Anvil Saga - Deluxe Edition

Anvil Saga drops you into the role of a blacksmith trying to keep the forge fires lit while the Hundred Years' War grinds through the countryside around you. It is, at its core, a resource and shop management sim - you take orders, source materials, hire workers, upgrade your tools, and try not to go broke when a noble decides not to pay. The RPG elements come in through the narrative layer: dialogue choices, factional allegiances, and decisions about who you sell weapons to and at what cost. Supply a local lord with swords and you might earn protection. Sell to a rebel faction and the crown notices. The tension between commerce and conscience is genuinely the game's strongest selling point. For players who like their management loops wrapped in story context, the historical setting does real work here. The Hundred Years' War backdrop is not just window dressing - the conflict bleeds into your supply chains, your customer roster, and the moral dilemmas that pop up between crafting sessions. If you have ever wished a game like Reigns had more spreadsheet teeth, this scratches a similar itch. The writing is serviceable without being spectacular, and some choices feel more consequential than they turn out to be, but the scenario framing keeps the loop from feeling purely mechanical. Where Anvil Saga struggles is depth past the initial hours. The crafting and upgrade progression is straightforward - too straightforward for anyone expecting the build variety of a proper RPG. There is no character class system, no skill tree that meaningfully branches, and the combat-adjacent mechanics (you are making weapons, not using them) mean the RPG tag should be read as "light narrative RPG" rather than anything resembling stat-crunching or party management. Some players in the Steam reviews flag that late-game content feels repetitive, and the Mixed review score at around 70% positive reflects a real split between people charmed by the concept and people who wanted more mechanical substance under the hood. The Deluxe Edition bundles in extra content that expands the story scenarios and adds some additional management options, which helps address the pacing issues somewhat. If you bounce off the base loop in the first two hours, the extras will not save you. But if the core fantasy of playing a morally compromised medieval craftsman trying to survive a war economy lands with you, the additional content gives the experience more runway. It is the kind of game that works best if you treat it as a narrative experience with management scaffolding rather than a deep sim with RPG flavoring - expectations calibrated correctly go a long way here. Honestly, as an RPG specialist, I feel the tension in recommending this one. The choices do matter in the moment, and there are genuine forks in the story worth seeing. But the writing does not quite reward a second playthrough the way a good CRPG does, and the lack of any real character build to invest in means my instinct to min-max and theorycraft goes mostly unsatisfied. If you are coming from pure management sims like Frostpunk or This War of Mine, the RPG trappings will feel like a pleasant bonus. If you are coming from Disco Elysium expecting that level of narrative density, recalibrate now. Monika, Scout Team