The skinny: if you don't care about the world and just want to kill mobs because you're done with Diablo and pissed off and PoE, this is pretty good. If you're like me and actually want the world to make sense and have some measure of depth, don't waste your time.

The world of Cairn, to which the eponymous apocalyptic event occured, is fairly bizarre. It seems as though the designers had this deep hankering for a game with demons, unknowable abominations from beyond the stars, (this time with CRYSTAL GEM aesthetics!! (no, they're not here to save the day)), magic, kings and emperors, skellingtons, cowboys, witches, shamans, an iterent, persecuted race rather like the Romani, (indeed, the devs chose the name Rohwari, or Rovers, colloquially) cultists in service to the aforementioned demons, zombies, as well as an entirely original pantheon of deities, all at the same time. Spoiler: it doesn't work. Not remotely.

That wouldn't be a bad thing, if the writers had a vestigal at best understanding of how religion and faith works, and at worst are from the /r/atheism cadre of thought. The supposed "good" deity, insofar as he is the deity of light, order, and mercy, is called Empyrion, of all things. And the faction that represents him, are, of course, religious extremists. The dog whistle here is for antitheists- "Even the "greatest" of the gods, named after empiricism itself, has evil followers!" That isn't in itself a black mark against the game, but for that to be the game's chief foray into questions of faith, is something I'd expect from a flash game on Newgrounds.

That said, the game looks good. The enemy design is on point, especially the demons you meet in the latter part of the game, and the cosmic horror monstrosities (I hasten to say eldrich because that refers to something else, in game). Some of the places you visit in Cairn are deeply memorable, but many others are simply not, or, worse, cut and pasted from somewhere earlier. This dulls the impact of some of my favourite areas.

Almost all the place names are limp, and seem to be cribbed from the "Fantasy Place Name Generator 9001"- Homestead, Devil's Crossing, Wightmire, Arkovia, Asterkarn. Others, like Darkvale, barrel into the territory of "I am 13. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are my heroes. I watched shoveldog and laughed. I DEMAND TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY!"

Furthermore, the world lacks any nuance. We are told that the Rohwari are considered petty thieves by many, but we're given no evidence. All but nobody says that they are, the game just tells you so. We're also told that they're good boys who are pacifists and who will never go to war due to their shamantic, animistic religion- yet like any other faction they're perfectly willing to pay you to kill things for them.
The "Death's Bannermen" former penal batallion, now ex-Imperial Fist (since the empire collapsed) and Humanity's Last Hope!! wants you to murder a witch due to supersititons, but they're never detailed further than "witch bad". Surely it would be better to perhaps cooperate with the witch, to set aside differences for the good of humanity?
In the third act, the game lets you choose between the religious extremists who I mentioned above, who've drawn their inspiration from a Tempar-style monastic military order, and The Order of Death's Vigil (yes, seriously), who are necromancers (also horribly persecuted). The former want to purge the world in healing fire. The latter want to ressurect the dead to aid in the reconstruction. And there isn't room for two of them in this 'ere Cairn.
Every rivalry, every character, every faction is contrived. Conflict is forced. The Aetherials, whose colour is (guess what?) electric-teal-green, aka Otherworldly Pigment #12, are in this world because something something long before humans something something perfect time to take it back, something something kill/enslave everyone. The Cult of C'thon are a comically, ludicrously evil blood cult who want to bring blood and obsidian demons into this world. Yet they seem to have a near-endless supply of members, parents and children, who have willingly signed up. That there are that many amoral, sadistic anti-natalists in Cairn is shocking. A cult that all but straight-up tells you that it wants you, so that it can drain you of your blood should not, in any situation, receive such a large number of adherents. Nobody has credible motiviations outside of survival.

