Broken Roads

Broken Roads is a charming, phenomenally written, and incredibly engaging RPG about life in what remains of the Down Under, and is equally likely to break your heart and put a smile on your face with its wonder storytelling and characters.

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.

Broken Roads is a video game that shows how quickly the ambitions of a development team can outrun its ability to deliver. The Outback setting is great, but the narrative threads can interact in weird ways. The Moral Compass is impressive as a concept but can feel restrictive in practice. Combat is just stiff enough to feel like a chore. Bugs and glitches sometimes interfere with quest progress. I love the sections where the focus is on talking to people, clicking on the environment for some extra lore, and thinking about where to source things people need to improve their lives. The narrator greatly enhances emotional moments. Broken Roads has heart and good systems. Players who like the setting and the RPG genre should play it if they are comfortable with some jank, while others should wait for a few patches before buying it.

Despite its rather simple combat system, Broken Roads is a fantastic new entry in the RPG genre.

You may trample your own path through the post-apocalypse, but you must be ready to accept the consequences. In exploring this concept, and allowing human morals and values to shape each individual journey through the post-apocalypse, the tale of Broken Roads lands with a devastating impact.

Broken Roads is an ode to the cRPGs of old, but it’s also a step forward for the genre, showing that the ‘90s approach still has a place today. The turn-based combat is punchy and responsive, the art style is gorgeous, and the roleplaying capabilities brought about by its revolutionary morality system lift Broken Roads out of the shadows of its inspirations and into its own spotlight.

Broken Roads is certainly a tribute to Outback Australia as much as it is to role-playing games of the past, and as an Aussie myself, I found this refreshing.The bleak surrounds and the harshness of many of the characters really set the tone of the post-apocalyptic storyline. The Moral Compass and the ability to level up your character’s abilities in any way you choose ensures that the game feels more personalised as you travel from one location to the next. And although the questing can feel somewhat laborious at times, and the citizens can be somewhat abrupt, there is a story behind every interaction - one that provides hope for those that have struggled to survive the 'wide brown land' they call home.

Overall, the ways Broken Roads challenged me were fascinating and frustrating, sometimes simultaneously. It definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, though I suspect some will adore it. If you’re the reflective type, it’s sure to get the gears turning. If nothing else, it’s much cheaper than taking Philosophy 101 at a university.

In the end, it’s best to look at Broken Roads as the answer to “What if Fallout but Australia?” Fans of any CRPG will immediately recognise a lot of what Broken Roads is going for, and those with more old school tastes will feel right at home nestled deep in the West Australian outback.

Broken Roads is an old-school role-playing game that draws heavily from revered classics like Wasteland, Fallout (especially in terms of settings), and Planescape: Torment. With its well-established and ever-relevant mechanics, it manages to engage veteran players, primarily due to its intriguing plot and multiple-choice dialogues, which allow for extensive replayability. It’s a shame that certain aspects are neglected, although this can be partially justified by the available resources: with five years of development, more could have been achieved.

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.

If you're looking for a CRPG that values dialogue and has a compelling story, Broken Roads will give you what you want. However, in order to love it, you really need to be able to overlook its flaws.

Broken Roads is a solid effort that falls short of capitalizing on its central mechanics. While it takes some ambitious steps, it doesn’t realize them in execution. Community engagement suggests patches will address the big rocks soon, but know that it’s a moving target thus far.

Broken Roads has improved quite a bit since I played it in early April, but still needs a bit more work to be an easy recommendation. In its current state, I can recommend it, but it is a few updates away from being something special. It definitely needs a demo because I can’t imagine many people will give it a shot at its current asking price given the launch reception.

The hand-drawn artwork is nice to look at, the turn-based tactical combat can be incredibly challenging and rewarding, and players will feel like they have an impact on the world. Broken Roads is held back a bit by its shortcomings, but those looking for something to sink their teeth into may still want to take it for a spin.

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.

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.

