Retro-style games are something of a mixed bag for me. On the one hand, I can appreciate the passion which the developers apply themselves, trying to make a game without the AAA budget which still entertains and feels like a good value for a gamer to spend their money on. On the other hand, I can remember playing some of the games which served as inspiration for contemporary projects, and some developers take the wrong lessons from those early games. For me, Drova feels like it might have tried to soften the “Nintendo Hard” difficulty of early action RPGs such as Ys and The Legend of Zelda, and somehow managed to create far more frustration than action.
Drova takes place in a quasi-Scandinavian fantasy realm, and it sucks for you as a villager. Crop returns are low, starvation is rampant, everybody’s miserable. Adventurers from your village, who went looking for food, return with a strange red crystal. The local druids determine that it’s from the otherworldly realm of Drova, a place of plenty, and that the crystal needs to be returned there by communicating with one of the Divinities. Being the terminally curious sort of villager, you follow the local druids to their ritual site, see them attacked, help the survivor perform the ritual, and you find yourself in Drova. If you thought life sucked in the village, it’s way worse here.
From a visual perspective, Drova leans perhaps a little too hard into the 8-bit aesthetic. While they’re decent enough to provide portraits for all the characters you talk to, the developers make it a little difficult to differentiate your character from all those that are running around. You can make out some of the different options during character creation, but they’re so slight that it doesn’t really give you a feeling you’ve customized the character. Slightly larger sprites might have alleviated this. As it is, there’s not a whole lot to really connect with your avatar. With that said, Drova does a pretty good job of providing an intriguing array of environments with some decent effects as eye-candy. Creatures are well designed and recognizable. The UI elements are reasonably well executed, and you don’t feel like you’re missing information per se when you go looking for it. Important NPCs have nametags over their heads which you can discover when you talk to them for the first time. There is definitely a style in play here which harkens back to an earlier time and it revels in the old-school vibes.
Audio is kind of middling for Drova. The music is pretty solid. Maybe not “OMG, you need to listen to this!” solid, but it does the job nicely. Since Drova hews tightly to the 8-bit aesthetic, there’s no voice acting so much as the slightly creepy chip-tune laughs which characters occasionally bark out, along with certain creature roars. Again, not necessarily amazing, but solid. Same for environmental sounds such as breaking boxes, crumbling walls, and other various sound effects. In its desire to adhere to the retro-aesthetics, Drova doesn’t seem to do anything particular clever or ground-breaking with them. They stick to what works but don’t try to squeeze the last little bit of utility of what’s available. That, more than anything, was what separated the classics from the also-rans.
The real pain points of Drova lie in its gameplay systems. Yes, it’s more Zelda than Diablo. I get that. I can even appreciate the distinction. But even so, it doesn’t feel like there’s a logical or even reasonable progression of difficulty. It feels more like trying to navigate a badly designed maze till you stumble on enough gear to get you through the next five feet and hopefully not get your ass kicked. Trying to level up your character is a painful slog of horrific deaths, near-death encounters, and all too often a lot of used up resources which you don’t know if you’ll need again. Add to this a “well I guess it’s dark now” day/night cycle and a map system which isn’t nearly as helpful as it probably ought to be, and you’re looking at some seriously frustrating gameplay. If you’re willing to stick through the slog, you do begin to noodle out the basics of character advancement, with your “Level Points” able to either go to abilities or attributes. Problem is that you’re going to probably spend a lot more on attributes because the abilities have a “proficiency” threshold you have to meet, an aggregate of your three attribute stats. By the same token, gear items like weapons also have a proficiency threshold you have to meet, so if you can’t grind out the XP, you’re going to be on the short end of the force imbalance for a long time. Equally, you won’t be able to earn enough coin to learn newer crafting recipes for refined materials or consumable items. Drova wants you to beat your head in trying to get all the kills and all the money to blow on stuff, and it’s just not fun.
The investigation mechanic, which is used to reveal more information about various bits and pieces of the map, is one of those things that you don’t really have a good sense of when and where to use it. Find a set of footprints on the ground? Sure. Birds’ nests on rocks? You’re wondering why you can’t pick through them until you go, “Oh, hey, Investigate Mode!” But then you start trying to walk around in Investigate Mode for everything, and suddenly get bum rushed by monsters. In theory, if you survive long enough, you can level up and learn new abilities. However, the mechanics for this are tied up far too intimately with the story for my peace of mind.
The story and writing only add to the pain. Drova requires the player to pick one of two sides, either the people of Nemeton (who seem to be keeping faith with the Divinities of Drova) or the Remnants (people who left Nemeton for one reason or another, usually involuntarily). There are bits and pieces of lore, how a precursor civilization created great structures now gone to ruin, but the narrative cohesion just isn’t there. Frankly, both sides suck as far as their motivations and their organization, which means anybody who picks one side is necessarily only going to get half the potential storyline. That, in turn, means having to make another run to play the other side. And there’s just not enough narrative meat on the carcass to keep one motivated. Some of the smaller quests definitely have a tutorial effort behind them, but others require you to go all over the map (and survive the trip) to get something done. No, the enemies don’t respawn after you kill them, but that doesn’t do you much good if you outran something big and gnarly before. They’re still there, and you might not get away clean the next time.
In his afterword to Eaters of The Dead, Michael Crichton mentioned that he had “played the game too hard” when trying to give his take on Beowulf a sufficiently scholarly tone with various footnotes and such. It could be argued that Drova “plays the game too hard” when it comes to trying to recreate the early action RPGs of the NES and Sega Master System era. There was a reason why those games were difficult, but also why they looked and handled like they did, and it wasn’t purely by choice. There was too much effort spent on recreating the aesthetic without considering reasonable additions or quality-of-life upgrades which could enhance the experience. I have no doubt that some people will appreciate the “purist” approach taken by Just2D. For myself though, it feels like a bad attempt to recapture one’s youth, and that never turns out as well as you want it to.
Axel reviewed Drova: Forsaken Kin on PlayStation 5 with a review code.
