Your donations keep RPGWatch running!
Box Art

E.X.P.L.O.R.: A New World - Review @ Kordanor's Gaming Lair

by Hiddenx, 2022-07-31 21:47:24

Watcher Kordanor has finished and published his review about the old school dungeon crawler E.X.P.L.O.R.: A New World:

EXPLOR - Review / Conclusion [EN] by Kordanor

[...]
I wished that EXPLOR did more according to what the name implies...as in Exploring. Exploring of alien Planets. Having an adventure. I would be fine with low production values, similarly as in the Spiderweb games, if the game offered good world building with great storywriting or if it offered great combat mechanics.

But unfortunately that's not the case here. It's nice that the game does have at least a few texts and NPCs with quests, but overall there is really just a very minimum of storytelling here. And while I would neither classify the Dungeons, nor the Combat, nor the Characterdevelopment as catastrophy, they are just means to an end. If just one of the main elements of the game was great, you could have looked over the other ones. But as it is, the overall experience can't really convince.

Fortunately EXPLOR does at least throw those mechanics overboard, which annoyed me the most in The Bards Tale 1, in the original as well as in the remake. You will neither find endless grind in EXPLOR nor the misery of randomized level ups. And so personally I would definitely chose EXPLOR over The Bards Tale. That said, the HD Version of The Bards Tale 1, originally from 1985, only received the lowest score from me, as I always rate depending on the gaming experience a game offers today, independently of the budget being used to create the game.

And I can't give more than a thumb half way down to EXPLOR either.

Even the average Crawlerfan (if something like that should actually exist) who would look over the presentation of the game in the steam-trailer, would probably not be convinced by the content the game offers, and I'd rather recommend other indie titles like "Legends of Amberland" or "The Quest".

If, even after this review, you think like "I don't mind, I just want to chill and kill some monsters", then you might still get some enjoyment from the game. And considering it's price is less than 7€ or 8 USD, and accordingly even less in a sale, you can't really do anything wrong in the case you still want to give it a try. 

Information about

E.X.P.L.O.R.: A New World

SP/MP: Single-player
Setting: Fantasy
Genre: Dungeon Crawler
Platform: PC
Release: Released


Details