SEVEN: The Days Long Gone Collector's Edition

SEVEN: The Days Long Gone is an isometric action-RPG that puts you in the boots of Teriel, a master thief dropped onto the prison island of Peh after a job goes catastrophically sideways. The setting is the hook: a post-apocalyptic world where ancient technology and brutal authoritarian order collide into something that feels genuinely distinct from the usual fantasy-RPG palette. Fool's Theory built a dieselpunk aesthetic that rewards slow exploration, and the island of Peh is dense with environmental storytelling if you bother to look. The core loop leans heavily on stealth and mobility. Teriel can parkour across rooftops, pick pockets, pick locks, and slice throats if diplomacy fails. The skill system is light but purposeful, letting you specialize into pure shadow-running or a more chaotic brawler approach, though the game is clearly happiest when you stay quiet. Combat exists and is functional, but it is punishing enough that forcing a fight usually feels like a mistake rather than a power fantasy. That design philosophy is either refreshing or frustrating depending on what you came for. If you wanted a conventional hack-and-slash, this is not that. The writing is where things get uneven. The main narrative involving Teriel, a demon companion called Artanak, and the island's oppressive Biomancer regime has genuine intrigue in its bones. The central premise - a thief who cannot escape no matter how skilled he is - creates good dramatic tension. But side quests range from genuinely interesting to obvious XP padding with thin justification, which is a shame in a world this visually detailed. The dialogue rarely reaches the heights the worldbuilding promises, and character arcs outside the main duo feel underdeveloped. Players who read every piece of scattered lore will get more out of Peh than those who rush the critical path. The Collector's Edition bundles the base game with an original soundtrack, a digital artbook, a guidebook, and a map of Peh. The artbook in particular is worth your time if the dieselpunk aesthetic lands for you - it adds context to design choices that might otherwise read as arbitrary. The guidebook is honestly useful given how opaque some of the stealth mechanics are on first contact. For RPG players who like their worlds morally grey, their protagonists morally compromised, and their stealth systems with actual teeth, SEVEN offers something genuinely original that was underseen on release. It is not a sprawling sixty-hour epic. It is a focused, atmospheric, occasionally rough-edged game that respects your intelligence without always delivering on every narrative promise. Go in for the world, stay for Artanak. Monika, Scout Team