Ephemeral Tale
An inevitable end. An unstoppable beginning.
Where another story ends, yours is just getting started.
Ephemeral Tale is a dungeon crawler/looter hybrid for the modern age, featuring hand-crafted dungeons, classic JRPG-style combat, and a loot-driven progression system.
Traverse through hand-crafted environments in search of those who hold the power to rewrite fate. As you tackle the game’s diverse dungeons, you’ll discover clues that will reveal the secrets of this forgotten land.
Collect powerful, randomized gear and build your own style of play! With over 80 pieces of unique loot, there’s always something new to try.
Engage in challenging combat that can be approached in many different ways. Find and personalize the build that works for you while you fight exciting enemies and challenging bosses alike!
Fight an undead T-Rex. Befriend a dog. Pet a grackle…?
Ephemeral Tale includes a range of accessibility options, from control schemes (including keyboard, controller, and touch input) as well as colorblind settings and difficulty options, empowering you to play however you decide you want (or need) to.
Steam User 20
Update to previous review:
The developer has already delivered a balance patch *two balance patches* on day 1, and is looking at further adjusting in order to balance the game out even more. It looks as if my benefit of the doubt was not misplaced. I have a lot of faith in this game, and even more faith in the developer now that I know he's responsive, and really cares what people think of his work.
The loot tables could still use some adjusting imo, especially in the tutorial cave, where to me it felt like nothing ever dropped besides Potions, but maybe that's intended or I was just unlucky. The enemies in the Forgotten Forest also felt pretty broken, but maybe that's just because I was gear-starved from the tutorial cave. I will continue to play the game and see how it goes. All things considered, I'm raising my intial review score significantly.
OVERALL RATING: 8/10
Review previous to January 14th patch below:
Steam doesn't have a neutral option for reviews, so I'm opting for Recommended, to give the developer benefit of the doubt until I figure out how the heck to be decent at this game, while I explain what its (my?) issues are.
Firstly, looking at the Store Page for Ephemeral Tale, I was not expecting a challenging game. I thought it would be a cute little casual game with some fun loot mechanics. Little and cute in its own way, sure. Loot? Sure. But this game certainly feels like the turn-based version of Dark Souls. But maybe I just suck at it, hence the benefit of the doubt, so let's move on to other things.
Price-wise, this game is cheap, $5 USD for a new indie game is very reasonable, even in Early Access. Even if you end up not liking the game, and you don't want to refund it, it's not a huge financial loss. I probably would have been willing to pay upwards of $15 for this, because that's how much I thought it was going to cost. Combat is turn-based, plain and simple. You've got your Attack, your Magic spells, Guard, and Items. Enemies are random encounters on the maps you travel on. Gear drops from chests, and enemies, along with items. Music is fitting, graphics and art are cute, UI is functional and minimalistic.
I didn't notice any bugs during my playtime, and didn't experience any crashes.
The "tutorial cave" you start out in doesn't seem bad at first, but gets rough if you're trying to explore the whole thing (you need to), and you get unlucky with Potion drops and enemy spawns. I had several 3-5 enemy fights in a row with no Potion drops, and you don't have any healing abilities. Early on a skull/headpiece dropped that made enemies increasingly stronger for every fight you win, and I knew right away it'd be a terrible idea to equip it, so I never did. But somehow, enemies still felt like they were getting stronger? The same slimes I'd fought when I first entered the cave that took 1 hit to kill, now take 2 or 3, so that was weird.
Moving along, outside the tutorial you can spend the Power you've collected from enemies (think Souls from Dark Souls or Amrita from Nioh) to gain an attribute point, but you only get 1 each time, and you get several from gear pieces, so it feels pretty unsatisfying.
I move into the next area, Forgotten Forest. I've got about ~150 HP, and enemies are spawning in groups of 2-4, each hitting for 15-20 damage, and introducing rage and poison mechanics, resulting in more damage taken. At this point I also notice that gear durability declines over time, so even if you find a really nice item drop, it doesn't last you terribly long before the item seems to just disappear. I'm out of Potions now, and die in 1-2 fights with no other way to heal myself, and no Potions dropping.
I should also mention; you can miss, and I believe enemies can dodge too? I have a 97% chance to hit, but during my time playing, it definitely felt more like 80%.
I had this game on my Wishlist for a while, was really excited about it, but between getting destroyed by bad item drop RNG, bad enemy spawn RNG, chance to hit/miss, and durability mechanics, it just doesn't feel very balanced or fun. It's not enjoyable to just be at the whim of RNG.
I should point out that I made a Discussion post that I'm waiting to see if the Dev responds, or has any explanations. If it happens to be something I missed somehow, or a game balance issue, whatever it is, I'm more than happy to update my review.
