Most RPGs cast you as a gallant warrior out to forge their own heroic destiny, or a plucky novice adventurer who suddenly finds the weight of the world on their shoulders. Our Adventurer Guild, which has just made the jump from PC to Xbox, presents a more unique proposition. As the name suggests, you’re in charge of a guild for adventurers. This involves forming parties, training units to keep them adept, maintaining high spirits, and generally making sure recruits don’t end up as the latest addition to the town square’s memorial plaque.
You’re still able to carve an identity for yourself, prompted during the tutorial to provide a name by which other townsfolk will refer to you. From thereon, it’s a case of hiring recruits from the tavern – each demanding a daily wage – before sending them on either short quests with turn-based battles, or automated assignments where they’ll return after a few days with more XP and crafting materials. Sillier quests feature too, such as sending a lone warrior out with a bard for song inspiration. Thy likes to move it move it.
Recruits can be customised – formed of randomised brightly coloured body parts as default – and level up, at which point they can gain extra training, eventually gaining a full vocation promotion. If they die in battle, say farewell. This can be genuinely disheartening if an experienced warrior unexpectedly falls. Over time, your party size swells. This means there’s plenty of scope to take on more assignments, but far higher wages to pay. Every recruit has a mood gauge to watch over too. Buying them a drink or giving them a fistful of cash will improve spirits, or alternatively, they can be sent away for a few days to rest.
After running into an enemy while exploring the top-down locales – which include forests, caves and old keeps – a turn-based battle will commence. These battles are rather in-depth, presented using an isometric view and bold, colourful, 2D visuals. Battle arenas feature various terrains that can be used to your advantage, playing into the focus on creating a balanced party. Mages and archers should ideally be positioned high and far back from the enemy. Defenders and warriors can go toe-to-toe with enemies to counter blows, priests heal and protect, while rogues can hide in long grass and perform stealth attacks. Outside of combat, text-based events dependent on dice rolls occur – which can be rerolled at a cost of BP – and it’s possible to make camp for the night to heal.
Quests can be completed quickly, usually lasting under ten minutes, making progress swift. Another neat thing is that battles can not only be sped up, but fully automated – allowing you to simply observe units in action. They’ll heal one another via magic, but draw the line at consuming single use potions, leaving your inventory untouched.
Story missions provide something to focus on and aim towards, with a bandit king causing a nuisance early on. These missions are tougher, requiring grinding to beat, and can even involve one-on-one battles. It definitely pays to make a new save file before taking on a harder story mission, as you may end up losing a favourite or two. Overestimating your party’s strength is another possibility.
Our Adventurer Guild proves to be an engaging experience, not so much through its storyline, which is a little limp, but simply through party management. Initially they start their careers as low level nobodies with weak default equipment, meaning you’ll need to send them on easier quests before acquiring resources and enough cash to improve their arsenal. This takes time, but it isn’t too strenuous, especially if you rely on automated battling. Additionally, you may find some rare items during a quest, saving time and helping to skip some of that grind. I wish quests varied more than exploring, collecting items, or defeating foes; it does feel quite mechanical in this regard, going through the motions until eventually becoming strong enough to take on a main story quest. The spirit of adventure isn’t so much present here, but rather the desire to upgrade, improve and dominate the battlefields.
As a humble indie there are a few presentational shortcomings. Around 50% of the experience is UI driven, such as visiting different stores and services in the town while managing parties. Although the UI is perfectly functional, it is a bit crude. The developers have clearly tried to mimic the look of traditional anime here, but the results are mixed and inconsistent, and it doesn’t help that some of the static backdrops are scrappily drawn. Providing you aren’t expecting a Square-Enix level of polish, none of this is damaging to the experience overall, especially in light of the appealing £12.49 price point.
I went into it expecting something competent, slow burning and overbearingly stat heavy, but found a curiously addictive experience – in no small part thanks to the ability to let battles play out automatically. If you prefer to observe battlefields rather than strategically plan, you may find the role of a guild master fits like a finely crafted leather glove.
GreenGuy’s Our Adventurer Guild is out now on Xbox Series and Xbox One. Published by Ultimate Games. A PC version is also available.