Drova: Forsaken Kin Review

I love it when a game comes out of nowhere and just gets its hooks into you. The sort of thing that you play for hours then realise you’ve not had dinner, and it’s 11pm. Drova: Forsaken Kin from Just2D Interactive was just that game, and I don’t regret any of those missed meals one bit.

This lovingly crafted ARPG borrows more than a few ideas but it’s the way the whole thing is put together that really impressed me. One would think, based on the visuals, that they are getting into a simpler kind of game but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Not to get too wild with my comparisons, but for me, Just2D Interactive have basically managed to condense Skyrim into a neat little package and made it look like it came out in the 90’s. I genuinely believe it’s that good and I’m just as shocked as you are.

There’s more mechanics here than you can shake a stick at and it handles all the interlocking systems incredibly well. Side quests for example, almost always tie back into the main quest in terms of progression. Levelling up has a fun twist in that certain characters can teach you new skills and help you level up stats. If you want to become an expert, you’ll often need to find someone else to teach you the rest. Each weapon type feels unique with a real heft felt in the attacks. They all have different combos and dedicated skill trees allow you expand your repertoire. Or maybe you want to explore the crafting, potion making, hunting, fishing, mining… the list is exhaustive but none of it gets in the way of itself.

The initial confusion of what the hell is actually going on, and just how much there is going on initially had me worried. I had no idea how vast the world was, and enemies were routinely battering me. Exploration was highly discouraged as one step of the beaten track could see you easily mauled by a pack of wolves or a psychotic chicken. But this was the game teaching me my limits. Sure I could beat a path of into the brush, but I had terrible equipment and I hadn’t grasped the intricacies of combat. Starting a fight with everything you see is a sure fire way to get your ass handed to you. In a way it reminded me of Kingdom Come Deliverance. You might be the main character, but you’re not a superhero.

The combat is slow and methodic, with a reliance on dodging and perfectly timing blocks to keep you fighting fit. All of your favourites are catered for with options including swords and shields, axes and hammers, spears, daggers and ranged options such as a sling or bow. There’s magic and special abilities to unlock that can also help turn the tide of combat. Things getting a bit hairy! Summon a bunch of rats to help or lob a few magic missiles at them. Or maybe you like getting up close and personal? Stack bleeding damage with poison and watch their health bar plummet. Or give them a mighty boot to the face as they line up an attack and watch them fly backwards keeping you out of harms way. You can absolutely play this like a souls game if you can master parrying as well! Each attack and successful parry takes a chunky off the enemies posture bar and once empty, it’s time to whale on them. Just don’t go mashing the buttons as timing each swing perfectly keeps the combo going. Once you’re comfortable and fully tooled up, you can also channel your inner Witcher and hunt some boss type beasties you can find in the wilds.

As much as I enjoyed the combat, I do have a few complaints. Firstly, kiting and circle strafing feels necessary as enemies tend to feel a bit spongey. If you can get smaller enemies peeled off on their own it’s easy to evade their attacks whilst getting in damage but you might be there for a while. It massively alters the way you approach combat as most encounters do feel risky. Add one or two more to the mix though, and that goes out the window and it’s time to make like Brave Sir Robin, and run away. This isn’t helped by how weak the weapons feel with regard to damage output and by how expensive and level locked the gear is! I swear that despite the meaty sounds of weapons cleaving flesh, those health bars hardly move. I understand the risk of players min maxing gold then steamrolling everything in sight once you can afford the best gear, but I want to see the impact on their health bar. Spending a solid minute killing a wolf cos all you’re doing is chip damage whilst it can down you in a few hits sometimes feels a bit overkill on the challenge front.

There is permanence at play here as well and by that I mean if you kill something it’s dead and its corpse will remain where it fell. The great thing with that being that once you learn how to properly butcher animals, you can go back and collect the additional loot. Resources appear to be finite, whether this is flowers, fish or ores. Thankfully there’s no encumbrance so pick up everything you find. And there’s a lot of stuff to pick up!

Thankfully the menus are intuitive, if a little cumbersome on controller. The journal gives you a clue as to what your next objective is. The inventory can become crowded, but everything can be filtered. The buyable maps are clear and can be annotated on the move. It’s a nice smooth UI that is clear and easy to understand.

