RPGWatch Feature - Balrum Review

Remove all ads!

RPGWatch's Forgottenlor has played a few games for which he did not want to write a review, at least not for all of them. So in a poll RPGWatch did last month, their visitors decided that most of them would be looking forward to a review of Balrum.

The story of Balrum isn't bad. It's a sort of classic fantasy story where the character's mysterious origins are revealed, where an ancient evil awakens, and where in the end only the character can make things right. The writing also isn't too bad. Most of the background story is revealed in text discussions with npcs or in the various notes you find throughout the world. Unfortunately there is nothing particularly interesting going on here either. The characters you meet in Balrum are for the most part as flat as cardboard. Since you can't interact with them much, and the few side quest are pretty uninteresting, that's not really so important. Indeed the story's main goal appears to be to sending you from one corner of a map to another, so you can explore first the Dark Forest and then the world of Balrum as a whole. Though you spend hours wandering around, you really only interact with the story and its characters for a small portion of the game. Players who are looking for a story oriented game or clever or interesting quests probably should avoid Balrum. That's simply not the kind of the game it is.​