"Dread Delusion" Review

Publisher: DreadXP

Developer: Lovely Hellplace

Platforms: Microsoft Windows (Reviewed)

Every once in a while, if I find a game I'm not 100% sure I'll be interested in and I find that it's sufficiently cheap, I'll give it a shot. After all, taking that chance has gotten me up close and personal with GOTY nominees and winners alike in the past! Like I imagine is the case for many people, my first exposure to the newly out of early access Dread Delusion was Second Wind's coverage on their "ByteSized" show. The game seemed to be seeping with atmosphere and filled with a deceptively large amount of content. However, it seemed like a gamble whether or not it would be up my alley. Seeming to take most of its inspiration from Morrowind would probably make it a selling point for a lot of people, but I've never been able to bring myself to like that particular Elder Scrolls game. But I figured, who knows? Perhaps a game created with a more modern mindset but with a Morrowind coat of paint could be great! Obviously we'll get into it a bit more in just a sec, but I'll say this: I fired the game up fully expecting to only play for like half an hour before quitting and starting something else for the rest of the night, and I ended up looking up a little while later to find that hours had passed. So, regardless of the pros and cons of this game, I can say with certainty that it's one of the most interesting games I've experienced in a long time. 

The easiest way I can think to describe the overall world in Dread Delusion is to imagine Warhammer 40,000 with just a slightly more medieval aesthetic. You play as a prisoner of an all-powerful Imperium sent on a suicide mission to apprehend a dangerous criminal. After initially failing in this pursuit, it's up to you to venture out into the world in search of this criminal's former allies in hopes of taking her down and earning your freedom...or aiding her and in doing so creating a changed world. Like Morrowind or any other Elder Scrolls game for that matter, the moment-to-moment story isn't really the point so much as the world in which the story takes place. The world of Dread Delusion is a world of god worshippers, god creators, and god killers, and it features as much nuance and room for discussion as concepts like these naturally lend themselves to. The Imperium, for its part, is a force of frigid, fascistic antitheism, having outlawed any and all god worship on pain of tremendous consequences. This is largely due to the fact that the gods of the Wikkans (this world's primary religious faction) were pure evil and demanded equally evil acts of their followers, but as all seemingly well-intentioned factions do, the Imperium regularly takes this idea of protection from the gods and uses it as a tool of barbarism and control. The Wikkans, on the other hand, understand that the bloodshed demanded of their gods before they were slain was terrible...but they also recognize how their crops have continued to do nothing but fail without the promise of protection that the blood sacrifices seemed to secure. And then there's the Clockwork Kingdom: a realm divorced from the Imperium and the Wikkans that lands somewhere in the middle. The Clockwork Kingdom operates under the knowledge that having an all-powerful ruler with its own desires lends itself just as much to barbarism as lacking a ruler lends itself to chaos, and so they sought to create their own god: a god of steel and energy dictated entirely by the immutable magical syntax that governs the laws of reality. Do you see what I mean? This is probably the most interesting, unique game world I've seen this year, and it only gets more and more interesting and nuanced the deeper you look. This is where I'd like to begin setting expectations, dear reader: if you're going to enjoy this game, it'll be because you want this kind of rich lore experience above anything else.

I ended that last segment the way I did because I need to make something clear: if you're looking for a series of incredibly deep open world systems like you'd find in an Elder Scrolls game, you're going to be bitterly disappointed. One of the skills you level up in this game is lockpicking, stealth is a regular part of the combat experience, and at nighttime all the shops are closed and secured with locks, so it would be easy to assume that there's some kind of crime and punishment system at play. But there isn't. You can break into shops at nighttime right in front of the guards and nothing will happen. Furthermore, you can't attack anyone who isn't already hostile, so that's another bit of open world organic content you might be disappointed to find missing. Really, guards are nothing more than a bit of environmental storytelling to set the stage that you're in a civilized part of the world. So despite the clearly Elder Scrolls-coded world, you're not going to get the kind of robust roleplaying experience you might expect.

That isn't to say this is a shallow, systemless kind of experience, though. There's a pretty expansive faction system with plenty of options across the game's several areas, and as you make your way through the story choosing your sides, you'll likely get entirely different experiences depending on your choices!

Beyond the factions system, there's plenty of ways of interacting with the world around you and getting past roadblocks. We'll be getting into the various stats later on, but when you're presented with a problem, you'll be able to take different approaches depending on your stats. Say you come across a locked door but find you don't have any lockpicks. Depending on your stats, you might have a look around the environment and see if anything seems out of place, and if so, you might investigate what you've found for signs of enchantment to reverse in order to open the path forward. Or, if you don't have time for all of that, you might be able to just knock down the door if you're strong enough! So, while this isn't a super complex series of systems, there's still more than enough to make interacting with the world feel plenty organic. 

