Broken Roads Reviews
Broken Roads neglects its best ideas, padding out its runtime with fetch quests that leave you asking "why am I here?" for all the wrong reasons.
A disappointing RPG with interesting but poorly executed ideas, Broken Roads lives up to its name in all the wrong ways.
There's half of an amazing game in Broken Roads. Trouble is you have to play the other half.
"Many of the mechanics aren't quite developed enough to feel meaningful"
Ultimately my time with Broken Roads didn’t light up any of the parts of my brain that video games typically do on some level or another. There’s some promise at first with its distinct, all-encompassing cultural flavor. But the scenario holding up the setting only struggled to capture my interest. Combat was a similar vibe, feeling like doing chores in the middle of reading a middle of the road novel in a crowded genre. While cool on paper the morality system did more harm than good, overloading the dialogue and getting in the way of character and personality. Nothing in Broken Roads felt bad or, well, broken. But whenever I played it, unless I was chuckling at the slang translator doing something weird I was always thinking of other things I would rather be doing.
Broken Roads has an engaging post-apocalyptic setting that, while a bit familiar, manages to still retain its own identity thanks to its Australian flair, it also has some interesting gameplay ideas and some engaging choices that allow you to impact the world around you. The game is not without flaws though: combat is clunky and unbalanced, the early phases are far too linear and, perhaps more importantly for a game focused on narrative, its characters often fail to leave a strong impression and its narrative never quite reaches the incredible heights of games like Disco Elysium or Pentiment.
Review in Italian | Read full review
If you're looking for a game with tough choices and challenging combat to get lost in, you could do much worse than Broken Roads.
In the moment, Broken Roads offers up creativity in spades, but the bigger picture story - combined with weak combat and a dry take on moral choice - never coalesces into anything especially entertaining.
While Broken Roads' combat system is not bad, it does feel a bit lacking when compared to other titles. The map sizes are rather small, the enemies and allies are not that varied, and there does not seem to be a lot to do, especially in the early game. Most combat encounters simply boil down to moving to a spot, shooting a gun, and then waiting for the next turn to come around. There are very few exciting abilities, but it feels like most characters play the same. Things improve as players progress further through the game, but nailing down the early game combat is important to keep players engaged, and it feels like Broken Roads fails to do that.
Broken Roads delivers an engaging exploration of competing ethical systems in the guise of a CRPG. A respectful and authentic setting and characters sweeten the deal, making philosophy fun. The writing is mostly spot-on and entertaining. All that is good news for fans of the genre. Less successful: the game’s awkwardly blended or superficial combat and RPG mechanics. They’re not great, but they don’t seriously undermine the core of what makes Broken Roads unique.
Broken Roads looks from Australian shores toward some even recent classics of the CRPG genre and reworks a rather known formula through the lens of philosophy. The juxtaposition is a not so obvious success: in fact, philosophy is not used as a mere label to offer a re-brand of something already seen, but a g that moves both the game mechanics and the narrative progression.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Despite the promise of its setting and philosophically informed morality system, Broken Roads fails to set itself apart from or come remotely close to matching the many post-apocalyptic games it's inspired by.
Broken Roads has elements of a great RPG, but they're buried beneath a broken quest system, tedious combat and numerous bugs.
Ultimately, I think there’s too much here to fully judge the game off one playthrough. Those who dive headlong into this somewhat niche presentation of Australiana are sure to find joy amongst the rough. For gamers like me, boring min-maxers who like to “get it right” the first time, things can be a bit harder – but there’s still plenty here to love.
Broken Roads attempts to put an Australian spin on the classic Fallout formula. Unfortunately it succeeds just as much at aping vibes from the modern iterations of those games, as just like each of them, it’s also releasing in a dramatically buggy state. At this stage, I can’t in good faith recommend a purchase of the game at launch.
It's a little pushy for boasting about freedom, but it'll definitely give you something to think about.
Despite its rather simple combat system, Broken Roads is a fantastic new entry in the RPG genre. It offers up a fresh take on morality systems with its use of a moral compass, and the game's setting alone does an incredible amount of heavy lifting in keeping things interesting.
Broken Roads is a cult classic in the making. It hearkens to the best parts of games like Fallout 2, and many other CRPGs of the '90s, and it fits right in alongside classic Fallout and the Wasteland games. It’s flawed in some areas, with bugs in spots, but it offers tremendous role-playing and storytelling that make it more than worth your time to spend upwards of thirty or more hours in post-apocalyptic Australia.
There aren’t too many truly authentic games set in Australia, made by Australians, telling Australian stories. Broken Roads is one, and it is one of the most different and interesting games you’ll play this year on that basis alone. Yes there are more refined RPGs out there, but none of those will take you on a crash course through Australian mannerisms while delivering a compelling narrative of human resilience, community, weakness and savagery.
The major issue is, for something so potentially grand and promising, there’s just no fuel to keep the fire going. You find handfuls of tinder and the occasional decent stick to build a little heat, but when the most exciting moments come from shooting massive spiders and finding innovative ways to run around the map, it’s just a bit of a splodge that doesn’t ever quite find its shape.