Graven Review

thesixthaxis.com:

Graven has been in the works for what feels like a very long time, this dark medieval fantasy immersive sim turning heads when it originally released in Early Access back in 2021. While the game has grown on its path to a full release, it brings me no pleasure to report that it still feels like a lot of work is needed to make this even close to the experience that is promised to be.

Up front, the retro aesthetic in Graven is fantastic. It really looks and feels like the spiritual successor to Hexen and Heretic that it purports to be, from the large and expansive environments, to the visual style and the moment-to-moment combat.

The dark backstory to Graven casts you as a former priest who has been wrongly convicted of murder after killing a cultist trying to sacrifice his daughter in an evil ritual. Banished from your previous life, you are sent to the mysterious swamplands of Cruxfirth, only to find that the plague that afflicts the town may be connected to the wider mystery of what has happened to you. This storyline mainly serves to push you from one area to the next, rather than being a deep and engaging narrative to immerse yourself in, and comes with limited voice acting through the game.

Exploring the world of Graven involves familiar FPS controls, with platforming and puzzle solving added for extra flavour. The platforming is functional enough, but the decision to implement a pretty strict stamina system proves to be a major headache. Running takes little stamina, but jumping empties the bar really quickly and it can take a full 20 seconds or so for it to restore. Sure, it stops you bunny-hopping like it’s Quake 3, but it means that the quick exploration that defines this kind of FPS is broken up into a frustrating pattern of resting and running. I can only assume that the intention is to make this into a kind of pseudo-Soulslike, but it feels completely at odds with the game itself.

Enemies are relatively varied and they hit ridiculously hard, even on lower