Vendir: Plague of Lies – Medieval-Fantasy Roleplaying in a Devastated Kingdom!

“But how can we win, when fools can be kings? Don’t waste your time, or time will waste you.” – Knights of Cydonia, MUSE

Pros

• Solid amount of classes to specialize into, including multiclassing. Each has a distinct role on the battlefield, and all have their uses. Respec is available.
• Satisfying exploration, with a high amount of secret interactions, unmarked quests, puzzles, treasures, and hidden bosses to find and defeat.
• The Hard difficulty really means HARD, and will test the mettle of even seasoned turn-based veterans.
• Combat is enjoyable, varied enough, and has a good level of depth with the high amount of cross-class skills and effects combos.
• Investigation-like quests, puzzles and dialogue-based challenges improve the variety of the main gameplay loop and feels interesting.

Cons

• It’s a mobile port, with all the issues deriving from it. Most noticeably, the graphics are low quality for 2024 standards in nearly all departments.
• AI translated dialogues without voice acting. Bizarre sentences and wording aren’t uncommon; this detracts from immersion and readability.
• The main story isn’t very exciting, nor does it stand out for any particularly good reason. It’s an average, clichèd tale you’ll soon forget, as are its characters.
• Most quests are boring fetch tasks or kill tasks. Few of them stand out in uniqueness, but those are rare exceptions. The rewards aren’t exciting, either.
• Poor enemy archetype variety: most foes, including bosses, will have little variation in their skills or movesets. Don’t expect unique or exciting encounters.

Bugs & Issues

• The control scheme and UI have several minor issues with scaling or handling.
• In some cases, quest markers point to the wrong location.
• You will resume in a different location than the one you made the last save at.
• Rarely, your character may get stuck inside object collisions.

Machine Specs

• i9 13980HX
• 64GB RAM DDR5
• RTX 4090
• NvME SSD
• 3840×2160

Content & Replay Value

It took me 38 hours to complete Vendir: Plague of Lies (VPOL), taking considerable extra time to clear all the side content I could find. Despite some branching choices in quests and build variance, I don’t see enough content to warrant another playthrough, as most of it is linear.

Is It Worth Buying?

Yes. The price of 15€ is very good for the content offered, and its fair quality warrants a purchase even without a discount, if you’re into turn-based combat.

Verdict: Good

A competently-executed RPG that, despite not being particularly innovative, offers solid gameplay that will satisfy fans of this genre; an overall enjoyable experience.

Vendir: Plague of Lies – In-Depth Analysis

Writing & Worldbuilding

Set in a medieval fantasy world where monsters and magic are common concepts, Vendir: Plague fo Lies puts you in the shoes of a lower-class peasant, living a miserable life in a city ruled by a tyrannical king. Without much preamble on your origins or situation, a hasty chase involving some friends has you on the run from the law, and quickly exiled from the city. Outside, madness and misery are even more predominant, so you’ll have to find a way to survive, and eventually fulfill your manifest destiny.

The writing of both the main story and both main quests is on an average level, at best, leaning to the mediocre side. This is partially due to the AI translation of all dialogues. Certain quests and NPC dialogues are legitimately fun or more nuanced, but in general, nothing is remarkable enough to compose a hooking framework for story and characters. Your companions have little in the way of interaction and opinions, mostly following you as battle minions, but with no personal development and no dialogues about their personal predicaments.

Its medieval fantasy setting is grim and gritty: the concepts of misery and ruin are well-delivered by the bleak palettes and ruined state of the environment, people and locales you’ll visit. Most denizens are in pain, suffering or have some kind of trauma! And will ask you to aid them. Locations are distinct enough, but few are truly remarkable enough to stand out on their own – they all kind of blend in into the same mish-mash of decaying medieval countryside.

Exploration & Secrets

You’ll explore the world on foot, with optional fast travel at fixed carriages, or by using a consumable you can cheaply buy at vendors. Most places and persons of interest will be auto-marked on your map as you explore, however, quest givers won’t be, the same for certain interactions – keen-eyed explorers will be rewarded for their efforts. With its fixed isometric perspective, it won’t be hard to spot chests or other interactable items, such as resources to gather to then use in crafting. There are some secret interactions with unmarked NPCs and items, which can lead to interesting developments, but rarely to worthwhile rewards. The presence of many invisible walls makes exploration feel more limiting and tracked than expected in an RPG. Exploring will also lead to random encounters with enemies, as customary for the genre.

Combat System & Bosses

Fights play out in a turn-based fashion, with each character having one action to use a single skill. You can freely choose who acts in which order, as there’s no turn queue. Your foes can do the same. The maximum fight size is 4v4, with some battles having multiple waves of enemies consequently. There’s a vast array of skills, attacks and moves to choose from, ranging from DoT to debuffs to support, other than the good old damaging ones, each with various elemental types your enemies might be resistant or weak to – or also be made weak to thanks to debuffs. The depth in combat is of a good level – the various class skills can be combined in clever ways to stack multiple effects and then use the right skill to deal devastating damage in a single strike, something that becomes almost mandatory to defeat tougher optional enemies. Enemy AI has a decent level of cooperation between one another, with support characters acting as they should to buff their DPS and tanks and keeping them alive, as expected.

Bosses are, usually, tougher versions of normal enemies that mostly don’t have any special moves or unique conditions to their fights. Some do, but rarely. They’re tough and rewarding in terms of XP and item drops, however they could definitely have been more nuanced. Brutals, optional bosses found throughout the world, are by far the deadliest variant of them all, and not only the best equipment but also respecs and tailored gear may be needed to defeat some of them.

Character Progression & Equipment

Your whole party gains the same XP and levels at the same time. Gear doesn’t have stat requirements, but instead often gives stats so that your characters can have better scaling with their weapon and abilities. A vast branching skill tree allows specialization for you and your companions, in classes like the support-oriented Witch Doctor, the beefy Warrior and many more. Remember: you can always multi-class and take two branches to make a more flexible character, and if a build turns sour, you can always respect, although later on at a specific NPC. Equipment is color-coded by rarity, and unlike other RPGS, neither quests nor enemies will be your main source of good gear – merchants are, so get to it and farm as much coin as possible from random encounters, don’t skip!

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