Ember
“Back in the earliest days, there was no sun and the world was dark. The heavens opened up and stars fell like beacons into the pitch black world, and they were known as “Embers”. Powerful and wise druids of a primordial race, “the Lightbringers," roamed the land searching for this luminous matter. They performed a ritual of awakening to call the “Embers” out of their deep sleep. Suddenly the world became bright, and the veil of darkness was lifted. The Embers were the embodiment of magical flame, light, and life, but as word spread about the sheer power of the Embers, they came to be hunted and captured…and so the War for Ember began…” A passion project 10 years in the making, Ember is a homage to classic role-playing games (RPG). Enter the world of Ember as a resurrected “Lightbringer” summoned to protect the dying Embers as the world is on the brink of collapse.
Game Discussion
Steam User 9
The game is okay. It has decent gameplay, a story that is easy to follow, although I did miss some quest markers in my map overview at times, and not a huge world. Didn't like the click to walk mechanism, but that is a personal preference.
However the lack of a skill bar was really an issue for me, you just have 3 action buttons where only items can be assigned to. Now there already isn't a skill tree, so any skills you have are gear dependent and can later be added to gear with runes. But to use them you have to click the skill buttons, located at your character portraits at the top center of the screen.
Given the "click to walk" mechanism, and having to click on tiny buttons on the top of my screen to use a skill, I've found myself disengaging and walking away mid fight a lot of the times I was using some of the skills. This got me killed in more than a few fights...
Overall still a decent game and had fun it it so far, but would've liked to atleast be able to assign skills to the 3 available quick slots.
Steam User 2
I got this game several years ago but never got to play it until now. It clearly shows it's age. The beginning was pretty rough, moving around the map with point and click felt really clunky and in chokepoints it was sometimes hard to navigate if one of your partymembers blocked the others. Overall it was hard getting used to especially since holding the mouse down lets you move the camera.
In that regard, fighting felt really clunky aswell as you only have limited options at your disposal while your party fights enemies on their own. You can pause the game at any point to individually move your partymembers out of harms way. You have 3 active skills at your disposal that are tied to the Weapon and Armor you use. Skills cost mana, but since they have no cooldown, you are encouranged to pause the game mid fight over and over in order to activate skills on all 3 characters. This makes fighting optimally more tactical but not exciting at all.
But if you pull through and endure the beginning, you'll rapidly notice that underneath all these rough systems, there's a lot of love poured into the game despite the clearly showing lack of budget. The Story is rather generic (hero's quest) but they added lots of side dialogue and lore-books if you want to know more about the world. The pacing is really good between advancing main story and doing side quests on the way. The Areas look nice and the map artwork is beautiful.
Along the way you'll find lots of food, herbs and ore to mine that are used for crafting. They put a lot of work into the different types: cooking, woodworking, tailoring, alchemy and blacksmithing. You can buy recipies from vendors or obtain them by looting chests. While there's really a LOT of different ingredients, the crafting menu was terribly inconvenient. So much that besides some basic cooking i didnt further bother diving into it and used the items i found along the way or bought from vendors. Really missed potential
Inventory management is clean with each item using up one space in your 99 slot bag. Later in the game you'll find additional 16 slot bags for more inventory space but unfortunately item stacks dont merge (so if you put 1 iron ore in one of you small bags to make room in the big bag, mining another iron ore will still use up space in the big bag as you have 2 stacks of 1 ore each until you manually drag it). Each item you find has a description that tells you exactly what it is used for so you can easily distinguish items used in crafting from items beeing solely useful to make gold selling to vendors.
Character progression is basic. You have 3 types: Melee in Heavy Armor using Strenght as main Attribute, Ranged in leather armor using Dexterity and Magic in light Armor using Intelligence. The 4th Attribute is Vitality for more Health. As mentioned before, skills are tied to the Weapon/Armor you use so you can test around which ones fit your playstyle most
The game itself runs very well and i havent encountered a single bug in the game, so kudos to the programming team. Steam achievements are easily obtainable in one playthrough with one exception: After visiting the giants cliffs for the first time and beeing sent back to the city of light, save the game before accepting the quest, do the quest in one way until you receive the achievement, then reload the game and do it the other way for the second achievement (there are steamguides explaining this). There are 2 different endings to the story, you can either replay the final bossfight reloading the game, or watch the alternative ending sequence on youtube.
Conclusion:
Despite it's sometimes very rough edges, i enjoyed my playthrough in Ember. It's clear the developers put a lot of love in their game with much attention to detail. If you can look past the flaws i mentioned above, you'll have yourself a fine little 20h adventure.
Steam User 3
Well, I'd give it a neutral review.
It's quite okay, simple and easy, just what I searched for. Story is okay (didn't listen to it), mechanics and gameplay is also quite okay (although one could have left out crafting).
For 10€ I guess it's fine, maybe grab it in a sale.
Steam User 0
Interesting game slowly putting things together it takes time to build. It has challenging parts. Think about movement think about your attacks. A slight learning curve. But play it slow and smart and can be successful.
Steam User 0
the engine is very good, it makes the game a flow. looks and sounds good and the ui is also well designt. only skills should be placable on keys but until now this game is making me happy.
let'S check out the story ^^
Steam User 0
The game is meh. Its not a terrible game but its not an exciting game either. If you want to shake things up a bit and play something different then sure. I mean yes play RPGs ect but this just is barebones. But for a 9.99 price tag its not bad. I play for a bit then stop. Again the game isn't bad but its not amazing either.
Steam User 1
If you had that long carefree summers when you you were a kid and had to read a carload of books but actually were playing and didn't care about the books, and now you feel guilty about it, Ember is the game for you! Who cares about gameplay when there are so many books to read in this game! Go READ them, boy!
Score: Marienbad My Love/Oxford English Dictionary