And yet when you look past all this, there's something of an interesting world hiding in the cracks. I like the Devotion system, whereby you gain bonuses and abilities by alloting shrine points into constellations, making up some basis of a symbolic order. But that's all we see of it. I love it when worlds invent their own swear words. Taff, for instance, in Thief, is deeply charming. Here, the word is slith, meaning, well, I'm sure you can guess. Slith, ingame, are tribalistic snake people, the Frankenstinian results of man Dabbling Where He Ought Not To. They come out of holes in the ground, called slithholes. It's great. But then it goes away and is barely mentioned ever again. That's another common thread in this game. None of the plots, side quests, or characters have personality. Legendary items are only legendary insofar as they have good stats and a cool name. The reason I'm so hard on this, is that if you're going to spend about 80 hours per character in a world, it better be a place worth exploring.

But none of that is what you're looking for in an ARPG. You want Combat! Blood! Violence! Cool abilities that cater to your inner Timmy. That, this game has in spades. The Mastery system, where you pick two classes and make your build from there, is a handmedown from the sperm donor of this game, Titan Quest (that is, post the collapse of IronLore, some of the devs who worked on Titan Quest wanted to make another ARPG and did so). It's a handmedown, yes, but it's inspired, and pretty fun. The two other inherited traits from TQ (and also, therefore, from Diablo 2) are the resistance system, here fleshed out further, (there is fire, and burning damage, cold and forstburn, etc, and a whole pallette of resistances and corresponding ways to deal damage) and the loot system- Common, Magic, Rare, Epic and Legendary, in increasing order of scarcity and Ability to do Cool Stuff. It's a delight to find your first Epic weapon, but the joy soon dulls. Ibid for Legendaries. The combat is satisfying in the same way that a kebab is, at 2am, after the 5th beer of the night: great in the moment, something you find unsubstantial and feel disgusting about in hindsight. This is probably a problem endemic to ARPGs, due to the skinner box nature of the underlying mechanics. That said, I kept coming back to it, time and again.

So if you want a game for this summer that has enough depth to fool you into believing that there's something there, and is otherwise near mindless clicking- here it is. Come and play.

