Drova: Forsaken Kin review — Survival and solidarity

Drova: Forsaken Kin is a dark fantasy action RPG with hints of Celtic mythology. You must learn to survive in a harsh new reality while also earning the trust of one of two factions. I had a mostly positive experience playing. While some parts of Drova exceeded my expectations, there were also some issues that kept the game from reaching its full potential.

Your character comes from a village that is struggling, several people dying each winter. One day, a group of warriors come back with a mysterious red crystal. Two druids hope to use the power of this crystal to reach Drova, an otherworldly land of peace and prosperity. You decide to follow them and are the only one of the group to survive the journey. Once in Drova, you meet the two major groups in the land: the village of Nemeton, who want to turn Drova into the Land of Legends that it’s built up to be; and the Remnants, who want to escape the harsh world they’ve found themselves in. You meet allies, fight wild beasts, learn useful recipes for crafting, gain new skills, and eventually choose who you want to join. 

Drova emphasizes hard work and growth. You start out as a nobody with only the rags on your back, but you gain experience by hunting and running errands for people. With some dedication, you become a warrior that makes the land a more prosperous place. There is a lot to see and do with 40 total hours of gameplay. Drova also highlights the importance of community. Before you can join the Nemeton or the Remnants, you have to prove yourself by helping out in the farm or the mines, respectively. This leads to a lot of simple, but unique interactions with all the different NPCs. Your actions also have consequences in this world. For example, people don’t like seeing you with your weapon out. You can commit crimes, but if you do, people no longer want anything to do with you until you earn forgiveness. 

I appreciate that the game doesn’t hold your hand too much when it comes to survival. You have to have a winning strategy in mind against enemies, whether that’s keeping your distance and hitting them with a slingshot or getting up close with a makeshift sword and shield. However, you aren’t completely on your own. The game gives you lots of advice through dialogue. There are also maps, signs, and different landmarks that give you a solid idea of where you’re going so you don’t get lost. If you don’t like to fight, just stay on the path and you’ll be relatively safe. 

While the premise and worldbuilding is solid, it is hard to get invested in the game at the start for a couple reasons. First, some of the wild animals are too powerful. The rats and flies are easy to defeat, but there are also creatures like wolves and large bloodflies that are more difficult to face off against. It’s easy to die in this game and while you can always try again, it would have made more sense to gradually dial up the difficulty of the enemies so you are more evenly-matched. You start off in the Woodcutters’ Camp, so perhaps enemies that are close in proximity to the camp could be easy and the more difficult ones could be farther away. As is, there are enemies that can kill you in three hits or less from the start. You will also find trading and obtaining new recipes difficult because of how much everything costs. Coins are hard to come by in those first hours of gameplay, so it’s tough to buy things and barter. 

However, the biggest problem with Drova is its technical issues. While playing, the game came across an error and shut itself down a few times, bringing me back to the main menu of the Switch. During other moments, the map fades out, leaving nothing but a blank purple landscape to traverse, killing the immersion. The most frustrating part was that there were moments where I would start up my save and a bug would prevent my character from moving or interacting with the world at all, so I had no choice but to reset to an earlier save. Two times, both of my save slots were corrupted, so I had to reset the game altogether and lose a few hours of progress each time. The best solution I found was switching the type of game save from Normal to Immersive. Even though the game recommends the former, my character didn’t freeze up at all with Immerse saves. (The game still reset itself due to errors a couple times.)

If the gameplay itself was boring, these errors would warrant a lower score. Still, I can’t ignore how invested I was while playing. I wanted to see my character progress and find out where they belonged in this unforgiving world. I also wanted to learn more skills, craft new recipes, and build relationships with all the different NPCs. The game is simple but what it does is effective. 

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