Preview | Chronicles of Galdurvale

LifeisXbox’s Chronicles of Galdurvale preview | If a game has dragons, you have my attention, alright! Chronicles of Galdurvale is an open-world action-adventure fantasy game that is currently in development by Luminous Games. A demo is available and I was very curious to try out the first available gameplay this exciting game has to offer!

What is Chronicles of Galdurvale?

As I mentioned in the intro, this is an open-world action-adventure fantasy game. A Kickstarter campaign is currently running to bring this entire game to live, and I’m pretty sure you’ll want that to happen too if you play the demo. Chronicles of Galdurvale follows the exploits of a young hunter named Amelia (we love a strong female lead!), destined to harness the powers of the Dragon Riders of Old. Upon discovering her mother’s secret diary, she uncovers ancestral powers, reigniting a war that lay dormant for millennia.

So much to love already

Right now, you can play two parts in the demo. First, there is the story mode where you can experience several parts of the gameplay. You set out on a quest, you learn about the combat system, and you get to enjoy nice graphics and soundtrack. Your objectives are shown on the screen with markers indicating how far and where to go, which was all very pleasing. Regarding the combat, you can use a sword or a bow. I very much enjoyed killing various enemies with both, but was a bit sad when my arrow ran out and I couldn’t find any more. What was most interesting about the combat, was that you can learn abilities from your enemies if you observe them for a little while. You also should not just swing your sword around, which I tried in the beginning. The game really requires you to fight strategically, which I very much enjoyed. The second part is the dragon demo, an unpolished demo to showcase dragon flight. More about this later in the preview!

The graphics are looking quite good already. I enjoyed some nice woods, a nice lake, a plain desert, and a cool cave. Together with the landscapes came a soundtrack that fitted the gameplay just right. I saw that customisation of the character is also going to be in the game, so that’s a plus as well.

Feedback

Obviously, with the game set to release in 2022, not everything is perfect yet. First of all, the voice acting just didn’t work sometimes. And when it did, the facial expressions of the characters were quite blank, or their mouths weren’t even moving, making the whole scene less believable. I think a lot of progress can still be made here. Second, I had some issues with the map. I wasn’t completely fond of it, but maybe that’s just personal taste. The marker showing you where your character is at, is a little house, which I found a bit weird as well. Plus, at first, I didn’t realise the house icon on the map showed my position. Third, the difficulty in combat was very uneven. I defeated the cave troll so very easily. I just stood still, shot all my arrows at him, and he didn’t even move. He didn’t even try to move once! Then I ran into Dafoe, who apparently is supposed to be dead. Now, defeating him became a lot more difficult.

Now, let’s get back to that dragon demo. Apparently, a lot of players were a bit upset that the first demo didn’t introduce any dragon gameplay yet so the developers jumped on that and added it, which is great, but in all honesty, I didn’t really enjoy the dragon flying and fighting. Your task is to destroy all 11 watchtowers in a valley. You fly through this valley but I had difficulty hitting the targets, even though they were big enough. I could not really aim with my dragon, and my fire balls just spit way too far. The whole experience didn’t feel very smooth either. But then again, it’s an unpolished version so far and I’m really excited to follow the progress!

To sum up

I’m very excited to see what the future holds for Chronicles of Galdurvale. It reminded me of The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim a little, and I’m completely in love with that game. As can be expected, the game needs more polishing and updates, but I’m quite positive about the demo so far! If you have a little time to spare, I highly recommend downloading the demo on Steam and seeing for yourself!