LifeisXbox’s The Hand of Merlin preview | The Holy Grail, one of the most sought-after objects in the world, will become your responsibility. In Room-C Games and Crotean’s new game, Merlin sends you on a task to take the Holy Grail to Jerusalem to stop the evil cataclysm. The Hand of Merlin is a turn-based rogue-lite RPG where you travel through different worlds and defeat different enemies in order to fulfill your task. Sounds fun right? Let’s start the journey!
The game so far
As I already mentioned in the intro, The Hand of Merlin is a turn-based rogue-like RPG. While playing the game, you have to travel through different lands in order to reach your end goal, which is to bring the Holy Grail to Jerusalem. On your journey, you have to make certain decisions in order to progress and survive. For example, every step that you take, you have to make a decision, will you fight evil, visit the market to buy food for your party, or just simply pass through and head for the next city.
When you start the game, you can select the 3 heroes that you are going to play with each having their own unique combat style and abilities. and the best part is that along the way, by doing certain activities, you can unlock more playable characters. At the moment of writing, there are 9 heroes in the game. Another important thing to keep in mind is that if one of your little friends dies in battle, they are out and when your whole party is dead, it’s game over and you will have to restart your journey.
Another fun thing that the developers did is add some nice Steam Achievements. It isn’t the simple ‘congrats you progressed to this point in-game’ achievements that you unlock, no, they are challenging and require you to do certain tasks to take the story and your journey to another level.
Is it any good?
YES! I know the game is currently in Early Access but damn The Hand of Merlin is good so far! The graphics and sound are on point, the way that they tell the story is fantastic and the story itself is an intriguing one. From the very first moment that you launch The Hand of Merlin, the game grabs your hand and pulls you through everything. And yes I managed to screw up a few times where I had to restart the game and where, in some games, this might suck and you just rage quit, this game made me wanted to play it again and again and again.
Can we expect more?
The developers are actively updating The Hand of Merlin until it has reached its full potential. Yes, there are some minor bugs, etc. but nothing worth mentioning explicitly. They (the developers) are going to add more heroes/spells further along the road until they think that The Hand of Merlin is finished and then will take it out of Early Access and give it a proper release; which it certainly deserves!
If you like this type of game be sure to check it out and support the developers. The estimated release date is 4 to 6 months and I know I can’t wait until the full game is playable!