The skinny: if you don't care about the world and just want to kill mobs because you're done with Diablo and pissed off and PoE, this is pretty good. If you're like me and actually want the world to make sense and have some measure of depth, don't waste your time. The world of Cairn, to which the eponymous apocalyptic event occured, is fairly bizarre. It seems as though the designers had this deep hankering for a game with demons, unknowable abominations from beyond the stars, (this time with CRYSTAL GEM aesthetics!! (no, they're not here to save the day)), magic, kings and emperors, skellingtons, cowboys, witches, shamans, an iterent, persecuted race rather like the Romani, (indeed, the devs chose the name Rohwari, or Rovers, colloquially) cultists in service to the aforementioned demons, zombies, as well as an entirely original pantheon of deities, all at the same time. Spoiler: it doesn't work. Not remotely. That wouldn't be a bad thing, if the writers had a vestigal at best understanding of how religion and faith works, and at worst are from the /r/atheism cadre of thought. The supposed "good" deity, insofar as he is the deity of light, order, and mercy, is called Empyrion, of all things. And the faction that represents him, are, of course, religious extremists. The dog whistle here is for antitheists- "Even the "greatest" of the gods, named after empiricism itself, has evil followers!" That isn't in itself a black mark against the game, but for that to be the game's chief foray into questions of faith, is something I'd expect from a flash game on Newgrounds. That said, the game looks good. The enemy design is on point, especially the demons you meet in the latter part of the game, and the cosmic horror monstrosities (I hasten to say eldrich because that refers to something else, in game). Some of the places you visit in Cairn are deeply memorable, but many others are simply not, or, worse, cut and pasted from somewhere earlier. This dulls the impact of some of my favourite areas. Almost all the place names are limp, and seem to be cribbed from the "Fantasy Place Name Generator 9001"- Homestead, Devil's Crossing, Wightmire, Arkovia, Asterkarn. Others, like Darkvale, barrel into the territory of "I am 13. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are my heroes. I watched shoveldog and laughed. I DEMAND TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY!" Furthermore, the world lacks any nuance. We are told that the Rohwari are considered petty thieves by many, but we're given no evidence. All but nobody says that they are, the game just tells you so. We're also told that they're good boys who are pacifists and who will never go to war due to their shamantic, animistic religion- yet like any other faction they're perfectly willing to pay you to kill things for them. The "Death's Bannermen" former penal batallion, now ex-Imperial Fist (since the empire collapsed) and Humanity's Last Hope!! wants you to murder a witch due to supersititons, but they're never detailed further than "witch bad". Surely it would be better to perhaps cooperate with the witch, to set aside differences for the good of humanity? In the third act, the game lets you choose between the religious extremists who I mentioned above, who've drawn their inspiration from a Tempar-style monastic military order, and The Order of Death's Vigil (yes, seriously), who are necromancers (also horribly persecuted). The former want to purge the world in healing fire. The latter want to ressurect the dead to aid in the reconstruction. And there isn't room for two of them in this 'ere Cairn. Every rivalry, every character, every faction is contrived. Conflict is forced. The Aetherials, whose colour is (guess what?) electric-teal-green, aka Otherworldly Pigment #12, are in this world because something something long before humans something something perfect time to take it back, something something kill/enslave everyone. The Cult of C'thon are a comically, ludicrously evil blood cult who want to bring blood and obsidian demons into this world. Yet they seem to have a near-endless supply of members, parents and children, who have willingly signed up. That there are that many amoral, sadistic anti-natalists in Cairn is shocking. A cult that all but straight-up tells you that it wants you, so that it can drain you of your blood should not, in any situation, receive such a large number of adherents. Nobody has credible motiviations outside of survival. And yet when you look past all this, there's something of an interesting world hiding in the cracks. I like the Devotion system, whereby you gain bonuses and abilities by alloting shrine points into constellations, making up some basis of a symbolic order. But that's all we see of it. I love it when worlds invent their own swear words. Taff, for instance, in Thief, is deeply charming. Here, the word is slith, meaning, well, I'm sure you can guess. Slith, ingame, are tribalistic snake people, the Frankenstinian results of man Dabbling Where He Ought Not To. They come out of holes in the ground, called slithholes. It's great. But then it goes away and is barely mentioned ever again. That's another common thread in this game. None of the plots, side quests, or characters have personality. Legendary items are only legendary insofar as they have good stats and a cool name. The reason I'm so hard on this, is that if you're going to spend about 80 hours per character in a world, it better be a place worth exploring. But none of that is what you're looking for in an ARPG. You want Combat! Blood! Violence! Cool abilities that cater to your inner Timmy. That, this game has in spades. The Mastery system, where you pick two classes and make your build from there, is a handmedown from the sperm donor of this game, Titan Quest (that is, post the collapse of IronLore, some of the devs who worked on Titan Quest wanted to make another ARPG and did so). It's a handmedown, yes, but it's inspired, and pretty fun. The two other inherited traits from TQ (and also, therefore, from Diablo 2) are the resistance system, here fleshed out further, (there is fire, and burning damage, cold and forstburn, etc, and a whole pallette of resistances and corresponding ways to deal damage) and the loot system- Common, Magic, Rare, Epic and Legendary, in increasing order of scarcity and Ability to do Cool Stuff. It's a delight to find your first Epic weapon, but the joy soon dulls. Ibid for Legendaries. The combat is satisfying in the same way that a kebab is, at 2am, after the 5th beer of the night: great in the moment, something you find unsubstantial and feel disgusting about in hindsight. This is probably a problem endemic to ARPGs, due to the skinner box nature of the underlying mechanics. That said, I kept coming back to it, time and again. So if you want a game for this summer that has enough depth to fool you into believing that there's something there, and is otherwise near mindless clicking- here it is. Come and play.