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344 Narrative games reviewed and scored, best first.
344 reviews
A choice-driven interactive fiction RPG told entirely through the pages of a turning book, following Karl von Aiden across five chapters, three routes and six ways to die — from a Chinese solo-scale studio, with AI-assisted CG art and full dual-language narration, and so far a launch nobody has reviewed.
6.5 / 10
A star-studded branching horror anthology from the Until Dawn team that splits its own reviewers on story quality and delivers far less mechanical agency than its "your choices matter" framing implies, launched alongside a broken multiplayer promise and now caught up in the same 2K Terms of Service controversy documented independently on the publisher's other 2022 release.
6.5 / 10
Deck13's sci-fi Souls-like introduced limb-targeting combat and an exosuit-crafting loop genuinely novel for the genre, and spent nine years being described in almost identical terms by its own fans -- a great first few hours undone by clunky combat and a back half that runs out of ideas.
6.5 / 10
A short, atmospheric first-person horror sim from a solo developer with an established following, whose genuinely effective scares and Night of the Living Dead homage were nearly undercut by real launch bugs — since addressed by nine patches in the game's first week alone.
6.5 / 10
Lunar Ray Games' Kickstarter-funded, Castlevania-inspired metroidvania is Very Positive on Steam, but its negative review sample splits into two genuinely different arguments -- one about real, specific shortcomings in combat, length and writing craft, and a separate, unusually large one objecting not to mechanics but to the game's prominent queer and trans representation.
6.5 / 10
DONTNOD's narrative vampire-RPG draws real praise for its moral choice system and atmospheric London setting, undercut by a genuinely clunky combat system that's the single most common complaint in this outlet's sample, and a deliberate "commit to your choices" single-save design that several reviewers describe compounding real bugs into permanent, un-fixable stuck states.
6.5 / 10
A steampunk grid-based dungeon crawler built squarely in Legend of Grimrock's shadow, with atmosphere and a Bioshock-flavoured setting that reviewers consistently praise -- and one specific, repeatedly-named design decision, enemy level-scaling, that a large share of its own fans say ruins the back half.
6.5 / 10
A card-based Cultist Simulator-inspired alchemy sim that genre fans on both sides of the aggregate respect, undercut by a real mid-game grind wall, real save-corruption bugs, and offset by unusually active, near-weekly developer patching since launch.
6.5 / 10
A densely written, well-regarded text-based RPG set in the World of Darkness, praised by its own fanbase as the strongest Choice of Games entry yet, undercut by a near-total absence of a save system, day-one paid DLC gating two playable tribes, and a tonal choice that splits its review base sharply.
6.5 / 10
Read review of Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names
MachineGames' sequel brings B.J. Blazkowicz's fight against a Nazi-occupied America to Steam with genuinely praised gunplay and presentation, sitting Very Positive across nearly 50,000 reviews — undercut by a real, remarkably consistent "step down from The New Order" complaint about cutscene-heavy pacing and underdeveloped new characters, and by a specific, dateable technical incident this review can confirm: an August 2018 patch that broke previously-working video memory handling, which the developer then hotfixed within roughly five days.
6.5 / 10
A hand-drawn Slavic-folklore action RPG about a one-handed, cursed blacksmith, still Very Positive on Steam seven years on -- but critics and players have agreed, with striking consistency since launch week, that the art, story and Romanian folk soundtrack are carrying a combat and crafting system that never got fixed.
6.5 / 10
A first-person, no-combat stealth slasher where a masked killer hunts by noise, light and movement rather than a script — built for one intense sitting, released day one with a single verified user review and a demo that had already been public for five and a half months.
6.5 / 10
A genuinely well-regarded text-based interactive novel with real fans of its writing and world, undercut by an undisclosed cliffhanger ending — this is Book 1 of an unfinished series, a fact the store page doesn't state plainly — plus real grammar errors and a romance structure some players didn't sign up for.
6.4 / 10
A free, solo-developed medieval action game with a genuinely creative post-apocalyptic twist and a small but enthusiastic fanbase, held back by two basic missing options — no mouse invert and no in-game sound volume control — that this tiny sample's negative reviews cite directly.
6.2 / 10
An award-nominated interactive drama whose rotoscope-style presentation and first-half storytelling drew real critical acclaim, undercut by a store description promising a thirty-year saga that ends on an unresolved cliffhanger its developer has said nothing publicly about continuing in more than three years.
6 / 10
An open-world "kung-fu fable" RPG about a mutant animal saving a post-apocalyptic world, announced in 2017 and delayed for years while its hype grew far ahead of what shipped -- Mixed on Steam, with a review pattern that's remarkably consistent about exactly where it falls apart.
6 / 10
An absurdist, story-first adventure from the cult studio behind Priest Simulator, whose devoted fans love its surreal comedy — but whose "simulation" store tags mislead buyers expecting real brewing-economy depth, and whose UI still lacks basic accessibility options years on.
6 / 10
A moody, RPG Maker-style psychological horror RPG about a man, a chainsaw and a city that stops being safe — with striking presentation and a real-time-interrupt combat twist, undercut by roughly an hour of Episode 1 content, scattered balance and a store page that's still openly asking players for feedback on "the demo."
6 / 10
A Kickstarter-funded "ratoidvania" whose hand-drawn animation draws near-unanimous praise from the same reviewers who call its combat sluggish and unfair. Two years of free post-launch updates, including a new survival mode, show a developer that kept listening — the controls just never fully caught up to the art.
6 / 10
A visually stunning UE5 adaptation of Bernard Werber's classic novel that nearly every reviewer agrees looks incredible and just as consistently says isn't the ant colony simulation its premise promised — reviewed here alongside a genuinely substantial free content update that answers some, if not all, of that disappointment.
6 / 10
A genuinely novel time-rewind combat mechanic — freely wind time back mid-battle to try a different move — carries a debut studio's fantasy tactics game a long way, but a marketed "RPG" with no items, equipment or character building, and a story that thins out at the midpoint, means fewer than one in thirteen players ever finishes it.
6 / 10
A stylish, short cyberpunk JRPG with genuinely excellent pixel art and music -- its own review corpus consistently argues the cyberpunk hacking theme is a coat of paint over conventional turn-based combat, and that eight hours isn't nearly enough time to find out otherwise.
6 / 10
A long-awaited revival of a beloved 1990s-2000s fantasy tactics franchise that traded its signature systems for a 3D open world and split its fanbase on arrival -- then ended on a cliffhanger promising story DLC that never came, after its studio was swept up in the corporate fallout of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
6 / 10
Infamous for one of gaming's most viral bad launches — the animation bugs — Andromeda's own reviewers agree the real, lasting problem was never the glitches but a story they call the weakest in the series, now sold for NZ$9.99.
6 / 10