It’s not all plain sailing though. I had a few freezes when I died that saw me needing to quit to dash and force close the game. One quest saw me get into a fight and get downed but I didn’t die. This is normally fine cos you get back up when you regenerate a small amount of health. Here though, there was a mass brawl that needed to play out and the last two guys couldn’t kill each other. I thought it might just be a one off bug, but nope happened every time. I even went and made a cup of tea and washed the dishes to see if someone would win and 15 minutes later it was still going somewhere off in the void. This again saw me quit to dash and force close the game. In the end I just had to let the cutscene play and then leg it. When you go back later everything has calmed down again so it’s by no means game breaking. Credit where it’s due though, the team are active in their discord and are quick to address any issues so many of these may be fixed for release.

I was also a little underwhelmed with the main quest, but most of the fun can be found in the side quests along the way. Before you even set foot in the lands of Drova, it all kicks off. A member of your village has heard of a way to use a magic crystal to access a lost realm but things don’t quite work out. Cut to you grabbing the crystal and legging it from a giant magic boar and then waking up in the middle of nowhere. You’re casually informed you’re now in Drova and it’s up to you to get a Druid to help figure out what’s going on with the crystal. Along the way you’ll encounter various NPCs who tell you about the two factions who are at odds with each other – The Nemeton, who are driven by science and religion and The Remnants who don’t believe in all that magic nonsense but just want to find a way out. You’ll spend a lot of time getting to know both sides, as well as the people caught in between. The world is wonderfully realised with each faction having their own motivations that you can get involved with, or not…

There is no time limit on quests, but failure or outright losing access to the is a very real possibility. Key quests cannot be failed with game falling back on alternate options, but I loved the way it dynamically wove my choices into the story. It actually felt like what I was doing had an impact on my surroundings and the people I met.

Organically finding things on your travels and having them lead into others quests was also a joy. I found an injured person in the woods and thought I had the right medicine to help them but nope, they croaked it. I the found a camp and one of the residents told me about their missing friend. Informing them of their untimely demise, I then casually forgot to mention it was me who finished them off with a dodgy potion and I got the reward for finding them. Had I not opted for my risky fix, I could have made it to a camp for help and things might have turned out differently.

The conversations felt natural as well with well crafted replies and the opportunity to manipulate the truth always gave me a chuckle. There’s a lot of humour in there as well and the writing led to some very fun outcomes. Getting a big hulking officer on your side by showing him you can fight and drink led to me getting absolutely obliterated and waking up in the buff and finding out from all and sundry that you were singing and dancing on the tables. No stolen goats or daedric princes this time though I’m afraid. I also let my lusty ways get the better of me and found myself having to talk my way out of a hold up. Fail to do that and you end up in a mine working for a bunch of bandits looking for a lost treasure. You can even talk to animals!

I loved how things unfolded depending on conversations or your combat prowess. It’s also mad to think that people could miss whole parts of the game depending on the choices they make. There’s a good deal of replay ability here if you want to experience everything Drova: Forsaken Kin has to offer. There are also a few endearing characters and it’s great seeing their story arcs play out. It’s easy to sympathise with some of their very normal struggles and saw me doing everything I could to help, even if I was playing as a sarcastic prick.

There is a fair amount of backtracking here as well. The map is a decent size but can be traversed relatively quickly if you try to avoid “shortcuts”. It’s not egregious, but there were definitely times where it felt like all I was doing was traipsing about. It is well crafted though with separate biomes having varying styles. Lush forests with ambling rivers give way to swamps and dry plains. There’s an ominous forest that gives off Zelda vibes with you getting lost and overwhelmed by enemies if you don’t have a map.

The pixel art style was also fantastic and married well with some charming animations to really bring the characters to life. Whether it’s a puff of the chest or the way some characters spit of the floor to punctuate a statement, I never grew tired of talking to people just so see what they’d do.

And here I am gushing again. Drova has really taken me by surprise and it’s all the better for it. It’s unassuming, yet pretty, art style belies a depth that’s rarely seen in indie projects. I came into it not really knowing what to expect and found myself enraptured. It’s rare that game will have me pottering about until ungodly hours, but here, it happened to me way more often than I care to admit. This is a hugely ambitious RPG from a new team, and despite a few bugs I loved my time in Drova. The combat and steep learning curve will put off a few but for those who persevere, the adventure is worth the effort. There is a rich world here full of lore and secrets to uncover. The solid writing, engaging quests and cast of characters all contribute to what is a fantastic RPG worthy of your time.