Skald: Against the Black Priory review

pcgamer.com:

There were a few games last year that we didn't have time to review, so before 2025 gets too crazy we're playing review catch-up and rectifying some of these omissions. So if you're reading this and wondering if you've slipped through a wormhole back into 2024, don't worry, you've not become unfastened from time. We're just running late.

Before playing Skald: Against the Black Priory, I liked the idea of this throwback roleplaying game, but wasn't sure it was for me. I love old-school RPGs, but pre-1997 is too old-school for me, and Skald's primary source of visual inspiration is an era of DOS and Commodore RPGs I have respect, but not much affection for. Skald's gorgeous VGA-inspired pixel art scared me off as much as it enticed me.

Finally diving into the game, though, I found something decidedly more modern: Skald is crisp and tight, threading the needle with an elegant, modern design sensibility that doesn't sand off the complexity and depth I crave in my RPGs. It's easy to get your arms around, but also challenging and surprising the whole way through. The biggest shock of all was the writing: Skald is one of the most effective, unnerving cosmic horror stories I've seen in a game, and part of that comes from all the effort it puts into fleshing out its fantasy world and characters before tearing it all down.

When I'm playing an RPG with its own bespoke rules (that is, not based on something familiar like D&D or SPECIAL), I always feel like I'm making a leap of faith. Is this one where dialogue skills are fun and useful? Which weapon and armor proficiencies are actually supported by the game's loot? Do rogues just suck for some reason? For every Divinity: Original Sin or Disco Elysium that knocks it out of the park, there's something like Broken Roads or Rogue Trader that leaves me frustrated, pondering an empty character sheet full of stats, skills, jargon, and effects of dubious utility.

Skald blessedly falls into the former camp. It's very much iterating on