Seven: The Days Long Gone

Hidden jem of stealth action genre. Really fun pro-active gameplay, especcially in stealth. Action encounters are also feels good thanks to different tools even if winner of most fights is decided by who gets to chain stun the enemy first. Story, charactes, visual style, worldbuilding and voice-acting+music are very solid too.
The only frustrating thing for me was the navigation between the sectors on the world map. Even though this game is an open world, most quests are evenly distibuted between sectors which are often conneted by 1 max 2 small chokes. And the problem is, these chokes are not represented on the map vividly. Because of that, I occasionally found myself lost on simple roads from A to B. Moreover, "Seven" is still rather buggy, but these glitches are mostly minor so just save your game more often and they wont be a problem.
All in all, I had a lot of fun playing "Seven" mostly because of systematic game design which offers greater extent of player freedom than other stealth games.

Nice stealth RPG. Quests and lore are interesting. Exploration is amazing, it's the best part of the game. The map is big and pretty much open from the start of the game. Gameplay is not too complicated, both combat and stealth are very easy, the consequences for being seen is basically non existent. The traversal is a bit janky, you can die from a wrong jump easy, also can be that you wanted the character to grab a ledge, but you can't see exactly if he will be able to because of the perspective. Better quicksave very often.

The Masterpiece You’ve Been Told to Ignore
Seven: The Days Long Gone is a singular experience that was, quite frankly, wronged by its own launch and a wave of biased reviews. If you can walk into Peh without trying to compare it to every other RPG you’ve played, you will find one of the most innovative open worlds ever crafted.
A World with Real Purpose and Density
Unlike many modern open worlds that feel like massive, beautiful boxes filled with "nothing" (looking at you, TotK), Peh is incredibly dense. At every turn, I’m amazed by how many distinct regions, cultures, and citizens the developers managed to pack into this island. It feels like a living ecosystem where every faction—from the high-tech Technomagi to the fanatical Biomancers—interconnects seamlessly.
The environment isn't just a backdrop; it’s a narrative tool. The sheer volume of fully-voiced side quests is staggering, and they aren't just "fetch" filler. They provide a genuine reason to explore, giving the world a sense of charm and conviction that keeps you curious about what’s over the next wall.
The Visa System: Freedom Through Subversion
The game uses a "Visa" system to gate your progress, but here’s the beauty: the gate is only as strong as you are uncreative.
Circumvent Boundaries: Between the parkour and the infinite stealth gadgets (smokes, traps, disguises), you can circumvent almost any barrier.
Risk vs. Reward: If you're smart, you can be in a Visa 4 zone while still on Visa 1. But be warned: if you get caught, the Technomagi will demolish you.
True RPG Progression: You don't "grind" by farming enemies to see a number go up; you progress by becoming more knowledgeable about the world’s rules, items, and shortcuts.
Stealth as a Survival Necessity
Many reviews complain about the combat. While it's true that combat is functional at best, that’s missing the point. Seven doesn’t encourage you to be a warrior; it wants you to be a Master Thief. The difficulty curve is a deliberate nudge: boss fights are nearly impossible if you haven't grasped the gear and build mechanics first. This encourages you to actually use your utility belt. If you decide to cross a frontier early, you are free to try, but the game makes it clear that your survival depends on your wit, not your DPS.
Lore and Narrative
The lore is impressively rich and well-thought-out without being "Dark Souls-levels" of cryptic. It’s not unnecessarily complex, but it’s deep enough to stay interesting for dozens of hours. While it may not be as psychologically heavy as something like Pathologic, it is charming, convincing, and clearly crafted with love.
Final Verdict
It’s its own beast—a gritty "Techno-Fantasy" immersive sim in an isometric view. If you value player agency and a world that respects your intelligence, ignore the Metacritic score and just play it.
Disclaimer: Review written at 50 hours in. I haven't finished the main quest yet, but the journey so far has been nothing short of a hidden masterpiece. I'll update this once I finish the main questline

