Hadefall: Ashen Notes

My playtime: the in game clock says 01:27:17, but it took like ~4h for me since i reset the game a lot from dying.

Intro
Hadefall: Ashen Notes is a rogue-like turn based game where you explore a forest. You'll start with one party member and you'll get up to 3 party members later on based on your choice.

Music
The music sounds relaxing. I like to listen it when i'm exploring the area.

Graphics
I have to say that the graphics in this game are very good. Both of the characters and the menu are beautifully made. I bet the dev spent a lot of effort in doing this.

Story
The game doesn't really have a story in it, except that there are mages who are looking for something while escaping from an army(?). You'll get some notes as you progress the game (or interact with more people) that will contain some abstract words that i don't think related to the story.

The NPCs will also have a lot of dialogues, mostly redundant, with some of them explains how the outside world is.



The game
The game will mostly focused in a tavern and a forest where you can do some exploration and encounter some enemies. Since you start with one party member, it'll be very tough if you explore the forest before recruiting other people. I spent like an hour trying to figure out which enemies i can and can't kill, and whether to escape from them or not. Even with knowing all that, i still get KO ed often since some of the enemies can one shot me. Plus, there is also an enemy that can insta KO you in 3 turns and you have to escape from it since you keep on dealing 0 damage on it. Fyi, the escape rate isn't that high, so prepare to die. The enemies are no joke and you'll have to re explore the forest from the beginning if you die, and yes, the dungeon is semi randomly generated so you have to say good bye if you get some items that you like (not like it's an unusual thing in rogue like games though, but i just hate it if i die not because of my carelessness, but because of my luck).

You might trigger certain events after you talk to people a few times in different day. You might get a letter or some notes (with memory shard) in it. These memory shard will be very useful when you explore the forest later on. Although there isn't much that you can do in the tavern, most of the events are triggered there, including when you get new party members. Getting new party members are completely up to your choice though. You can reject or accept them as you like, in unusual way.

Speaking of party members, things will be complicated in battle when you have party members. The game has this AI thingy where you can set party members to do what they'll do automatically. However, there's no option that will allow me to control the other party members by myself. Luckily, you can switch between party members in battle with left and right. There is also this little "energy gauge" that will be depleted whenever you do an action in battle and when you run out of it (or if you don't want to spend it anymore), you can always do defend (get less "energy gauge" although you'll take less damage from enemies) or wait (get more "energy gauge" and take more damage from enemies). However, this defend and wait command ends the whole turn so you have to be careful not to press it before assigning all of your party member's command. To be honest, i accidentally pressed it by accident several times.

Speaking of enemies, the enemies aren't that difficult once you got your party members (i use 3 party members with me). The game ends up becoming too boring after you keep on doing the same thing for several hours for me and i still didn't know where to collect memory shards and corrupted shards to access the final area. I only know how to farm corrupted shards after a few hours later. I still didn't know how to farm memory shards though, although i think that it's some limited key items that i have to collect.

Speaking of final area, i think that the final area (or the forest in general) might be changed based on how many days you're on. I was in 20-ish days when i collected enough corrupted shards to access the area when i'm forced to fight a boss battle. Just to let you know, i can't finish the boss fight because i keep on getting "Script is hanging." error that crashes my game whenever i fight that boss. I ended up slacking off until 30-ish days just to find out that i don't need to do any boss fights to finish the game. I can't really access the area with memory shards though because i'm missing one shards (which i think is from ashen note p2 that i missed)

There is also this shard, called corrupted shard that will be needed when you're exploring the forest. Some areas or chests in the forest will only be unlocked when you use the shard. This makes it hard for me to fully explore the area because the shard is limited and hard to find.

There are also some simple side quests that you can do, such as talking to someone or booking a room, which is recorded on your quest log. There's no way for you to know what some quests are without unlocking them though so i ended up missing 2 from the list.



The game also offers a crafting system although to be honest, i don't really use it that much. You can only craft potions and damage items that are not really that useful for me. And while we're at it, levels and equipments don't seem to matter that much in the game. Sure, you can assign a skill point for any stats that you want after a level up, but i don't think it helps a lot.

Pros:
- Control up to 3 party members
- Multiple ending side quests
- Good looking graphics

Cons:
- Enemies are way too strong early in the game, and you need to rely on luck to survive
- You can't fully explore the forest if you're lacking shards
- Crafting is useless

Conclusion
This is a beautiful looking rogue like turn based game. The game has a lot of features that needs to be polished further too.