Battlepaths (PC) Review

From the grasslands and torch-lit dungeons, to the actual characters and monsters of this generic kill-the-evil-bad-dude fantasy tale, everything looks like a picture designed by a child during his art class. Is that a flaw? Strangely enough, not really, as it manages to give this a unique look, and sort of amateurish charm. Not to mention that it's sort of funny how the main protagonist is stuck in a facial expression that's somewhere between "meh... I'm bored" and "hey babe! Wanna see my +1 Endurance hammer?"

Make no mistake, though, this is definitely something that was made on a budget of about a pizza (a small one) and a Coke, and it shows - not only in the quality of it all, but in its variety, as well, since there isn't much to see here besides a typical medieval land with typical skeletons and orcs, a typical Egyptian desert with typical mummies and scorpions, and a typical demonic lair with typical lawye... err, demons. Typical! It would also be nice if the developer had actually tried a bit more in regards to the music at hand, which is one step from complete non-existence.

The name of the game, however, is neither audio-visuals, nor atmosphere or storytelling. Battlepaths is, above everything else, a loot-gathering dungeon crawling, action "RPG." You know the kind: go to [area], kill enemies, gather drops, search every chest in sight (busty NPCs excluded), and then teleport your heroic behinds to the local garbage bi... err, village, to sell part of your collection - rinse and repeat until A: bored or B: bored to death.

This recipe can make the ride quite an addictive one but, sadly, four hours into this and boredom will start to kick in, and due to plenty of reasons, the first of which being the actual battles. Fighting with enemies sort of plays like a turn-based game, with step or move spending a turn, and hitting a foe means going next to it, and just pressing the button that corresponds to its direction - repeat until dead. Needless to say that not only does this system feel extremely old and unimaginative, it's also tedious and non-immersive.

The worse thing about it, though, is that there's not much else to do besides that. The player character can acquire a bunch of skills, but don't come in expecting something fancy like a fireball, lighting bolt, or poison dart, as these are nothing more than passive boosts that temporarily raise your strength, speed, agility, and so on. Despite all this, however, this is actually a fun game… or could be if it weren't for its last and main issue.

Simply put, Battlepaths has some severe balance issues. It's challenge is all over the place, with some sections being a piece of cake, while others force you to do some EXP grinding beforehand; skills get acquired veeery slowly, to the point that you forget that they exist; and, finally, apart from the treasure chests that area bosses guard, most items are almost worthless, thus few will bother comparing them to what is already in your hands.