Elden: Path of the Forgotten

Elden: Path of the Forgotten is a top-down action RPG developed by Onerat Pty Ltd, putting you in the boots of a character named Elden who crosses a decaying, corrupted land on a personal rescue mission. The premise is intimate by genre standards - save your mother from ancient horrors lurking in a forgotten world - and that kind of focused, character-driven hook is exactly what I want from a small-studio RPG. The blighted aesthetic leans into dark fantasy territory, and the eldritch magic system suggests there was genuine ambition here to build something with atmosphere and mechanical teeth. On the combat side, the game pitches itself as brutal and technical, which is a high bar to clear. When it works, there is a satisfying weight to encounters that rewards patience and timing over button-mashing. The eldritch magic options add some build flexibility, and experimenting with different approaches to fights is where the game earns its RPG label. If you enjoy methodical action combat where positioning and resource management matter, you will find moments that click. The problem is consistency. With a mixed Steam rating sitting at 46% positive across 71 reviews, the signal is clear that a meaningful portion of players ran into friction that outweighed the fun. Common pain points in this score range for indie action RPGs include rough difficulty tuning, limited quality-of-life features, and world design that can feel sparse rather than atmospheric. The small review pool also means a few rough launch-window impressions carry outsized weight, but I would not dismiss those signals entirely either. Who is this actually for? Players who have a genuine appetite for rough-edged indie RPGs and are willing to extend some patience to a small team working in ambitious territory. If you cleared Hyper Light Drifter and wanted something darker and more magic-system-forward, this is the kind of game that might scratch that itch on a patient playthrough. If you need polished onboarding, strong narrative payoff, or branching dialogue that rewards close reading, this is not going to deliver on those fronts in the way a larger production would. The worldbuilding feels more gestured at than fully realized, and I did not find the kind of layered writing that makes me want to replay a scene. As an indie release from a small studio, the scope is honestly honest - this is not pretending to be a 60-hour CRPG. Whether the combat loop and the blighted-world mood hold your attention long enough to reach the payoff of that central rescue arc is the real question worth asking yourself before you commit. Monika, Scout Team