So in between bouts of Diablo IV, reviewing a pair of high-end AMD Ryzen 7000 X3D processors (YES!) and figuring out what to buy during the Steam Summer Sale, I managed to check out Ravenbound, an open-world roguelite from Systemic Reaction on the PC.
Players start off through a tutorial to familiarize themselves with the controls and combat, and it reminded me of the beginning of Chivalry 2. Yup, Ravenbound is set in the medieval-fantasy island of Avalt where an ancient power known as the Raven is waiting to bestow its power on a Vessel to rid the island of monsters roaming the land. The tutorial ends when the player manages to reach the Raven and is selected as the Vessel.
As the Vessel, players can traverse Avalt by flying around. The Vessel doesn’t seem to have a problem plummeting from great heights when accidentally transforming back to human form. There are special locations on the map that will allow players to transform back into a raven.
Players are given missions to clear a specific areas of the map of enemies, culminating with a boss fight. Sounds pretty straightforward? Well there are several gameplay mechanics to take note of. Firstly, Ravenbound has a card-based mechanic, players gain cards by collecting shards from surviving combat and unlocking chests. Activating a card will grant weapons, abilities and even coin (more on that later).
You’ll also need to watch out on how much “hatred” that you accumulate just by collecting and using shards and opening chests, the only way to be cleansed would be to finish the boss fight in that particular area.
Combat is generally sword-based (with other weapons to pick up), with different types of strikes and dodges that you can use There’s also a grappling hook but it is not as nice as the one that Master Chief uses in Halo Infinite.
Aside from picking fights wandering (or flying around) the open world, you get to visit villages which offer up among other things, health replenishments which will require coin. Villages are also a source for side quests. It does feel like a bit of work when you have all these mechanics together but there’s also another thing that doesn’t sit very well with me.
Graphics. While I’m not expecting something like RDR 2-levels of graphics fidelity, Ravenbound looks pretty ho-hum, not much better than New Vegas or Fallout 3. I think the game would look a lot better on a smaller screen like on the ROG Ally or the Steam Deck.
So what’s the verdict? Most roguelites that I’ve played are isometric, procedurally-generated affairs. Ravenbound’s open-world offers up a different experience but at the same time the mechanics don’t really sit well with me, but may be the cup of tea for some folks. Nine Over Ten 9/10 rates Ravenbound at a 3 out of 5.
Ravenbound is available on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1307660/Ravenbound/. A review code was provided to Nine Over Ten 9/10 for the purpose of this review.