Growing up is a funny thing. First, the hind legs of a chair seemed to be pillars just begging a palisade to be grown inbetween and blossoming further with some linen, pillows, and sticks. Or the top of the wardrobe seemed like a mountain there to be conquered that could only be braved by the righteous and valiant. Before you know it, you find yourself giving directions to tourists or navigating a city, completely alien, for no other reason other than some “work stuff”. I don’t like it. I hate finding myself having travelled between two totally different countries, and three different cities within a week, only to be back at home, totally exhausted and craving an end to my suffering.
I keep going back to Seven: The Days Long Gone in my mind, even though it has been more than a month since I completed it. The more I think about Seven, the more I find the exact reason I loved it so much is this feeling of growing up. I started out in a mansion, where each and every guard seemed like insurmountable challenges. I moved onto, what seemed to be, the massive port city of Lewmer. Then I found out that this Lewmer, with its incredible verticality, multiple factions, and bustling bazaar is nothing more than a provincial backwater, where inmates are just being acclimated to what is to come and how things work on this alien (but familiar) planet called Peh.
I had that same feeling, as I checked out the map and saw the greyed-out parts expanding far, more than I could have imagined. As if I am a toddler once more and there is an insurmountable wilderness, filled with magic (and sometimes monsters), between home and school. I even came across a Steam forums thread titled “Too Overwhelming” and even though I disagreed with it, I could not help but sympathize with the OP. The thread was complaining about how the owner wanted to love the game but “there is just too much open world” and they just need some pointers to get going. And ♥♥♥♥ me if at least some of us haven’t thought exactly the same growing up.
The same feeling of overwhelmingness came over me when I left Lewmer for the first time and had to move across a giant quarry that spanned across multiple levels, two bays and towns, and was full of enemies that I was too weak to take on. Unlike the OP, I persevered, as I as well loved the game and had nothing better to spend my time on. During my whole playthrough I never got over the dread of having to visit a new location, but I also grew confident as my abilities started to outshine the perceived difficulty of the areas I visited before.
To be frank, I did not realize I was loving Seven at this point, and I occasionally refrained from booting it up as a new area felt too daunting, or even impossible. But I kept coming back to it. Sometimes it reminded me that there are more colours than only four (or five) we are allowed to use in the perceivable colour spectrum, sometimes it gave me a glimpse of some landmark far away and of course I had to travel (meaning: climb, fall, teleport, die, climb again, die again) there to see it. At one point, I realized I was now feeling very confident that I could traverse the capital, Warden’s Hollow, without looking at the map, and it filled me with a sense of impervious survivability. Just like I bragged to my girl about how I could traverse her city, or mine, from end to end, without ever needing to look at the map and came out justified.
I also grew to be more confident in what I could do, other than just being more effective with traversal. When I was in Lewmer, I got caught multiple times by regular NPCs because I had to steal some unpaired socks to craft some XYZ that I cannot even remember now, and I remember going through the wrong door in Mortbane and getting immediately impaled to the wall, but in Warden’s Hollow I was stopping time and doing flashy combos to become the arena champion. I found myself wishing the real life growth worked the same, and I could grow more confident in my abilities as more of the world became my stomping ground.
Maelor wrote a beautiful piece about walking and permanence of things we see while we walk a couple of months ago, and ever since I completed Seven, I cannot stop thinking about becoming accustomed to objects so much that they no longer hold any significant impression on us. There is an abandoned cushy armchair in the middle of an unchecked weed growth in my neighbourhood, first couple of times I saw it, it reminded me of post-Soviet imagery and I even drank a couple bottles of wine and beer next to it, contemplating my and the chair’s place in the universe. The thing is, I eventually learned to walk just past it, looking for other, more novel objects to entertain my melancholy. This sense of moving on is exactly what I felt while playing Seven, especially when The Witcher composer M. Przybylowicz’s especially melancholic works kicked in.
As much as the game reminded me of my own growth, it never felt shy of reminding me that this is a world divorced from reality. I walked through a swamp filled with putrid, blinding fog, narrowly escaped death by mutilation or falling and found myself at a treehouse tavern where everybody was having an inexplicably good time. I let out a chuckle when I checked my inventory and saw the all-knowing demon in the main character’s head was unable to describe an 80’s controller, but I obviously could. I visited a temple built on living, breathing tissue and understood why they cultivated organic matter that caused a plague even though I did not agree with them. The game reminded me of the famous quote, “any sufficiently advanced technology is undistinguishable from magic” at every turn and made me love how weird the literal application of this concept turned out to be.
A developer in an AAA studio getting an idea similar to Seven would be shot, drawn and quartered. They would also be lauded as geniuses if it were as a strong start as Seven to an IP. I only played Seven because I was enamoured by The Thaumaturge and I now truly hate Fool’s Theory because they have given me two incredible worlds that I cannot see any future for. Seven: The Days Long Gone is a victory of colour over the repetitive corporate drabness, and ambition over caution. Or I could say that if the game actually became a cult classic as I would have expected it to be. For me, this game scratches the Cyberpunk itch, Deus Ex itch, Dishonored itch and even China Mieville videogame itch many other itches I did not even know I had. I am at a loss in how else I could convince you to give this one a try.
Growth and melancholy/10

I expected nothing and it delivered everything.
The game is much more elaborate than I imagined for this price. It really deserves a sequel. Just play it.

That game was quite frustrating at times. A buggy mess at other times. But, the story was nice. The gameplay was nice. the no hand holding approach (not as much as Morrowind but way less than skyrim) was a breath of fresh air in a sea of baby games where they guide you toward every quest location.

It's a 7/10. Someone said to me that it was like a parkour, Isometric Metal Gear, and it's pretty close to that. It's just, kinda boring. Well made enough, but I didn't get very deep.