I think one of the most tragic things I run into at times with indie titles, are games that have many elements in them that I like and enjoy to a degree, but that just don’t quite seem to work in the end. You can appreciate the artistry, some solid design, and components that work on a general level, but it’s almost like when everything got assembled there were a few too many pieces forced into place, leaving the finished product just a little wonky. Baladins, despite its interesting storylines and host of odd characters that you’ll encounter, and allowing you to play with friends, is one such title for me (and my wife).

At its core, the idea seems to be that there’s a time-eating dragon that you and your team of general do-gooders are trying to stop. In order to do this you’ll ultimately need to satiate its hunger with items you’ll collect over the course of 6 weeks. If you fail to satisfy his hunger he’ll consume all of that time again, effectively having you start all over again in a Groundhog Day-esque loop. While in principle it may not be a bad idea, with one benefit being that you can enjoy relatively predictable play sessions that will last less than an hour (varying depending on how many people you have playing), in practice that also brings some frustrations to the table as well.

At the start of every run you’ll get to choose which character you’ll play as, each corresponding to a set of attributes like strength, creativity, and more that will aid you in your quest. Each turn you’ll only have a limited number of movement points to get around, and action points that you can use to talk to people, participate in stat-building guaranteed activities, or challenges where you’ll need to roll to see whether you’re successful or not. If you happen to have a high enough stat in the target category, these can be a great way to build up some gold coins or boost your stat further, but if your stats are low you’ll risk wasting an action point or even having a stat diminish further. Your goal though is to talk to people, understand their problems, and then try to solve them. What you’ll often find is that there are then chains of tasks you’ll need to complete, with success in the first one opening the door to success with another, and so on.

This is where some frustrations with the game’s structure kick in. While you won’t lose all of your progress when the dragon resets time (again), you can only keep 1 item from the previous run so there’s a chance you could lose a hard-won item if you’re not careful. What can be frustrating though is that many quests don’t feel very rewarding when you complete them, with ones concerning the dragon in particular tending to fail spectacularly, making your efforts along the way feel wasted. Adding more people does help move things along more quickly in some ways, but honestly waiting for everyone to work through moving, and then deciding on tasks, and then talking to people can get pretty dull to watch as you’re stuck being idle. The game absolutely has some pretty good bones underlying the experience, but I’m just not sold on how it all comes together in the end.