Furthermore, you can't throw a dart for fear of hitting deep, interesting side quests that are sometimes far more expansive than the main story mission of the area! For example, I took on an early side quest only because it was one of the ways I could get my hands on the passport I needed to progress the story. However, I found myself seriously getting invested. In this quest, a local Imperium Weigher (oh yeah, I forgot to mention: the Imperium uses a kind of magical scale to determine if a person's mind is weighed down by superstition...isn't that cool?!) finds himself jumping at shadows due to rumors that the seeds of god worship are beginning to take root in his village. So, he tasks you with secretly investigating the villagers to determine the validity of these rumors, and when it becomes apparent that a human sacrifice will be performed soon, it becomes your responsibility to stop it...and things turn out in a way impossible to guess. To give another example, I found myself deeply invested in a late game side quest involving the titular god-king of the Clockwork Kingdom: a lengthy, lengthy espionage mission involving multiple factions, philosophies, dark truths about the ways in which a god of pure mathematics with magical powers might operate, and what possible solutions could be applied. I suppose it should go without saying that in a game in which the major driving factor is the lore of the world, engaging with the world and its characters makes the experience all the richer! So again, if what you're looking for is an experience like this, you're gonna get what you want, but you aren't going to find as deep an open world from a systems perspective.

Another thing you're not going to find in Dread Delusion is a challenge. That isn't an issue in my book, but it's a thing to note. Combat can be easily survived by walking up to an enemy, doing a power attack, backing away as the enemy attacks, and rinsing/repeating until the enemy dies. So, that alone makes combat a simplistic affair before you even get into the impressive amount of weapon types available. It really doesn't matter what your weapon choice is: combat will go pretty much exactly how I laid it out every time. But even if you end up taking a couple hits, you have as many armor choices as you do weapon choices, and they all do a great job of absorbing damage...even before you get your hands on armor, it's pretty hard to take enough damage to be worrying. Combat is governed by three meters: health, magic, and stamina. These really don't require any more explanation, as you 100% know how these will play into the experience if you've ever played an RPG before. I bring these up as a way of transitioning into the next reason why the game isn't really a challenge: enemy drops. 

If you've ever played an RPG, you're likely used to picking up things like coins or extra potions from certain enemies after you kill them...however, in Dread Delusion, you'll pick something up from literally every enemy you defeat. With each enemy you beat, you'll pick up one of the following: a health potion, a magic potion, a stamina potion, a handful of coins, a small amount of ammunition for ranged weapons, or 1-3 lockpicks. Given that enemies respawn with decent regularity, you'll be picking up SO many of these things. You know how you aren't going to be taking very many hits? This means that you'll end up with a ridiculous surplus of health potions. There's no offensive spells from what I could tell, which means you'll have even more ridiculous a surplus of magic potions, which you'll typically sell to get more money, which you'll already have a bunch of just from enemy drops. Likewise, you won't be running out of stamina in any big way, so you'll also have way more stamina potions than you'll ever need. The lockpicks are always useful, so the plentiful nature of those isn't a problem, thankfully. Finally, the most ridiculous drop is the ranged ammunition. You don't even get a ranged weapon until you've made it to the second of the three main story areas past the tutorial. So by the time you get even the weakest ranged weapon, you'll have well over 300 bits of ammunition. Is that a problem? Not really, as I've been saying, but it just goes to show how much of a cakewalk Dread Delusion is.

Now, there's one aspect in which Dread Delusion isn't as generous: its leveling system. For as many enemies as there are and how often you'll be fighting them, if this were the type of RPG where you leveled up with experience from battling, you could easily become overpowered. However, leveling up and experience-gaining in Dread Delusion is based on exploration. As you open locked doors or find hidden nooks and crannies, you'll either find a skull that gives you a full level or a piece of a level. With each full level you get, you can spend a point on one of the game's four stats. You have might (which governs health, attack, and defense), guile (which governs stamina, lockpick skill/amount, and agility), wisdom (which governs your maximum magic, your ability to discover hidden magic in the world, and the amount of spells you can equip), and persona (which mainly governs your prices at shops). All these stats except for persona determine your ability to explore, as I alluded to a couple segments ago. Might determines whether or not you can knock down a door with sheer force. Guile determines the likelihood of succeeding in lockpicking plus the amount of lockpicks you can carry at a time. Finally, Widsom is kind of your Hail Mary for being able to open doors through little magic sites in the world. So, which stats you level up will largely determine how you want to interact with the world...but allow me to give you a word of warning. As tempting as it might be to try and be as well-rounded as possible, I'd only recommend doing that if you're planning on leveling up as much as possible before heading out on the final assault. Up until the end, there aren't really any hard skill checks to be found that will prevent you from progressing. However, right at the end there are some skill checks that demand high stat levels, which you aren't likely to meet unless you're at a super high level if you're being well-rounded. However, if you've put most of your points into lockpicking, for example, you won't have the same problem. It's a real shame, because this is the kind of thing I can't stand in RPGs, and Dread Delusion decided to implement it at the last minute. Thankfully, I was right at the precipice of the level I needed to be in one of those stats at this point, so with a bit more careful exploration of the immediate area, I was able to make it work. But until I had that realization, I nearly quit the game right then and there. 