OVERALL RATING: 6/10
Steam User 5
This review is mixed. The game isn't bad but it feels lacking.
The way you customize characters and level them is pretty straight forward. You get souls which = exp. You get levels from that. Loot is almost all stat changes but feels a bit underwhelming. The skill tree is linear. The game looks pretty. Story is background and not very exciting. even after 3 hours. Imo it cost too much for the lack of mechanical depth. Needs a lower price point.
Steam User 5
Very fun combination of a lot of fun concepts from different games rolled into one. The monotony of random encounters is toned down by the fact that any monster could possibly drop your next big item. Every piece of equipment you find has a durability and will break (unless you get one of the highest rarity, then it doesn't break.) It may seem frustrating, but with the diversity of items has you cycling in and out different types of armor/weapons with different abilities and random stat bonuses which keeps the random encounters interesting.
Steam User 6
Are you a fan of rouge-likes? How about a witty crossover between the following games: Original Legend of Zelda, Pokemon, Final Fantasy, Souls, and an abundance of other references? If you answered "yes," Ephemeral Tale is the game for you!
When I originally purchased this game, I knew that I would be drawn in by the artwork, customization, ability to form broken combos, and unique dialogue on each item you collect. Unfortunately, I did not have the time to give this game its due diligence... that is until last night. I was able to start the game and became so entranced that I completed the whole game, along with New Game +, AND collect all the achievements in one go. After reaching out to the developer, I also learned that there are at least three other secret areas included in the game left for me to discover.
The visuals, audio, and unique game style will take hold of you, leaving you wanting more! I highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys sitting back, relaxing, and becoming immersed in their games. Welcome to Ephemeral Tale!
Steam User 4
TLDR: A fun experience - even if it needs a little bit more polish before it's full release!
CATEGORY
GRADE
NOTES
Story
C
It's more of a dungeon crawler - so don't expect anything too engaging on the story front (at least not from what I've seen so far). Everything you come across is pretty vague - I hope as the game progresses the companion characters have their personalities/stories fleshed out.
Gameplay
B+
The game itself feels great! It's not clunky, battles are fast-paced and everything is pretty straightforward. I hope to see magic scaling/companion scaling in future updates though - I don't think I've used any of the skills in the game except "Double Attack"; and when you have a companion who's leaps and bounds below you in regards to usefulness - it kind of makes them feel like a wasted addition.
Two other minor grievances that I have are the way your power is distributed into attributes - it's a pretty tedious process overall and doesn't feel quite right in-game. If the system doesn't change it would be a lot more fluid to have all of the character attributes/build specifics come from the equipment itself. I feel the same way about equipment durability too - if it's not shown on the battle screen (where your attack command is etc.) I'd just remove it completely because you essentially have to keep track of an invisible number after every few battles and it takes away from the actual fun parts of the game/inventory management.
Graphics
A+
I love Jason Perry and his Time Fantasy/Omega Modern resources (it's what made me buy the game) - and this game uses them so, so well! Every area has a distinct personality (my personal favorite is the forest areas) - and everything blends together harmoniously in-game!
Music
B
I'm not the biggest fan of chiptunes (some of the songs in this game definitely have abrasive highs) - but some of the music in the game is great (I'm lookin' at you Corrupted Castle)
Price
A+
You can tell the developer cares - with regular updates and visible effort in-game I paid full price and feel completely satisfied with my purchase!
Steam User 5
It's fun, it has some flaws, but that doesn't ruin the game and the best part is that the developers respond right away and collect information to fix the bugs.
It seems to have some missing content for 2 places that may be added soon. I would also like to see some "fillings" there are some bare places in the dungeons that can have a chest or something to see/read.
Overall i give it 8/10 for the genre. Should be tried as a game, it doesn't cost much and it will stimulate the developers to continue working on this and new projects.
Steam User 3
Fun little loot JRPG. New game + so you can playthough over and over while retaining your skills/gear. At least for me, the metagame meant grinding for orange gear, which have infinite durability unlike the lower tiers of gear. Most of the loot drops off many different types of enemies, however some loot only drops off specific monsters, for example "Sassy's Murder Mitts" only seem to drop off the Tigeuxrs in the Bayou. The chances of getting an orange Sassy is pretty low so eventually its just grinding. There was a faint glimmer of hope delivered in the form of a witch NPC who can take 4 pieces of your unwanted gear and combine them into one piece of gear. However, there is no reliable way to use the witch to produce orange gear, and the gear she produces is also completely random, even though she hints that the fourth piece of gear you supply will somehow determine what you get. Also her dialogue for combining is WAYYYYY too long and I spent hours with her emptying my inventory and didn't get any orange.
It's a good game to play for a while, but after two playthroughs and still having no way to reliably farm orange it gets tedious.