Baladins Review – Time Is Everything!

Introduction to Baladins

Seed by Seed’s newest game, Baladins, takes you on an addictive, choose-your-own-roleplaying adventure in the chaotic, fantastical land of Gatherac. Here, you play as one of the members of the titular guild. These heroes are on a mission to save Gatherac and their hometown’s peace festival from an evil time dragon named Colobra, taking them through various towns and kingdoms as they endeavor to break the six-week time loop that Colobra has trapped them in.

Each Paladin, or Baladin in this context, is named after their associated class, such as Bard, Cook, Pyro, Luxomancer, or the Dancer. Each class has a high stat in a particular skill that will be helpful as you progress through a new loop.

How Each Action Matters in Baladins

The game’s skill system is similar to those found in other RPGs, where the higher the number you have in the skill you’re using, the more likely you’ll succeed in a random encounter or secure an excellent ending to your current quest. However, there are a few different skills to use in Baladins. I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of ways I could use my skills to continue the game’s story in ways that I didn’t expect during my playthrough.

There are the standard strength and knowledge skills, but there are also skills such as destruction, which can cause chaos in a random encounter or a quest that you’re trying to complete; creativity, which can come up with good ideas to solve an issue, and finesse, which can be used to perform stealth-based actions like being sneaky or doing something without getting caught and suffering consequences.

Performing actions such as traveling through the map, training to get more points for your skills, talking to characters, or performing skill-based challenges such as completing various food or drinking contests will take action or traveling points to perform, and you get six long turns for each loop, each turn representing a week in-game that you have until Colobra’s arrival and the loop will end.

This caused me to pause a few times so I could think about what I wanted to do next during my current turn, making me consider what was important during my current loop. For example, I could have helped Sebaste, the town crier, with problems with his audience, or Gabi, the wise cleric, with writer’s block.

Luckily, visiting various town squares and caravans around Gatherac allowed me to buy potions, which not only allowed me to increase my action or traveling points to extend my turn but also temporarily increased some of my skills, which was really useful for me in giving me more turns to finish quests, find more information, or help stop Colobra.

Skill Checks Galore (Not That It’s a Bad Thing.)

Certain actions, such as helping a character with a problem or encountering a random encounter during your travels, will also require players to perform a skill check by rolling three-sided dice in a cup. Failing these skill checks could result in your character losing gold or a skill point.

But I found these skill checks fairly easy to do during my playthrough, and I managed to complete most of the events or challenges that a character had set out for me to do, such as completing three trials hosted by Onorada, a member of the spellbound, or going against Filomena, the barmaid, in a drinking contest.

While some skill checks related to quests did require me to go back and train a skill at a certain location in order to continue with completing a quest, it only took me a few action points to do so.

Completing Baladin’s Many Quests

Most quests have various endings that the game encourages you to find all of in each loop that you go through. Some quests will have bad endings where misfortune will befall a character you were trying to help, but quests also have good endings.

I found most of the endings to these quests amusing and hilarious in fitting with the game’s sense of humor, with most of the character’s dialogue earning a chuckle for me from time to time, even Colobra was funny whenever he appears at the end of the current loop.

However, some ways to complete quests will often require players to wait for the next loop to find the correct answer to complete a quest or move the story forward. I found this to be an interesting mechanic, and it gave me time to complete other quests that I wanted to finish before my loop ended.

Preparing for Colobra’s Arrival

While the dragon will eat all of your items that you collected during your current loop, you are allowed to keep one item with you for the next loop, however, the Baladin you are currently playing as will be the one to carry the item. You can also get the item again by redoing the quest that you got it from in the next loop.

Feeding the dragon items will slowly cause a gauge related to Colobra to increase. Depending on the item you feed the dragon, the gauge can increase tremendously or very little, depending on how important it is. Baladin’s boasts a colorful kids’ picture book-like setting. Each area feels like it came out of a children’s TV show or book, with characters looking like paper cutouts. I liked each location I found myself in.

While playing, I did come across a few glitches. One such example was the game suddenly freezing when I gave a character the wrong item, which forced me to reset my current loop. While I didn’t mind this, other players will likely feel frustrated at having to redo their loop again.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

At the end of the day, I really enjoyed playing Baladins. I found myself addicted to trying to complete each quest and hopefully finding a new way to break everyone out of Colobra’s time loops. Although I was annoyed that a few of the game’s glitches had caused me to reset my loop, I wasn’t annoyed with redoing the loop itself; in fact, it left me intrigued by how I could perform it in another way.

I love that most quests have various endings, and I loved trying to find a way to get all of the endings to most quests, which was my favorite part of doing my playthrough of the game. I also love trying out the various Baladins to play as, with Pyro, Cook, and Bard being my favorite characters to play as out of the various selections of the guild.