While I can forgive things like a lack of challenge, technical shortcomings are a bit harder to ignore. There's a not insignificant amount of jank to be found in Dread Delusion. For example, there came a point in the story where I needed to take a lift up to a cliffside to speak to a new character. This lift was the only way to reach that cliffside, yet somehow it was stuck within an environmental storytelling destroyed piece of building. In case I didn't describe that effectively enough, there was a slab of sheet metal that appeared to once be an intact building, and the lift was, for whatever reason, inside of it. And I don't mean it was "located" within a piece of building...I mean the models of the lift and this large sheet of metal were overlapping and clearly not meant to be in the same place. Nothing I did made this go away, so in order to proceed, I had to get creative with crouches and jumps and finagle myself into the space between a gap in the metal and the side of the lift. Thankfully, I was able to manage this both times I required the lift, but it could've easily been the end of my playthrough if the assets had been even remotely more jankily placed. 

Then, in the same rough part of the story, I found myself unable to pass through a door to get to the dungeon I needed to be in. I had a password that I was supposedly able to enter in order to get through this door, but I couldn't find any place to put the password and no dialogue prompts came up. Well, after doing some research, I learned this was a common problem and that a reload might fix it. So, I reloaded, and it turned out that prior to the reload, an entire robotic doorman NPC had spawned on the wrong side of the door. Reloading put the NPC on the correct side and I was able to get through. That is so common a problem that I was able to find an answer fairly quickly, but it's not a great look if a bug in a game that has flown so far under the radar is that well-documented. 

The most consistently annoying technical problem though, is by far the sound effect volume inconsistency. It doesn't matter how much you turn down the sound effect volume in the options (unless you turn it down to 0, which I should never have to do), there are certain effects that are deafeningly loud and irritating no matter what. The save stations are one example, and you have to listen to them activate at full volume every time you try to get a room for the evening. Certain enemy cries also suffer from this problem. There's just such wild inconsistency in the sound effects that it makes several moments unpleasant. This kind of technical problem is disproportionately upsetting to me, so it's an unforgivable sin in my book. In addition to this, there was one instance where two soundtrack pieces that did not fit together started playing at the same time, causing a terribly overwhelming experience. This bug didn't go away with a reload, instead I had to quit to desktop and fire the game up again from there. 

It's not all doom and gloom on the sound front, though. Despite the bug I had with the overlapping soundtrack pieces, the ost on display here is quite good...but even that has a caveat. The soundtrack is good, but there's just not a lot of it and the tracks are a couple seconds long each. This means you're going to be hearing the same several seconds of music on loop hundreds upon hundreds of times before you've even left the tutorial level. 

Now, I've been throwing the book at Dread Delusion on the technical level thus far, but there is one thing that I unironically need to give it credit for. While the game world isn't as large as most game worlds these days, it's still large...in fact, even if you've explored every nook and cranny available and you're about to embark on the final mission....you've seen maybe half (maybe even a third, I'm not entirely sure) of the game world. So the game is not only a fair size for what it is, but it's far larger than you'd ever guess for most of the runtime. But that's not the thing I'm wanting to commend the game for (even though it's impressive). What Dread Delusion deserves applause for is the fact that this entire game world is 100% devoid of loading screens. Not one entrance to or exit from a building, not one transition between regions, literally not one single second of your play time. None of it takes any time to load. So despite the overwhelming amount of jank to be found, you at least can get from jank piece to jank piece without having to wait!

Dread Delusion isn't quite the immortal indie gem I was hoping for this year, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it anyway. Behind a deceptively simple retro art style lies an intelligently thought-out and truly unique sci-fi/fantasy fusion story just familiar enough to be accessible to most audiences yet just alien enough to keep the curious player coming back for more. Its simplistic combat system might turn off those expecting a test of skill, but if you're like me and your expectations are tempered, it's an inoffensive means of getting from plot point to plot point, and the lack of difficulty means you won't find yourself having to re-do any segments more than once even during the game's most complicated combat portions. Really the only truly disappointing aspect of the game is its technical state, which is made so much worse when you realize that this is the game's state after a couple of years in early access. I shudder to think what problems I would've faced if the developers hadn't already (presumably) been gathering player feedback for the past couple years. So, Dread Delusion is not remotely dreadful, nor would you be delusional if you said it was great! This is perhaps one of the greatest examples of "your mileage may vary." For my money, though, I don't regret my time with this welcome throwback, and if anything I've said has grabbed your attention, I don't think you'll regret it either.

Let us review:

Massive jank factor - 1.0

Horrible volume inconsistencies - 1.0

Hard skill check at the end - 0.5

The final score for Dread Delusion is...

7.5/10 - Pretty Good

Bravo, Lovely Hellplace, bravo!