Serpent in the Staglands - Oldschool punch in the dick

I'm the gaming equivalent of a hungry pregnant woman. I get cravings. The other day I had this incredible appetite for party-based RPGs. And since I'd rather fuck a cactus than touch any of Beamdog's "enhanced" shit, and since I consider Pillars of Eternity to be very average and highly overrated, I turned to Bioware and Dragon Age: Inquisition. Again. Figured I'd try a jerk inquisitor this time, maybe a mage, got all sorts of awesome ideas, then stopped playing two hours later, because there's too much soul-crushing boredom in between the good bits. Tons upon tons of fucking filler. There's just no way I'm gonna click on any more elfroot in this life.

In my boredom I clicked my way through Steam's suggestions for "party based RPGs". It recommended a bunch of crap made in RPG Maker, Final Fantasy IX (seriously?) and Avernum, which entertains a small but faithful cult of followers, despite being utter shite since their beginning as the Exile series in 1995. It also recommended classics such as Wizardry 6, which is technically correct, but...

yeah...

And then I tripped upon a game titled Serpent in the Staglands. It's largely unknown and has less than a hundred user reviews on Steam, 24% of which are negative due to the game's insane difficulty and lack of user-friendliness. Larger outlets won't even review it, because there's simply no audience for old, old, OLD school pixelated RPGs, which look like this:

It's bleak, depressing and not that fun to look at. Like England.

Like most games, Serpent starts off with a hooded lady, who asks you a bunch of questions. Why would you save a group of people from certain death, which parting gift do you leave behind for some chick you have seduced and so on and so forth. A little bit like the fortune teller at the beginning of the Ultima games. Then you start your adventure as a god, the Moon Lord, who finds himself trapped in a mortal body and no idea how or why. You get to customize said body by choosing from a whole lot of different races, you get to distribute stats and pick your starting abilities and this is the part where I was really glad that the game comes with an extensive, well-written manual.

You may also roll up to four additional party members, though there are tons of mercenaries and NPCs, who are willing to join you if you can't be bothered to create any more toons. NPC followers have their own personality and banter, but they may choose to leave your group for various reasons. Maybe they're afraid to head in a certain direction or their contract with you simply ends. You can then choose to soulbind these characters, robbing them of their free will and forcing them to stay with you. They'll hate you for it, what with you making them your slaves and all, but heyho. I opted for a custom party, tailored down to my personal preferences and play style. No banter here, but at least they're loyal.

Yep, zoomed-out looks even worse.

The starting area doesn't have any decent blacksmiths. Heck, even if it did, your mortal form isn't exactly drowning in riches, so I equipped my party with frying pans and kitchen knives. They rampaged through the woods and beat the shit out of random goblins and foxes like a bunch of angry Gordon Ramsays. "The fucking bass is fucking RAW!" *BAM*
I actually felt pretty smug at the time, because lots of user reviews and forum threads complained about how this game is oh-so hard and people couldn't even kill the stupid foxes. Meanwhile, I pan-slapped them around like a boss and murdered entire legions of chicken-riding goblins. Yes, that's a thing. Combat happens in realtime and can be paused with the space bar.

Dozens of dead noob-level enemies later, my little troupe of adventurers ran into their first bandit. He had a crossbow, a shield and a real sword. He was basically a god. Frying pans could not penetrate his armor. Meanwhile, his crossbow bolts penetrated the everloving shit out of my guys, so I had to reload over and over again. Dead party members cannot be revived, a dead main character means game over. Serpent also features GTA-level load times, so I had a great many opportunities to think about my life choices.

Level-Ups are painfully slow and do very little.

In the end I used magic to heat up the bandit's weapon, causing him to fumble while my characters beat the crap out of him. He dropped his armor, his helmet, all of his weapons and a bunch of ammo. Now one of my characters could be as strong as a god! Life was good. Then I ran into two bandits.

The first few hours were brutally unfair. My group has two tanks, but there don't seem to be any taunts or provoking abilities. Meanwhile, my main character is a squishy caster. The AI is keen on destroying him, running past the tanks, ignoring the hail of bolts from my rangers and going straight for the squishy one. Ultimately, I had to turn my rangers into nurses, constantly focusing their healing magic on my main character, who runs all over the place like a moron, kiting enemies whilst my tanks try and keep up. It's all a bit messy.

Enough adventuring, let's bone!

Battle is a yoyo. You go up and down, feeling invincible when you finally start beating up the bandits which seemed unkillable a few hours ago, right until the game throws an organized party with tanks, rangers and mages at you, which will make you its bitch and force you to reload another dozen times or two.
For an indie game, the amount of skills, spells, weapons and viable play styles is remarkable. My main character can now polymorph into a wolf, tearing enemies to shreds, whilst one of my tanks swings a magic chain whip, which can disarm enemies. My other tank summons chicken-goblins and buffs the entire group with battlecries, while ranger/nurse #1 litters the place with traps and ranger/nurse #2 melts enemy weapons, causing the bad guys to screw up their attacks and take damage simply from holding their swords.

Abilities and spells can also be helpful outside of battle. My ranger can talk to animals and gathers vital information from rats in exchange for bits of salted meat. My main character can shapeshift into a cat and reach spots, which are too tight for humanoid characters to access. One of my characters can control thieving imps and force them to grant gifts and favours.

You can reach hidden areas by turning into a cat.

Serpent uses a bleak and depressing dark fantasy setting. Seemingly injured kids will beg you to find help and lure you right into the arms of greedy bandits, then sneak up on you from behind and stab you in the back while you fight for your life. A bounty quest sent me out to collect the head of a lady who left her husband and ran off with the family savings, only to have me attacked by a bunch of rival bounty hunters. I discovered a lair of creepy monsters, who possess and eat children. I felt rather proud when I beat the puzzle at the end of that dungeon. I found the clue in an old diary, which I had discovered much earlier in the game, by shapeshifting into a cat.

The most polarising aspect about this game, apart from the ridiculous difficulty, is the story. The world is indifferent to you. You aren't the shining hero or the stereotypical chosen one, the universe doesn't revolve around you and plenty of NPCs simply don't care about you at all. You're a god in a mortal body, pretending to be a spicer, whilst trying to figure out what exactly has happened to you. There are no quest pointers, there isn't even a questlog and the only thing you can do with the game's "journal" is type notes by hand, if you so desire.

It's a big world and I have no idea where to go.

People are working their fingers to the bone to repay a huge debt to a local noble. There's a mysterious disease with no known cure, which only afflicts one of the world's races. Sailors smuggle slaves all over the place. Folks entertain themselves in a secret fight club, hidden in a tavern basement. Everybody has their own problems, their own lives and nobody cares about you and your problems as the player character. They're not waiting for you to show up and save the day. They also don't tell you where to go or what to do next. Dialogue is incredibly well-written and full of swearing, which is always a plus in my book.

There's zero handholding here. Whether that's a good or a bad thing depends entirely on you. You might enjoy exploring a big, open world, where you can go just about anywhere, anytime you want. You may uninstall the game in frustration after hours of trying to figure out where to go, only to get destroyed by monsters, which are way above your party's level.
Serpent in the Staglands is 60% off on Steam while I'm writing this. There's also a GoG version if that's how you roll.