TalesOfVengeance

My first thought when I hit the TalesOfVengeance store page was that the worldbuilding hook punches above the game's indie weight. You play as MasterBun, a warrior with a mysterious past dropped into the "Shattered Land of Time" - a reality where death has been severed from the natural order, the sky is literally cracked, and light behaves like it has somewhere better to be. For an RPG nerd like me, that lore setup is genuinely interesting. The problem is that beyond the premise, documented details about what this world actually does with that concept are thin on the ground right now. On the mechanical side, what we know is this: it's an open-world action-RPG built around sword combat, looting for gear upgrades, weapon crafting and modification, and shop economies for buying and selling items. The stated goal is hunting down the Ultimate Sword across six distinct worlds, with the developer claiming over 40 hours of content. For context, that's a reasonable runtime for a solo narrative RPG - but whether those 40 hours are 40 hours of tight design or 40 hours padded with repetitive enemy camps is the core question this game cannot answer yet, because no community reviews exist at time of writing. The six-world structure could mean six meaningfully different biomes and encounter sets, or it could mean six reskins of the same corridor. I genuinely do not know, and neither does anyone else publicly. From a narrative standpoint, the samurai-coded protagonist with "honour and a mysterious past" is not exactly a fresh archetype. The "you are not chosen, you are created" framing suggests the game is at least trying to sidestep the Chosen One cliche, which I respect. Whether the writing actually delivers on that self-awareness depends entirely on execution, and execution is what only hands-on time can verify. As someone who needs her RPG writing to earn its runtime, I'd want to know whether MasterBun the character gets actual arc progression across those six worlds or simply moves from zone to zone with a sword upgrade as the emotional throughline. The honest assessment here is that TalesOfVengeance is a solo PC release from a self-publishing developer with no critic scores, no user reviews, and limited external coverage. That is not automatically a red flag - plenty of worthwhile indie RPGs launch quietly - but it does mean the risk calculus sits entirely with the buyer. The core loop of sword combat, gear looting, weapon crafting, and open-world exploration across six areas is a solid structural foundation. The atmospheric world concept is genuinely evocative. But without any post-launch player data on whether the combat has depth past hour five, whether the story pays off its fractured-reality setup, or whether the build variety in gear modification holds up across a full playthrough, this is a wait-and-see title for everyone except the most adventurous early adopters. Monika, Scout Team