The Dwarves

I actually quite liked this game. I think the role play side of things, the world and the characters are very well done and the graphics are truly gorgeous! Unfortunately, the combat is a little bit weak; not absolutely weak and it's not terrible. This is the game's second greatest flaw, only eclipsed by it's price tag! At £35, this game is not cheap, but it really is quite dear when you consider that I beat the thing in less than 15 hours, which is pretty bad for a game with very limited replayability. In addition to that, while the world building and Characters is fairly good, I do wish that those things had been taken further; I would have liked to have seen the budding romance between the two dwarves flower more and to have learned more about the kingdoms of Girdlegard, but with those two complaints, it may be that was all that there was in the source material that KING Art had access to, although, obviously, I don't know for sure as I am just some mook posting a review on Steam. Overall, I do recommend this game, but I would advise that this be purchased on a steam sale, as it is not worth it's steep price tag otherwise.

I'll give this a thumbs-up, but only under the following conditions:
a) do not buy it at full price. 40€ after 5 years is overpriced! I bought at full price - I regret.
b) you should love~<3 Games based around Dwarves
c) you should not be afraid of a lot of text - and if you are not afraid of a lot of text you should not expect a deep CRPG.
Why I love the Game:
Gameplay
It is a bunch of fun to guide the Dwarves (not those other dudes!) through combat. Build a line, crush the Orcs with Hammers and Axes. Even when they run and when enemies are close the Dwarves auto-attack, which is a bunch of to just push through the Hordes.
But do not get me wrong: the combat system is -simple-. You do not have huge skilltrees, and to me it seems like all of those non-human Skills are rather mediocre (except of healing).
Somehow I feel, though, like there should be more combat encounters. The Gameplay System as in is really fun. I would have wished for more (optional!) Quests which simply take advantage of one of the big strengths: the Dwarven-Combat-System! (yes, honestly: I do not give much about the other skills. They feel like a waste of Resources)
Story
It's bland at times and based on coincidences. Some aspects I do not really understand yet, about the Firsts, Seconds, and Fifths - whatever: at least there is no large Codex with walls of text the game did not manage to convey.
But the most important part: I started the game... and I immediately felt immersed. I do not like the protagonist that much, but the Game gives the feeling of being on a Journey - like some Bilbo. That made me feel engaged, and that is something for example Divinity 2 could not do for me!
There is a lot of fluff, about the Heroes eating Cheese or having a drinking-competition in a Tavern. There could be more of that, but especially those little things I tend to miss on Games, because they are "not that heroic and too much work to implement for being 'not that heroic', doo.."
The companions are rather unique. There is something for everybody. Dwarves (obviously), Humans, a Half-alb, and undead Dwarf, a Magician and some Full Metal Alchemist Dude. All of them at least seem to have a small sideplot - I am not sure if I missed something! Though I am afraid that I would have preferred if there were only Dwarves; sorry, I cannot say that often enough! In general my skirmish-parties only had dwarves, because to me it was the most fun to play them gameplay- and context-wise.
All of the sidecharacters have somehow a certain faith - but not all are explained well. (The heroic half-alb who is supposed to steal the kill from the protagonist, for example, gets wounded in the end - but it was never explained if she survived, I think..)
The sidequests are interesting. They are small, and are based on the protagonists profession. It feels good to play them, and especially in the beginning I got the feeling that even little decisions like "Do I sleep inside of the village or outside?" change the world.
Without wanting to spoiler too much: there are a few good plottwists. And especially in the beginning of the game it teaches you not to be a complete goody-good-shoes.
I like the humour - in German the dialogs are rather good! Except for -... this Dandelion-dude. I forgot his name. His voice-acting was really bad in an exaggerated, annoying Spanish-accent.
Music
The combat Main Theme is pretty cool and immersive. I just feel it.
Suddenly: Blind Guardian?!
Anyhow: the Soundtrack is neat.
Here are a few things I dislike, though:
Dialog-Idiocy
If you click too fast on a primer, then you may think that you did not trigger it. BUT: you may have triggered it already and then clicked away the text-window.
"You can just click it again..?" - "No, you cannot. Those are one-time Events!"
That sucks, really. There is not much lore, only lore conveyed via text - and it sucks to miss all those tidbits.
Bugs
Yea, there are bugs, despite of the fact that those should be fixed.
One that annoys me the most: all fights start with the heroes only having 50% HP. But before in the window it was shown that they actually had 100%.
Another one, which is right in the beginning: you are supposed to behead 30 zombies. It stops at 29. All are defated, nothing happens. I redid the whole mission, just to realise that I had the same issue again. This time, though, I luckily found the last Zombie standing around. Considering that I had the same error after loading this should be something that should appear quite often...
Oh, and one of the biggest bugs: one of the final fights. Suddenly all heroes got stuck. It was like the connection dropped on an Online-Match. I had to redo everything. Not acceptable.
Furthermore there are LITTLE bugs... which break the immersion. For example you find a Dwarf-merchant which was beheaded. You can meet him before, but I never did in my playthrough. Still: when the issue was solved, the protagonists magically knew the name of the merchant, despite of the fact that it was never mentioned. On top they revenged him - without any reason at all. I consider this to be a bug because this is a story-branching issue.
Later on, in the final parts, I had different voice-lines which did not match what was written in the textboxes - and as soon as they were recited the same was said again. Such unfixed bugs are really unworthy of a game which was released 2016 (and hence is currently ~4 years old).
Unfortunately.. I got the feeling that the Devs had a good idea, and that they were passionate about it - but they were damn happy that they "finished" it and never wanted to touch it again.
Bad Dwarve-Ratio
This game is about Dwarves. There are five(?) Companions which are not Dwarves.
Sure: Dandelion is supposed to be the one who tells everybody about the Story. Furgas is the Tech-Dude. Alb-Girl is supposed to be the Hero. And the Full-Metal-Alchemist-Dude is supposed to be... mysterrriiouuuussss....
.. but still: you called it "The Dwarves". Stick to the damn theme and do not try to please those who are not into Dwarves that much, damnit!
Overpriced
Simple statement.
In the end of the game they had a nice idea: Orcs run over a road, and every Orc had a nametag of the Devs. The Devs were through after 3min. Then all the Kickstarter-Backers came, and after 5min they finally reached "B".
There was a LOT of backup. Without knowing what the game was supposed to offer the emptiness of the world map, the generally flat story, and that there is a level-system which only needs 10 levels are signs that the real potential was never met - and the worst: so many bugs did not get fixed.
Even if I would argue that the price is appropriate considering that this is a niche-genre: no, it is not appropriate!
So... The Dwarves.
It's about Dwarves.
I wish the Story was less cheesy and fantasty-stereotypical at times, but personally I never saw that much (interesting) Dwarf-Lore to engage with (in a game!)... which actually focuses around Dwarves, and is not only a sideproduct (compare with Dragon Age and Witcher 2)
Buy it on discount!
Because it feels to me like this is a rather failed game. There is no wiki with details. I googled most of those bugs I had - and rarely found any context to this game.
At the moment I am not sure how to feel about The Dwarves. On the one hand I had heavy LotR-feelings when ramming through those Orc-Hordes; what made me feel like there was a lot of potential for this game, but that it somehow... sunk into the depths of project-hell and that it just needed to be "finished".