While it does have some stumbles it is an RPG that does away with the traditional good/bad decisions and has room for those moments where even the stalwart paragon of justice has to get down in the mud to get his way.

There's half of an amazing game in Broken Roads. Trouble is you have to play the other half.

Broken Roads offers a rich post-apocalyptic world with complex characters and philosophical debates, reminiscent of Wasteland and Disco Elysium. However, it suffers from unfulfilled ambitions and lacks depth in gameplay mechanics. Despite memorable moments and intriguing moral choices, it's hindered by simplistic combat and repetitive missions. Overall, it's a flawed but engaging experience for those willing to overlook its shortcomings.

Broken Roads is narratively competent, philosophically aware and relatively complex in terms of dialogues, while the moral compass mechanic stimulates the player intellectually. However, all the other elements of the game are not as exciting (or even solid) and gameplay is marred by bugs.

An unusual idea with an intriguing setting, but immature mechanics.

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 is a game that I wish I liked more. The authentic Aussie identity which shines through its dialogue, voice acting, and art is a joy to behold, and its exploration of morality through the application of classical moral frameworks in a post-apocalyptic setting is a terrific idea that brings a unique spin to played-out moral choice systems. Unfortunately, underwhelming combat and loading screen-laden fetch quests definitely hold it back, and the presence of game-breaking bugs make it only a tentative recommendation as long as you keep those aspects in mind.

Although a passionate display of Drop Bear Bytes’ native culture and heritage, and a beautiful visual and audio experience, Broken Roads is stuck as a missed opportunity where its shortcomings outweigh the diamond-in-the-rough potential.

Broken Roads is what comes out of giving too much attention to cool ideas (moral compass, great dialogue and descriptions) and forgetting to make a game out of them. This is an RPG with glimmers of genius that are overshadowed by tons of unfinished elements.

Although the Australian setting is good, and it occasionally shows potential, Broken Roads is a clumsy party-based RPG with mediocre combat, pacing issues, and bland fetch quests.

Broken Roads provides a strong draw with its Aussie take on the post-apocalypse and the philosophical strands running through its open-ended role-playing. Rather than leading to an interesting destination, however, these roads really are somewhat broken, with systems that don't feel properly integrated, bizarre leaps of logic and even bugs that lead you into dead ends.

Broken Roads is a gorgeous Aussie world undone by incurious writing, ambitious but poorly implemented ideas, and unstable performance issues.

Broken Roads lives up to its name, as it is teeming with breaks in both gameplay and content. And of all things, the interesting morality system disrupts the role-playing instead of deepening it.

This classic RPG is one you can afford to miss. Despite its well-executed stylization and intriguing setting, it doesn't have much to offer. The story is uninteresting and often downright misleading. Continuity is so broken that most of the time you'll be wondering whether it's just poorly written quests or if something has gone terribly wrong. The moral compass is too restrictive, as are the outright illogical quests. Unenjoyable battles are just the proverbial rotten cherry on top of this stale cake.

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 is an ambitious RPG that can’t meet the expectations it sets for itself. It asks you to invest in an intricate morality system only to not end up making good use of it, giving you choices that don’t lead to much. A lot of this could be forgiven if the story held up, but there really isn’t much of a story to begin with, despite the philosophical angle Broken Roads tries very hard to get across. Couple this disappointing journey’s interesting but poorly executed ideas with pointless and often busted combat, and Broken Roads lives up to its name in all the wrong ways.

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.

Ultimately, we can talk about a flop. I'm playing an underdeveloped and thoughtless game, requiring boring, time-consuming tasks. Messy, both in terms of the script and gameplay. This poses further problems – because moving the plot requires wandering around the locations aimlessly, and we cannot direct the attack at the right enemy when in combat. However, if someone has a lot of patience and understanding and would like to spend many hours looking for secrets and delving into philosophical topics, they can give Broken Roads a chance. Nevertheless, I warn you, even after forgiving shortcomings, I would not see potential for anything good here.