Stone Story RPG

This game starts off incredibly strong. Almost every area you visit introduces a new resource and a new gameplay mechanic, keeping things fresh and interesting. It's a charming blend of an RPG and an idle game for the first hour or two.

Then all of a sudden you hit a brick wall where there are no new features or resources introduced and the entire game devolves into grinding for gear to target elemental weaknesses in one of 5 nearly-identical zones. Grind aether gear so you can grind fire gear easier so you can grind ice gear easier so you can......... I would attribute this huge drop in quality to this being an Early Access game, but based off the patches that have been released so far, I have no confidence that this will change. The developer seems to be betting heavily on community mods to add meaningful new content - the Bethesda approach, if you will.

At the end of the day, the weakest parts of the game are the "semi-idle" parts. You can't leave it AFK for long periods of time to get better gear because it needs to be CONSTANTLY baby-sat for no good reason. If you play manually, each time you start a zone you get healed to full. If you don't play manually, you do not heal to full, meaning you have to have vastly better gear just so you can leave the game alone for more than 90 seconds in a zone you can trivially complete. And even if you COULD idle earlier, all you'd be doing is exhausting the small amount of content in the game even quicker.

The UI is also pointlessly time-wasting and frustrating. The number of clicks you need to do to re-forge your equipment to attack a different elemental weakness is enough to make you grind your teeth. Why can't I just swap a runestone in a sword with a different runestone instead of needing to go through multiple phases of deconstruct, deconstruct, merge, merge???

Yes, I understand that the game includes an entire scripting language that you are meant to use to automate some of this tedium, but the problem is that you don't even get access to this language until you have seen 95% of the unique content the game has to offer. From what I can tell, once you unlock the automation ability, there is ONE additional boss and ZERO additional areas or game mechanics. You're just grinding for grinding's sake.

I don't think "you can go back and grind the same zones to higher tiers so you can fight the same bosses again except with more HP" is nearly enough motivation to continue to engage with the game after you unlock the scripting language.

I'll probably revisit this after a few years of early access to see if it has improved. For now, only buy this game on sale or if you DESPERATELY want to grind a small amount of repetitive content for hours.

The art style is a breath of fresh air. If you are looking for something to look at, something like a casual browser game with little clicking, but actually good production value, then this is it!
But if you came here for exciting and engaging gameplay, you will be disapointed..
It feels like a type of game that could be good if you want to chill a bit though.
Works well for some. Not much for me unfortunately.

Most of the game is essentially you choosing gear for a stickman, then sending it to a location where you sit and wait while you watch it gather resources and fight monsters. With no involvement from the player.
You can also change equipment while watching your stickman run through whichever area it may be in.
Choose a location, watch the stickman fight & pick up resources and loot. Rinse and repeat until you have enough resources to craft a canoe or whatever it is you need to explore further, or for your stickman to find the key to the next area.
No penalty for dying.
If I were to compare this to another style of game it would be those idler games where you send your adventurer out to gain gold. Then wait, and buy upgrades when you have enough gold.

Cool enemies and boss fights become a boring drawn-out waiting-game. Because that's all you can do: sit and watch. And if you must find something for your fingers to do, you can pause the game and switch out your offhand for another kind of automated spellbook.

In my own book; This is a point and click adventure. Where even the point and clicking is lacking.

At least give me something to interact with while I watch the stickman do things. Like interact with the environment or something. Alter the landscape with my mouse, anything. But it's not my place to come up with ideas, it is to give my opinion.

PS: I was about 2.5 hours in when I wrote the review. Was in offline-mode to get the most out of steam refunds.

It's good but it has a whole bunch of horrible design decisions (unskippable LENGTHY animations each time you break apart an item (you may have to break hundreds of items at a time)) and the mobile version is free and there's almost no benefit to the Steam version.

In fact, the mobile version gets *more* options through the ads, which are non invasive. Examples: watch an ad to upgrade a chest; skip the chest openings (which on PC costs currency (and should be free wtf)); microtransactions to buy ki crystals, which are a special currency, while also having every single method of obtaining them that the PC version has. So it's just a +1. The only reason you'd really wanna buy the game is for the functional in game code editor, which in mobile is very bad.

I don't recommend buying it, just download the free version on mobile.