Broken Roads released to mostly negative reviews and impressions

Broken Roads celebrated its launch on PC and consoles with a new trailer unveiled during the Triple-i Initiative Showcase. This post-apocalyptic CRPG, set in the Australian outback, features over 400,000 words of dialogue, a complex story that requires difficult decisions to be made, and a new approach to the moral dialogue system. The Australian game development team at Drop Bear Bytes is led by Colin McComb, known for his work on games such as Fallout 2, Planescape: Torment, Wasteland 2 and Torment: Tides of Numenera.

However, the release of this game was followed by a series of very negative reviews and ratings, both from critics and players. Currently, there are only 43.29% positive reviews, of which 38 are negative, that is, there are a total of 64 user reviews on Steam. Additionally, the game peaked at just 570 concurrent players in the last 18 hours. On Metacritic, the game has a score of 58, with only 32% of reviews being positive.

The main reason for the poor reviews lies in the game's slow pacing with unconvincing important decisions, and a world that feels desolate where most NPCs have limited dialogue and a general lack of interaction. Also, most of the characters you talk to are vendors, while the combat lack depth and complexity with interesting but poorly executed ideas.

Firstly, the story feels like it’s an act short, wrapping up almost as soon as you uncover what’s really going on in Kalgoorlie, and what exactly is at stake for your community and Australia at large. But it also means a lot of the game’s more familiar CRPG systems are undercooked. The combat system is an incredibly basic turn-based affair, lacking the weapon, enemy or ability variety to produce interesting tactical scenarios.

PC Gamer

The question arises whether it is wise to trust the reviews of players and critics. When Maddmike, the game director of Broken Roads, starts leaving comments on reviews, it's clear that something is wrong. Despite this, there are many positive reviews highlighting the simplicity of gameplay, distinctive isometrics, good direction, understandable combat, and a compelling but not particularly deep story. A moral compass allows you to weave your own story, i.e. a character is not just an empty vessel. Perhaps in this case, it is still worth waiting for the developers to fix certain things before diving into this game yourself.