Baladins – Switch Review
"I can see a lot of people who would adore this game"
In my years as a tabletop enjoyer, I’ve seen many things inspired by tabletop that take me by surprise because different people take different things from the hobby. Some people love deep gameplay mechanics, which leads to things like Pathfinder; people like me use it as a creative outlet, leading to book series, TV shows, movies, music, art, etc. The developers over at Seed By Seed took the aspect of chilling with your buddies and made a co-op choose your own adventure game out of it. After the kingdom of Gatherac gets stuck in a time loop, it is up to a group of adventurers known as the Baladins to find a way to stop it.
The Good
The first thing that caught my eye in this game was its art style. Baladins is very reminiscent of the Paper Mario games, in which a flat 2D character sprite interacts in a 3D world and uses that inspiration to portray the game’s other main inspiration, children’s choose your own adventure books. It mixes so perfectly together that it made me look back and wonder why the earlier Paper Mario games went with a stage play theme and not a storybook.
Right from the get-go you can tell that Baladins is inspired by tabletop RPGs. Before you start the game, you have to pick a character, each with varying levels of skills, and your choice is very important because it determines how well you perform during the game’s various skill checks. While there are many different systems out there, thanks to the popularity of Baldur’s Gate 3, most people would know that these checks are made with a twenty-sided die. Baladins changes things up by making you roll three regular six-sided dice instead, not only making skill checks a tad more forgiving but also making the player feel more confident in riskier rolls, as the numbers will be more consistent and the lowest you can roll is a 3. This is a perfect system for people looking to get into tabletop RPGs but aren’t sure if they’d like it.
On top of that, Baladins also allows for multiple solutions to quests; a very good example early on is that you find a love letter and you can either return it to the one who wrote it or deliver it. One I found rather amusing was after a well started bursting like a geyser, I was tasked with finding a way to plug it up; instead, I found a woman at the local tavern who was a notoriously heavy drinker and asked if she could drink all the water instead.
TL;DR
- Charmingly cute style
- Well-implemented tabletop mechanics
- Multitudes of ways to complete quests
The Bad
Baladins’ main conflict is that a dragon comes along every six weeks and rewinds time with only you remembering what happened. Because of this, all items you collect and additional stats you gain are reset and you have to find a way to complete each of your main goals and defeat the dragon in six weeks, getting more and more efficient with your time each loop. This leads to the game getting really repetitive very quickly. I’m not going to sugarcoat it but I got bored before ever defeating the dragon.
If only I had an extra set of hands or two to help me speed this quest along. Well, you’re in luck because Baladins was clearly made with multiplayer in mind, to the extent that it felt like I was being punished playing it alone. Sure, I could get what I needed done but it really did feel like a slog and the whole time I was thinking things like, “This would’ve been easier if I had someone playing this character” or “I could’ve gotten that done quicker if I had someone helping me.”
This is more of a personal nitpick than anything, but due to its more cutesy tone, I really couldn’t get all that invested in Baladins’ writing. Constantly having to repeat things didn’t help either but Baladins really doesn’t have any stakes to its plot; there’s no real drive for adventure, no drama. While yes, there is a dragon in the game that you have to stop, it feels more like an inconvenience and an afterthought rather than a call to action.
(After writing this review I went to check the game’s eShop page, and one of the main features listed was, and I quote, “Encounter a dragon! It wouldn’t be a fantasy roleplaying game without one!” which kind of proves my point.)
TL;DR
- The six-week time loop gets repetitive
- Clearly made with multiplayer in mind
- The game’s tone made it difficult for me to get invested
Final Score: 7/10
While Baladins isn’t for me, I can see a lot of people who would adore this game. Baladins is a tabletop RPG for people who love Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley; it's a game meant to be played with your friends and relax too and I truly commend it for that.
Thank you for checking out our Baladins Switch review, thank you to [PUBLISHER] for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:
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