You wander a huge, grim fantasy land on horseback, and it never tells you where to go or that a monster ahead will flatten you. Fighting is deliberate, about learning an enemy's swings and picking your moment, and you will die often while you learn. It is demanding, but nothing stops you from riding somewhere easier and coming back later.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
The verdict
This is a demanding fantasy adventure that rewards patience, and while it never holds your hand, nothing stops you from riding somewhere easier when a fight goes badly. You will die often while learning an enemy's patterns.
The mechanics
You wander a huge, grim land on horseback, fighting deliberately and studying an enemy's swings before picking your moment. The game rarely tells you where to go or warns you about danger ahead.
Presentation
The world is bleak and atmospheric, with quiet stretches broken up by dramatic music during big fights. It favours mood over bright, welcoming visuals.
Staying power
There is an enormous amount of land and lore to work through slowly. It suits players who enjoy a tough challenge far more than someone looking for a relaxed adventure.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
You start on foot in a grim, huge fantasy land with a sword in hand and a horse you can summon at almost any moment with a button press, and the game gives you almost no direction about where to go first, just an open horizon in several directions. The stick moves and the horse gallops far faster than walking, one button swings your weapon lightly and holding it swings harder, another blocks or dodges, and within the first ten minutes you can very easily wander into an area with an enemy far too strong for you, since nothing stops you from walking anywhere from the start. Managing stamina, a bar that drains when you attack, block, or dodge, is the quiet skill underneath every single fight.
The goal is to work your way toward several powerful bosses scattered across the land, but what fills most of your time is smaller exploration, finding items, learning shortcuts, and fighting smaller enemies to get stronger before those bigger fights. Combat is deliberate rather than fast, success comes from watching an enemy's attack pattern closely and picking the right moment to strike or dodge rather than mashing buttons, and you will die often while learning a new enemy, sometimes losing progress in the process. Nothing forces you to fight a boss that is beating you repeatedly, since the world is open enough that you can usually find an easier area to explore and grow stronger in instead.
A session can run long since one more area to explore or one more attempt at a boss tends to lead to another, and the sense of finally beating something that killed you many times before is a big part of what people enjoy about it. It suits players who do not mind repeated failure as part of learning, and is a poor fit for anyone who wants a relaxed, low stress experience. The honest drawback is that the lack of direction and the real difficulty of many fights can be genuinely discouraging early on, before you have found the tools and levels needed to make the world feel fair.