Many games have a notable route to release, and VED, from the small development team at Karaclan, is one of the extreme examples. Beginning life as a 2D Souls-like platformer with gorgeous, hand-drawn sprites, the game slowly evolved over 12(!) years to its current RPG format, complete with a complex, branching narrative and turn-based combat. This extended development has required huge design shifts, plus migrations through several game engines over the last decade or more. Although the graphics are as eye-catching and detailed as the original concept, the branching story suffers from poor event cohesion, wonky translation, and an inability to clearly place the lore of the world. Coupled with a lightweight character progression system, this is an RPG where looks may flatter to deceive.
VED tries to do something special with its narrative setup. Cyrus, our blind protagonist, lives in the city of Micropolis with his aunt, and begins the game looking for work at the headquarters of the local corporate giant. He soon manifests an unusual power to teleport to another world interconnected with his human world. This other world is filled with floating islands, strange creatures, and magical artifacts. As Cyrus tries to understand this magical world and its denizens, he realizes that different factions in the human world are also interested in it.
These include a powerful corporation, Impulse, who hoard the magical artifacts of the hidden world to sell powerful technological innovations with similar abilities, as well as a group of Sorcerers who want to establish magic in the human world for all to benefit freely. There’s also the Veds, a sort of anti-magic group that uses their powers to keep the boundaries between the worlds separate, putting them at odds with the Sorcerers. Add in Cyrus’ own motivations and historical events from thirty years earlier that influence the plot, and VED has a potent blend of possible narratives and branching choices.
VED splits its structure into visual novel-style dialogues and turn-based combat. Dialogue choices are frequent, and even what seem like small selections can greatly impact later events. But after the first few chapters, the story begins to buckle under the weight of all these interwoven threads. The cohesion of events breaks down, and it’s difficult to understand why one thing happened and not another. This is exacerbated by weaknesses in the writing and translation.
In short, there are some baffling lines, both in an attempt to provide characterization and to expand and explain lore. I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear “Holy mushrooms!” from a tough-guy character at the point of a significant plot revelation. Nor did I think Cyrus opining that he’s “still a regular person” despite his “plusses and minuses” after a girl notices his blindness sounded like anything an actual human would remark to another. It fits that mere seconds after meeting this unknown character at the door to his aunt’s apartment, there’s an option to call her back as: “She sure has a beautiful voice. I wonder if we’ll ever meet again…But what if I rush after her right now and say something?” This sort of illogical, broken conversation is common and detracts from the story and characters at the heart of it. As a result, the pathway through the plot ranges from merely confusing to outright nonsensical. And while I give the developers credit for providing a full English voice-over, most of the delivery feels like the actors weren’t sure where the characters were going either.
Some narrative choices are tied to the character stats system. Cyrus has scores for Strength, Magic, and Dexterity, which improve as he uses them to make checks against different exploration or choice elements. For these checks, the game adds Cyrus’ current stat value to that of a large d20 die that rolls on screen. The results determine the next stage of the narrative or exploration. The results of the check may deny access to a specific plot route or, in rarer cases, cause you to fail a narrative combat event. There’s also a basic measure of how strongly different characters fear, respect, or feel friendly toward Cyrus, influencing dialogue choices. Even so, those craving more complexity in character customization may be disappointed.
Cyrus explores the magical world through a series of nodes containing exploration, conversation, or combat elements. In combat, he relies on a health point pool and abilities mapped to a hotbar at the bottom of the screen. Conflict only ever involves Cyrus, and he has a range of ability points to spend on his offensive and defensive arsenal. As well as dealing magic or dexterity-based damage and adding a range of status effects, abilities always shift Cyrus to the left or right on the combat screen. This leads to extra strategies, as monster attacks are stronger, or have a greater chance to miss, depending on where they are targeting during any given round. For example, Cyrus might note a monster is targeting the middle of the combat area, and use an ability to strike the creature while moving two spaces to the left. At the start of the monster’s round, it deals less damage to Cyrus because he has shifted to this flank. Abilities can only be assigned to a given section of the combat area, and there are limited slots in each, so you must think carefully about which abilities to equip where.
On the exploration nodes, Cyrus can activate both blessings and curses that remain with him for the duration of the story. In every subsequent round of combat, there’s a chance that one of these accumulated statuses could trigger. It’s a novel way of tying in narrative decisions with combat consequences and increases the variety of a single playthrough: succeeding in a tricky battle because your extra action point blessing triggered three times in a row is pretty cool.
Combat is quick and efficient, with most information being presented clearly, including the important option to view enemies’ upcoming actions. Combat animations are stylish, with Cyrus striking different hit and attack poses as he delivers or takes damage. The main downside is the lack of variety: there aren’t many enemy types, and many abilities feel similar in application. There are several status effects, like increased critical chance or damage dealt, but combat mostly defaults to a slugfest.
Cyrus learns new abilities at a small settlement named Dawn in the magical world. A range of fae folk populates this nascent village, and Cyrus will meet more of them as he progresses through his journey. Once found and directed to Dawn, these fellows unlock the opportunity for Cyrus to build structures in the village that offer additional abilities. It’s a simple system, but it provides a reason to explore thoroughly and engage in battle, since combat is the primary way to earn the currency required to build. New building graphics do appear once construction finishes, but no further settlement systems exist. Much like character progression and combat, there’s not much crunch to engage with.
There’s no doubt VED looks great, from its overall design to small animations of its narrative scenes, to ability animations and monster designs. Everything benefits from the hand-drawn ethos, and little touches like shifting eyes, blinks, and sways lend the world and the characters a lived-in, grubby feel. Cyrus is blind at the start of the game, which is reflected visually, with his perceived view of others literally colored by their personalities.
On his excursions to the magical world, the setting shows off its dream-like backgrounds of ancient forests and fallen palaces. Cyrus teleports through these landscapes by shifting from one 2D plane to another, and it’s a neat way to progress to the next branching narrative, exploration, or combat point. Monsters and setting backdrops are detailed and steeped in dark fantasy, with plenty of dead trees, glowing runes, and gibbering mouths. The developers have pulled in assets from their original 2D platform levels here, and it’s cool to see they’ve managed to keep a link to their original designs from over a decade ago. It’s worth mentioning the musical soundtrack is pretty diverse, with plenty of low-fi throbbing synth tracks and ethereal synths accompanied by the odd choral mood piece. There’s some nicely chosen sounds and pads and this fits the brooding nature of the game well.
VED deserves credit for its gorgeous graphics, workable combat, and underlying lore, but there are significant caveats. Although it proposes to take you on a journey between two worlds and at every point in between, the game makes staying on any path difficult, and trying to find the links between them takes more work than it should. You can find a dozen or so hours of playtime with VED, and many more to explore every possible route or action of consequence. (And if you’re on the fence, there is a free prologue, VED: Purification, available on Steam.) Perhaps with a few patches targeting the script and the wonkier translation, this could be something quite pleasant in the genre. But much like Cyrus, you just might find yourself struggling to understand what’s going on in either of its worlds.
