The Lonesome Guild Review – Combat Can Frustrate, But Story Shines

The Lonesome Guild Review

I enjoy being surprised. Let me clarify. I don’t like finding suspicious stains on the rug or being surprised when the car battery dies when I’m late for work. But I do like it when games surprise me by being a little more than they seem. The Lonesome Guild looks like a family-friendly action RPG. And it is. But it’s also an exploration of some pretty timely and profound themes.

Mist and Opportunities

In The Lonesome Guild, a red corrupting mist has begun to spread over the kingdom of Etere. The corruption is more existential than physical, making people feel lonely, disconnected and powerless. The main character is a spirit named Ghost, who awakens into their non-corporeal form without memories of who they are. Ghost begins to meet and gather friends. At first, there’s a rabbit inventor named Davinci and Mr. Fox, who is more of a warrior type. They discover that by banding together, the power of their friendship starts to dissipate both the mist and their loneliness. Over the course of the game, the party grows by adding playable characters Ran Tran Trum, a punk-rock capybara; Mauhen, a wish-granter; and Sarangalyn, a witch. They each bring specific abilities and talents to the group.

The narrative becomes wider and deeper. In addition to ending the influence of the mist, a major theme and task is ghost recovering their memories and identity. Second, the group explores the wider conflict in Etere between different factions and the backstory of each party member. In other words, there’s a lot going on. The theme of a society being corrupted by isolation and lack of communication is a bit heavy-handed but undeniably relevant.

The story’s effectiveness is undercut a bit by quite a few unexplained elements that come off less as mystery and more as obtuse. A lot of the dialogue is wordier than it needs to be. Sadly, because there is no voice acting, the vibrancy of the diverse characters doesn’t quite land. All the way through, I wished the storytelling was a bit more direct, because I enjoyed the ideas and characters.

The Loop

There are games where the narrative barely supports the action. Kudos to The Lonesome Guild for making it at least an equal partner to the game play. The game’s primary loop consists of solving some environmental puzzles to progress through the world, a combat encounter or boss battle and another piece of narrative or character development.

The puzzles themselves are interesting, relying on using Ghost’s powers and several party members to simultaneously manipulate switches or move objects in order to access treasure or open a path. I generally appreciated the accessible puzzle design. Now and then, clues in the form of fresco images and found text hinted at a solution, and sometimes these were a bit vague. Like all puzzle games, it’s hard to shake the essentially illogical conceit of gating so many elements of a supposed real space behind puzzles. I always feel sorry for the residents that opening a door requires a cooperative team and manipulating several objects. That’s no way to live.

While the puzzles themselves do a good job of being fun to solve, the game’s fixed camera and a lack of persistently available map get in the way. Maps are only viewable at certain locations, which means players should prepare for some needless wandering.

Fight On

Like the game’s puzzles, combat in The Lonesome Guild has a solid foundation and a few frustrations. Individual characters have special attacks and a variety of weapons and abilities, which they level up via conversation and connection with each other at campfires. It’s a cool reinforcement of the theme, but in practice slows down character progression quite a bit as rest points are pretty infrequent.

Combat animations — especially dodge-rolling — feel a few frames short of smooth and responsive. This makes rolling out of the way of AOE attacks, for example, kind of frustrating. On the other hand, using Ghost’s abilities in combat, and teaming up with another party member, are very satisfying. Combat can be pretty challenging, especially boss fights.

One rather annoying oversight in The Lonesome Guild is the lack of a save anywhere mechanic (like before bosses) and widely spaced rest points. Long re-load times and the need to replay sections or resupply before fights are never a good time.

Pretty As a Picture

One area where The Lonesome Guild shines is in its colorful storybook art style, which has a lot of detail and great variety as the characters pass through different biomes and environments. Character design is equally good, though sometimes it’s a little hard to identify characters in combat when there are a lot of enemies. There’s no voice acting, and overall, the audio landscape is fairly subdued, but the music is very effective.

Setting aside its sometimes sluggish combat controls and a few frustrating mechanics, there’s a lot to enjoy about The Lonesome Guild. With beautiful art and a much-appreciated theme centering on connection and communication, The Lonesome Guild should appeal to fans of puzzle-heavy action RPGs looking for narrative depth.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***