Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest Critic Reviews

Druidstone draws inspiration from a variety of genres (even tabletop boardgames) and combines all those elements elegantly. Its whimsical writing and beautiful (Trine-sque) art should not fool you. This is a game which will put your tactical planning skills to the test and demand forward thinking in the development of your characters. Another spectacular result from the makers of the Legend of Grimrock series.

Although the story and characters are nothing new to RPGs, the strategy gameplay systems truly stand out in their seemingly simple execution.

Ultimately, Druidstone is a challenging and rewarding tactical-RPG with plenty of charm to keep it engaging in-between brutally tough encounters. It can border on unfair at times, but the steady stream of progression and versatile combat ensures it remains satisfying. Ctrl Alt Ninja clearly demonstrates their development expertise with this finely tuned and tightly crafted adventure that’ll have you brainstorming turns for hours.

Druidstone is pretty great but not without flaws. Fortunately, the unforgiving strategic combat, charming art style and light puzzles sprinkled in between the fights, far exceed the balancing issues. You just need to keep playing it beyond the first 5-6 missions, you'll find that Druidstone is a hidden gem.

Druidstone is a perfect entry point for RPG fans that are interested in this style of tactical game without having to invest several dozens of hours in a longer experience that they may not enjoy. It doesn't offer a lot in terms of unique themes or robust storytelling, but it's balanced out by an impressive variety of encounter designs and flexibility for different playstyles. On top of these strengths, it also offers some surprisingly good musical scores and environmental art. It's a strong overall package that, while brief, was a joy to play through.

A competent as well as challenging tactical RPG from former Legend of Grimrock developers.

Druidstone plays it quite safe when it comes to the usual complexity of skills and battle tactics that we see in games of the genre. Nevertheless, this might as well be considered its strong point for those players that would like to approach turn-based fantasy games, but would like a more simplified entry point in terms of rules, status effects etc.

Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest is not a bad game, but it has nothing really new to thrill you.

Combat is rather simplistic, but effective: situations and objectives vary greatly, and each fight requires its own tactics and equipment. Unfortunately, it’s also the best part of the game – although writers managed to draft an intriguing world, they failed to populate it with memorable characters and stories.

As it is, this is a perfectly reasonable portion of carefully planned fantasy stabbing, which was enough fun (once I started playing properly, at least) to make me reevaluate my whole position on puzzle elements in tactical games. Hell, it might even be time to postpone my next marathon slog with XCOM, and revisit Into the Breach.