Runeshard

RPGs have come a long way over the years, especially in the gameplay department. However, there are many sub-genres to talk about, depending on whether you are more interested in the story or the action. Thus, ARPGs provide you with slightly more demanding gameplay mechanics, given the fact that you have to deal with a lot more enemies along the way.

Runeshard is an upcoming top-down RPG that provides you with the chance to explore a fascinating new world and take on its unruly occupants. There are a couple of new ideas at work as well, including an interesting combat system and a story progression that keeps you wanting for more. Granted, more content is on the way, and the developers seem to be quite involved in the project.

The whole thing takes place on open maps that can be explored freely, although you need to watch out for enemies. In order to get stronger you have to use the gold you win in the battle arena and purchase various potions. On top of that, you can also collect magic shards that increase your power, although it’s important to combine them in order to get the desired effect.

As far as the action is concerned, your only job is to attack whenever you are close enough to enemies, as well as use your shield to block incoming attacks. The shards allow you to use special abilities and survive for longer periods of time, but a bit of skill is still required in order to get the most out of your character. The ultimate goal of the game is to become the arena champion, but that’s obviously easier said than done.

The graphics are not bad either, but there are some issues when it comes to the map design, because it gets repetitive after only a few minutes of game time. Hence, the environments look almost the same no matter where you go, which is not great in a game where you’ll die a lot. However, more work is certainly going to be put into this aspect by the time the final version of the game rolls out.

In the end, the shards system is what makes Runeshard so exciting, especially since it affects the gameplay and the combat so much. However, there’s still a long way to go until the experience is complete, so you need to keep your expectations in check.