A sprawling open-world RPG that trusts you to get lost. The combat takes a few hours to click, but once it does, few games this year reward curiosity so generously.
Every so often a role-playing game arrives that seems allergic to hand-holding, and Ashfall Covenant is proudly one of them. There is no glowing trail to follow, no quest marker begging for your attention. Instead there is a world — cold, layered and quietly confident — that assumes you are clever enough to read it.
The opening act is the weakest stretch. For the first few hours the systems feel deliberately withheld, and the combat, which later becomes a highlight, reads as stiff and unconvincing. Push past it. Around the point you unlock your second discipline the whole design snaps into focus, and the fighting reveals a rhythm built on positioning and patience rather than raw numbers.
What lingers is the writing. Side characters remember your choices across dozens of hours, and questlines fork in ways that feel authored rather than procedural. It is a long game that never pads itself, and its capital city — technical hiccups aside — is one of the most convincing spaces we have explored this year.