Playing The Dwarves is a whole lot more enjoyable than what I expected. Review became a lot longer than I expected too so.. TLDR.
STORY AND LORE that goes into the game is well done and progresses at a good and steady pace.
NARRATIONS AND VOICE ACTING are amazingly well written and well done. I particularly loved the comical dialogues that comes up from the interactions between the characters throughout the game and the voice overs definitely give life to each of the characters which makes it so much more enjoyable than it would have been without them.
GAMEPLAY AND MECHANICS I personally had a lot of fun with it. I am just reading the reviews right now and I see a number of negative reviews pointing at how bad the controls and mechanics are, which are definitely understandable, but that was what made it so fun IMO.
CHARACTER CONTROLS is definitely not easy at first as most times you need to find a way to get through hordes of enemies or allies that just blocks you off and can be irritating but it just makes sense cause the realism is you cannot just bulldoze through everyone unless you are huge, remember you are just a dwarf and human sized at most.
FRIENDLY FIRE this happens a lot, and I mean A LOT. Be it a normal attack or a skill used, a dwarf swinging around a giant axe around and your other character moving automatically next to him to flight is clearly going get a faceful of axe from time to time. So the main thing you can do to lessen this is POSITIONING AND CONSTANTLY WATCH THEM, YES, ABUSE THE PAUSING because that is the best perk to have for full control of all your characters at once. Every characters have their own skill range shown to you so make good use of that.
MAP/STAGE/BATTLE OBJECTIVES THIS IS IMPORTANT AND THEY TELL YOU SO IN THE BEGINNING
Every battle sequence you encounter as you progress has objective(s), you may murder everything in the map but always remember that is not the only thing you have to do. If the objective tells you to escape, you can only just focus on escaping. If it tells you to beat one guy alone, just beat that one guy alone and you can be sure you will still able to progress with the story. I played through on the HARD difficulty, I do not know what the difference of other difficulties are, but the hordes are no joke, if you are surrounded too long and cannot get out of it, you dead. So OBJECTIVES are always your main priorities even if you want to satisfy your blood lust like I did (and I died countless times too doing it, no regrets though, its part of the fun)
OVERALL
It really is a great game and can be somewhat challenging with how the mechanics are BUT it definitely is worth playing IN MY OPINION.

