Broken Roads

Despite its rather simple combat system, Broken Roads is a fantastic new entry in the RPG genre. It offers up a fresh take on morality systems with its use of a moral compass, and the game’s setting alone does an incredible amount of heavy lifting in keeping things interesting.

Broken Roads is a cult classic in the making. It hearkens to the best parts of games like Fallout 2, and many other CRPGs of the '90s, and it fits right in alongside classic Fallout and the Wasteland games. It’s flawed in some areas, with bugs in spots, but it offers tremendous role-playing and storytelling that make it more than worth your time to spend upwards of thirty or more hours in post-apocalyptic Australia.

Broken Roads once again takes players to a post-apocalyptic world, but this time, the adventure is focused solely on Australia. Players take the role of a survivor in this world and must do whatever they can to survive its many factions vying for control. Along that journey, they will interact with a wide variety of characters, make decisions that could affect the world, and fight off anyone who might get in their way. And while that does sound like an enjoyable time, some RPG fans may be looking for a bit more than Broken Roads has to offer.

Descartes before the horse.

Ultimately my time with Broken Roads didn’t light up any of the parts of my brain that video games typically do on some level or another. There’s some promise at first with its distinct, all-encompassing cultural flavor. But the scenario holding up the setting only struggled to capture my interest. Combat was a similar vibe, feeling like doing chores in the middle of reading a middle of the road novel in a crowded genre. While cool on paper the morality system did more harm than good, overloading the dialogue and getting in the way of character and personality. Nothing in Broken Roads felt bad...

Although a passionate display of Drop Bear Bytes’ native culture and heritage, and a beautiful visual and audio experience, Broken Roads is stuck as a missed opportunity where its shortcomings outweigh the diamond-in-the-rough potential.

Broken Roads neglects its best ideas, padding out its runtime with fetch quests that leave you asking "why am I here?" for all the wrong reasons.

Broken Roads could've been an amazing game with a rich story, memorable characters, and an engaging world, but the lack of depth and enjoyment in the gameplay and combat makes it hard to appreciate the good aspects of the game.

A lot of love has gone into Broken Roads and making its Australian setting unique but lackluster combat, companions, and nonstop bugs make this one difficult to approach until further down the road.

Ultimately, we can talk about a flop. I'm playing an underdeveloped and thoughtless game, requiring boring, time-consuming tasks. Messy, both in terms of the script and gameplay, which multiplies problems.

Despite the promise of its setting and philosophically informed morality system, Broken Roads fails to set itself apart from or come remotely close to matching the many post-apocalyptic games it’s inspired by.

I was excited to see my country represented properly in a video game, and that did happen. Sadly the game itself isn’t worth a damn, it’s a classic style RPG but none of my choices matter and I can hardly make any of them. The only real redeeming quality is the art.