Kromlech Review

A Sword-And-Sorcery Souls-Like That Asks You To Die, A Lot

Kromlech, from Czech studio Perun Creative, entered Steam Early Access on March 5, 2026, at $29.99. It's a hand-crafted, third-person action RPG set in a grim pagan, sword-and-sorcery world that multiple reviewers describe as closer to Conan or classic Gothic than to anything modern, wrapped around a roguelite structure: runs are capped at three lives, resurrections are limited, and skill points earned along the way carry over between attempts. Across the 68 English reviews read in full here, well past this review's minimum sample, out of an all-language pool of 160 reviews sitting at 68% positive ("Mixed" on Steam's own descriptor), a clear pattern emerges: reviewers are genuinely torn between admiration for the world Perun Creative has built and frustration with how unevenly it currently runs.

"This Game Doesn't Want You To Beat It" — And Its Fans Mean That As Praise

The most common comparison in this pool isn't to other Early Access survival-action games, it's to Piranha Bytes' Gothic 1 and 2, with a healthy dose of Elden Ring and, more than once, Hades for its persistent meta-progression between deaths. "This is basically Gothic rogue-lite... you start as a weak nobody and struggle even against the weakest of enemies," wrote one reviewer, praising a hand-crafted world that "actually has a lot of verticality" despite looking small on the map. Another summarized it as "a mix between Elden Ring gameplay, Skyrim aesthetics, and Hades meta progression." A particularly detailed long-form review described the game's reactive "Scars" system, in which the world visibly remembers past failures, as a hook that made the punishing opening hours feel purposeful rather than arbitrary. Several reviewers explicitly warned away players used to a Souls-lite power curve: "This game is a game that doesn't want you to beat it... Yes, I have died many many times. Yes, I went right back at it!"

A Gorgeous, Densely Built World Draws Near-Unanimous Praise

Regardless of where reviewers land on the difficulty debate, almost none of them fault the presentation. "The world is gorgeous with interesting level design and a lot of little hidden corners," wrote one reviewer, echoing dozens of others who single out the environmental art, dungeon depth, and sword-and-sorcery atmosphere as standout achievements for a day-one Early Access release. A quirkier detail drew repeated affectionate mentions: the game's diegetic healing system has the player character yell loudly when hurt as a way to recover, which one reviewer joked was "just like in real life." Several reviewers who otherwise criticized the game's rough edges still credited the visual and atmospheric groundwork as proof the eventual full release has real potential, framing their current lukewarm scores as a bet on the studio rather than a rejection of the vision.

Severe, Widely Reported Performance Problems Are This Pool's Central Complaint

Set against that praise is a large, specific, and frequently harsh cluster of technical complaints. "Out of ALL the titles I've bought NONE run as absolutely atrociously bad as this title does," wrote one reviewer, a sentiment echoed by others reporting crashes, hard locks requiring a full PC restart after changing resolution settings, and frame rates that spike or stutter independent of hardware quality. A recurring, specific frustration is loading-screen length relative to how quickly a run can end: "I run around, meet an enemy, die, wait for three minutes before the game reloads," one reviewer wrote, with another simply titling their negative review "Loading Screen Simulator." Combined with reports of missing gamepad support and camera angles multiple reviewers called among the worst they'd experienced, these issues form the backbone of nearly every negative review in the pool, distinct from and often layered on top of complaints about difficulty itself.

The Combat Itself Splits The Pool Almost Exactly Down The Middle

Beyond raw technical stability, the combat system's fairness is this pool's most contested subject. Detractors describe dodges with unreliable iframes, a heat-based heavy-attack system that locks players into effectively one viable playstyle, and enemy damage that feels punishing to the point of unfairness: "I had no problem to finish Dark Souls and Elden Ring, but in 10 runs failed to kill a single mob. Idiotic combat system," wrote one reviewer. Defenders counter that the system simply demands a different mindset than genre peers, with one directly rebutting critics: "Don't listen to reviews from people with only 0.2–1 hour of playtime... Kromlech has its beauty and potential." Several reviewers who initially bounced off the combat reported it "clicking" after ten or more hours, once dual-wielding, stamina management, and target-lock mechanics became intuitive, though a meaningful minority never got there and refunded.

Active Early Patches Won Converts, But Update Cadence Has Since Slowed Sharply

Perun Creative's early responsiveness is one of this pool's most consistently credited strengths: several reviewers explicitly describe rewriting a negative review to positive after a specific patch, most often citing an added tutorial, "greatly improved onboarding," and combat rebalancing shipped within weeks of launch. The studio's own patch history bears this out, with updates on March 6, 8, 12, and 20, and further content updates through April, May, and June 2026 (Update 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4, the last of which added enough new content that one reviewer with 40 hours logged still hadn't seen everything). That cadence has gone quiet since, with no further update posted between late June and this review, a gap worth flagging for anyone weighing whether ongoing Early Access support remains as active as it was at launch.

Verdict

Kromlech is a strikingly atmospheric, genuinely ambitious Souls-like roguelite hamstrung, for now, by real and widely reported performance problems that go well beyond the rough edges normally excused in Early Access. Its Gothic-and-Hades-inspired world design, verticality, and reactive difficulty earn it real fans, and its developers showed strong early responsiveness to feedback before their update pace slowed over the summer. But a $29.99 asking price is a lot to pay for a game that a meaningful share of its own audience currently can't get running smoothly, and the combat's demanding learning curve will turn away players who aren't already sold on the genre. Worth watching closely, and worth buying now only if you're prepared to be an active, patient participant in its Early Access development rather than a customer expecting a polished experience today.