuff with your decisions.

One big thing that prevents this from being a 5-star game is the combat. For such a big part of the actual gameplay, it's incredibly basic and laughably easy. The only times I ever died or even got below half health was from fall damage. Even from the start, most enemies die in 2 or 3 hits with a rusty sword, and you only continue to get more powerful, with better armor, weapons, and spells. Don't get me wrong, it can be fun to just completely annihilate everything in your path, but it becomes boring when there is nothing that can really challenge you combat-wise.

Another part of the game I would have liked to have more impact was the faction system. There are several factions in the world that have their own opinions of you based on your decisions, but there are only two factions that reward you becoming friendly with them, and the rewards are very small. Also, most factions in the game just exist to hate you - there is no way to increase your reputation with them, and they start out hostile toward you. Honestly this system overall is so crude and underused that the game would simply be better without it.

Other RPG aspects of the game are solid though. There are almost always multiple paths to solving a problem in the game, and typically multiple ways to reach a chest or delusion too. But while your stat allocation is important early game, you realize pretty quickly that clothing, rings, and items improve your stats so much that you usually just need to switch clothes (which you can do any time you want) to solve a problem.

All that being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this game and I contonue to think about it even after completing it. I may even do another playthrough just to see what would happen if I made different choices. If you enjoy open world games with good writing and impactful choices, I suggest you try it out.

what i liked:

• a well done love letter to retro masterpieces like retro the elder scrolls and king's field with it's own unique ideas and themes.

• atmosphere and immersion in dread delusion hits like a truck from the first minute and will continue to prove overly solid throughout the game.

• interesting and abundant lore which i personally enjoyed a lot. books with interesting lore texts and talkative npcs providing a wholehearted world building. the world and its past and present events is thought through decently, so it's quite intriguing to learn more about whats going on.

• complex and serious decisions how to solve some of the quests and be prepared, there isn't always a satisfying way to deal with things - choose your evil.

• exploration is probably one of the major selling points of dread delusion. many points of interests to discover, treasures to salvage and a lot of stuff to do.

• the world design is excellent. do you see a certain promising point of interest in the distance? simply walk there and explore it - if you see it, you can somehow reach it and that's great. despite being an open world, the zones are gated, so you won't end up in deathtraps.

• fantastic and unique retro artstyle. absolutely loving the pixel aesthetics and the overall art direction of the game. the color palette is magnificent and everything is fitting together quite well.

• chanting, calm and atmospheric soundtracks definitely hitting the right spot to make you getting lost in the games atmosphere.

• combat works out pretty well so far. its possible to dodge melee hits with movement and that's great. first person melee combat can get odd really quick in such games, but it's fine.

• charming (retro) game design decisions which make the world feel even more a live. all these little roleplay features simply add up in a positive way.

• odd characters, which are fitting the games obscure setting perfectly.

what felt debatable to me:

~ playing as a mage didn't feel viable to me at this point. would be awesome if the developers are planning to add more skill checks for other skills and builds as well. i love how charisma works in this game, but other builds feel a little bit lackluster.

~ decent amount of quests and things to do already, but the more the better.

~ there should be way more equipment in general. more weapons, more spells, more armor and so on. if there would be overall more memorable loot, exploring would feel much more rewarding.

~ more and deeper dungeons and mines would be great.

~ the lore is actually really interesting and engaging, so please throw in a couple more lines of text to increase the world building even further.

~ please make a sprint lock on setting / keybind, my pinky is crying.

what i disliked:

• several charisma 60 skill checks just didn't work at all in my run, despite having the correct amount of 60.

• a couple text parts and dialogues are placeholder or blank pages. minor spelling errors as well.

• some glitched and misplaced objects

i'll update this review after some major updates and the 1.0 release. dread delusion is imo one of the most promising early access title out there on steam and i'm glad watching this game grow and improve. definitely a worthy contender for a 10/10 game so far.