Azarine Heart

Alright. I think it's time to offer some Early Access impressions for [i]Azarine Heart[/i] in its current state. [b]I did receive this license via our IndieGems Curator program[/b] and will update this periodically, and especially once it sees its full release. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3187097348 My overall impressions are very positive. This is very much an Elder Scrolls game if the Elder Scrolls games were made using RPGMaker and was isometric. This is really cool in my opinion. The game is real time with opening the menu effectively functioning as a pause button, which will be familiar to Elder Scrolls fans. I've been playing on my Steam Deck, and this is probably where your experience may vary. The game has a lot of control prompts, which is better suited to k/m, but with some control mapping, this can be playable with a gamepad/Deck. It does however require some work on the player's part. If you check the game's forum, you'll see this was a concern of the developer's, that it might be difficult to properly adapt the controls to a controller, and I'd say it's 50/50. The developer offered a control layout he thought might work, and I've been pl…

It's a good Rpg maker game and an okay game overall. The map is really big and the art is decent. The tiles are nice to look at, better than the generic ones. I think the combat was kinda clunky but it wasn't bad. Its not the turn based combat that most Rpg maker games have. There's a lot to do, and lots of people to talk to. Some of the quests need to be more clear in the journal and the notebook isn't updating and that's kinda annoying. I'll probably keep playing, I haven't touched the main story yet.

This game has a lot of potential. The solo dev who is crafting this game has been putting a lot of work into it. The atmosphere of the world is excellent and I have really enjoyed the lore entries I have read so far and what NPCs have shared. There's much to explore any many individuals to meet. I romanced a character. Became chief of a village. And recruited a few companions. There's no handholding for the main quest, side quests, or acquiring companions(i.e. markers on the map or exclamation points over NPC heads). The realtime combat system for this game is also quite good. Though I feel there is room for more balancing. Particularly when it comes to blocking which feels a little overpowered. I think a block meter would be a great way to prevent spamming of the block action. The physical skill resource meter could potentially also be used to throttle blocking. There have also been bugs. However the developer is quick to fix game breaking bugs when you post about them in the Discord. He has done so 2-3 times for me so far. And he improved the smoothness of the magic targeting system which was initially a little laggy. I also really appreciated the storage system that he put into …

The Dev is always working on this game. I work with him personally and i can tell you....he wont stop talking about this game haha. Its a great game altogether. He came up with the lore himself and wanted to bring a game that had depth, story and purpose over a lot of today's' modern run of the mill. There's hidden humor and every day life meanings in the play through that are meant to make you think while you're immersed in your role. Its worth the play and with his future updates he has planned there will be a lot of improvements coming. He's put a lot of time into trying to bring back the reason we all fell in love with video games as kids because in today's world of cha-ching, you dont find much wholesome value.

As part of a disclaimer, I do enjoy the world building and story potential of Azarine Heart. The game has an interesting basis for a plotline and lots of potential, but that is also what kills it for me. My first gripe is no real controller support. You can do conversations and dashing with the controller, but no combat or abilities. So you might as well use the awkward keyboard controls that don't really work well for an Action RPG. Plus, dashing is not the most effective way of travelling, because that's the dodge key that's not on the controller. My second gripe is a two-parter about combat, as it is a major thing in the game. No matter the difficulty, you can skip random encounters in the overworld by simply mashing the dodge key and backstepping. Meaning you can travel from one side of the map to the other by mashing dodge and only stopping to change directions and not once encounter a single random encounter. The second part of this gripe is that while I love Action RPGs, the RPG Maker system is not a good system for Action RPGs. While I hear there is a new plugin out that is much smoother and better for Action RPGs in RPG Maker, this game came out before then. Where you …

haven't played a whole lot yet, but from what I have it seems like there is a lot of great, classic RPG content, and honestly if the rest of the game is like the start, then I for sure recommend. It does need some polish, mostly quality of life things, but is being updated and worked on by the dev, so not really a big issue. Don't forget to save often.