Pros:
Physics and collision based combat; there are definitely not enough games that operate on these kids of mechanics. You get a good position and angle and you can kick enemies off of cliffs (satisfying). Positioning and not getting surrounded is a must. The narration, voiceacting, and story are quality; you don't need to be underage to think so either.
Cons:
The game is fairly short; you will beat it on the same day you get it... a shame. Also, physics based combat may not be for everyone: if you are a person that is so used to guard-rails that you will walk off a cliff without them, then this game is not for you.
The game is definitely worth the buy if it is on sale. However, if you do find yourself falling off cliffs so much so that you feel like rage-quitting, then it is probably a good idea that you put the game down and add more bubble wrap around your shins and forehead as the amount you are currently wearing is likely insufficient.

I recommend this game but I think it is fair to say that it may not be for everyone. The game is based off of a book by the same name by German author Markus Heitz and I really want to buy the books and start reading them now - something I plan to do tonight.
It took me 10 hours exactly to finish the game - there is some repeatable content like battle modes but combat isn't the strong part of the game. Story is. I kept the combat on easy mode and I didn't have trouble with most of the encounters. I struggled a bit at first and when you get the hang of it you can notch it up to normal or hard and still have a good time. The collision based combat is fun as you can throw enemies around and it is a cool experience.
The story is overall good - I have one or two gripes about it, an off screen character death and a romance that is probably better explored in the books. And there are a few twists and turns that I found pretty interesting. I also found the characters to be enjoyable and I had some investment in a lot of them. The protagonist is an outsider and this allows the game to really do some superb world building which I enjoyed.
The game had a few hiccups, maybe two or three character animation glitches and once I had a character get stuck in terrain, as well as a challenging bug at the end where my health potions didn't show up as consumables - but luckily you have a few characters and abilities capable of doing healing so it wasn't a game breaker at all.
Some of the reviews mention it feeling unfinished - I feel as though this is because they are unaware this game covers the first book in what is now a 4 book series. So yeah, the ending has a bit of a cliffhanger and gets more combat heavy because it is the climax of the book.
I also found the graphics to be enjoyable and the aesthetic in general.
Who do I recommend this for?
- Fantasy genre fans
- fans of games that are story rich and story heavy
- fans of Dwarves which are often under-represented or play a minor role in fantasy works (looking at you, Tolkien).
But thanks, King Art I'm buying a new book and following a new author because of this fantastic game.

The actual combat is kinda, meh, its not great but its okay.
The REAL draw, is hands down the story, its fun, has made me smile, and you get to make fun lil choices. Its not perfect but if ever on a sale (I picked it up at -75% off) its worth your money maybe not full price, but it was a fun bit of snacky delight for the 11hrs I played it for

Rpg game with dwarves in the lead role. The gameplay can be boring, but the plot and narrative are well done. Perfect position for players who like adventure games with a good story.
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