STEEL ON BONE

DREAD DELUSION

where most roleplaying spaces unfurl into greater mechanical, numerical dimensions, this only gets more and more hazy and frictionless over time, taking on a melancholic quality as you soar and glide effortlessly thru the world -- decadent accumulation carving an ever-increasing gulf between You and Everything Else

sprawling curiosities, unreliable histories, and warbly metaphysics never making peace or finding balance with the ceaseless extrinsic rewards. excavation and communion of the dream growing distant as you pawn off Squirming Godlings to the highest bidder, buy out every house on the market, and upgrade weapons you don't need to kill things that pose no threat to acquire items you won't use

it's all the more uncanny cos none of the perverse little interloper privileges are of much benefit to you. save for a couple sloppy dungeon crawls dredged up out of the early 2000s there's hardly anything that demands to be solved thru violence or expenditure. all that hard power amounts to nothing compared to having a bunch of stats invested in candles

I agree with more or less every criticism that's been brought up to some extent, and I'm pretty sure that people who say it's like king's field probably send cryptograms to local newspapers when they're not LYING on the internet, but I like what's here more than I'm bothered by what isn't. the exploration and quaint little cartography, the surprising tenderness, the strange, incidental mode of unheroism, the disinterest in blood n bone problem solving, even the shameless Michael Kirkbride ReShade bits

when you make The Object Graveyard I can no longer take umbrage with your boss hitboxes being too tall to hit my character or the earlygame revolving around lockpicking for lockpicks so you can lockpick for exp to upgrade your lockpicking. I don't care, I just wanna see what's on that island over there