A rudimentary crafting system lets you turn raw materials into said potions, but be careful how much you carry, because your party has a weight limit on top of the standard inventory grid. Losing all of either statistic means death, and there are numerous potions and items to restore either or both. Your characters have two separate health statistics, for example, the standard and obvious “health” number as well as “vigor,” which essentially represents your resistance to the cold – the game takes place in a frozen, ghost-haunted city – but can also be lost in combat. The core exploration and combat of Vambrace: Cold Soul takes that grind and that random number generator and adds needlessly complex RPG and even survival game mechanics, encumbering what was essentially a tough but minimalist exploration with loads of statistical management. I loved Darkest Dungeon’s atmosphere and potential for spontaneously arising narrative enough to forgive it for both its grind and its arbitrarily cruel RNG. Unfortunately, Vambrace seems to have captured the worst of both worlds. Sweetening the pot both visually and tactically, Vambrace combines anime and JRPG tropes with a visual and tactical approach that looks lifted from Darkest Dungeon, my favorite game of 2016. I love contemporary Japanese-influenced RPGs when they’re done right (like this year’s excellent Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark). I was tremendously excited for Vambrace: Cold Soul when it came out on PC earlier this year (followed by the Switch version about a month ago).
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