Steam’s New Old-School RPG Feels Like The King’s Field Successor I Needed
Don’t let your guard down.
FromSoftware’s Dark Souls inspired so many other developers that it spawned an entirely new genre, but its older first-person RPG series, King’s Field, hasn’t enjoyed nearly as much attention. In recent years, games like Lunacid have proved that you can still make an excellent RPG while sticking close to King’s Field’s decades-old formula, and now a new take on the first-person RPG shows there’s still plenty of life in the old-school genre.
I first encountered Verho — Curse of Faces during the most recent Steam Next Fest. The demo begins well into the game, where your character is equipped with magic and an assortment of weapons to fight the hordes of walking plants and frog monsters occupying a small, swampy village.
Verho — Curse of Faces is an old-school RPG packed with secrets.
The full game begins very differently. You find yourself magically sealed into the forsaken land of Yariv, in the aftermath of a curse that slew anyone who looked on another’s face and devastated the kingdom for centuries. You begin your journey to find the curse’s source with nothing more than a broken sword for defense, making even the bats and skittering insects you first encounter formidable threats.
It takes a long time to work your way up to anything useful, and the way you build your character has a huge impact on how those first hours will go. Specializing in magic will let you make short work of foes, but you’ll be practically defenseless when your mana runs dry. Going for a rogue build requires more finesse but makes you capable of dashing in and out of combat, as long as your focus never falters.
Either way, getting your footing in Verho is tough, and a single wrong move can easily spell your end. The first time I ate it, I was surprised to see a game-over screen telling me to reload my last save. The soulslike mechanic of reviving after defeat but losing experience points is so ingrained into modern games that returning to an old-school system like Verho’s was a bit shocking.
Verho’s tough combat and rewarding exploration are both enthralling.
That all feeds into a captivating sense of danger and wonder. Knowing that falling in battle means a true reset back to the last checkpoint makes every step count. You can never let your guard down between moments of safety, but at the same time, Verho is littered with secrets, urging you to explore just a little more and push your luck a little farther in the hopes of stumbling across something game-changing. That tension makes Verho exhilarating, and moving through its strange world feels like a true adventure in a way that many games don’t.
Not everything in the world of Yariv comes across quite so well, though. Verho’s barebones story is enough to propel you through the game, but the quality of its writing and voice acting is hit or miss. Genuinely interesting tales play out in notes you’ll find scattered through the world and in the inferences you can make from the way different characters offer comments, but the prose and performances are often dull or inconsistent.
That hasn’t kept me from having a great time with Verho, though. There may not be the grandest of stories animating my journey, but the sheer joy of exploring all of its dark corners kept me hooked. Verho demands a lot of patience and curiosity, and rewards both in equal measure. On my first playthrough, I encountered so many weapons and spells that I didn’t have the right stats for, and so many small secrets that I never quite figured out, that I’m eager to head back through a second time. Verho feels old-school in all the best ways, but it also never stops feeling fresh.
