Ashes of Immortality

I have a soft spot for the kind of RPGMaker release that just quietly shows up on Steam without a press kit or a trailer budget, and Ashes of Immortality is exactly that kind of game. Warfare Studios dropped this one in mid-2015 and it sits in a peculiar middle ground: ambitious enough to build a three-game saga around its dark fantasy world of Ruthven, humble enough that a chunk of players bounced off it before it found its footing. Knowing that going in changes how you read the rough edges. The setting is the strongest thing here. Ruthven is a continent where Hunters, Vampires, and Werewolves are locked in a species-level cold war, and you play Simona Rinoldt, a Hunter from an organisation called the Family. What starts as a small-town rescue mission sprawls into something involving Noble Houses, unlikely cross-faction alliances, and a tone that oscillates - sometimes deliberately, sometimes awkwardly - between Gothic horror and dry wit. That tonal balancing act is divisive. Players who lean into the humour tend to enjoy the ride. Players expecting brooding Castlevania gravity may find the comic beats jarring. I land in the first camp. The writing has personality, and personality in a budget RPG is rarer than it should be. Combat is party-based and turn-based in the JRPG tradition, presented in a top-down 16-bit pixel style that wears its RPGMaker origins plainly. There are side-quests, hidden bosses, hidden items, and a set of special skills attached to your characters. None of it is mechanically groundbreaking, but it is solid enough to stay out of the way of the story. The soundtrack, by community accounts, punches above its weight - one of those carefully composed small-studio scores that sets the right mood in the right room, which matters more than it sounds when you are spending hours in tiled dungeon corridors. Pacing is deliberate; the opening is slow, and if you are the type to quit RPGs before the second town, this one will test you. Stick with it past the first act and the world starts breathing. The real caveat is technical. Community threads flag compatibility issues on Windows 8.1 and higher, which is a genuine concern for a game released in 2015 with no apparent patch activity in recent years. If you can get it running cleanly, the experience is what it promises: a compact dark-fantasy JRPG with a story-first design and enough personality to justify a few evenings. The mixed Steam score around 68-69 percent is honest - this is a game that suits a specific kind of patient, narrative-oriented player and frustrates everyone else. It also has two sequels and a spin-off if the world clicks with you, which is the best argument for starting here rather than skipping the franchise entirely.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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