Stranger of Sword City

Over the decades, RPGs have evolved into an entirely different beast. Whereas epic stories, stylish characters, and breathtaking cinematics are now the norm, the concept of carving your own path in a mysterious world is much harder to come by nowadays.

Stranger of Sword City is an extremely solid dungeon crawling RPG. Fans of the genre will likely lap this straight up due to a lack of options on Xbox One. However, whether it deserves a place up with the genre leaders such as Etrian Odyssey is open for debate. Newcomers will still find plenty to appeal to them even if at times the game does sometimes come across as a little inaccessible in spite of its attempts to make things easier. You'll need to make a serious time investment if you want to get to grips with all it has to offer.

Stranger of Sword City does a great job of living up to its name. Trapped in a weird, rather haunting fantasy world, you're constantly made to feel like an outsider – someone that's stumbled into a series of events that they can't quite comprehend. This is a dungeon crawler with an atmospheric edge, and although it doesn't do a great deal to differentiate its gameplay from other titles in the genre, it's a refined experience that role-playing game fans may get a lot of mileage from.

A solid dungeon crawler with fantastic art and music, but a few poorly implemented ideas prevent it from being a truly great experience. The PC port is simple but performs well enough for the genre, and the addition portrait uploads is a fun bonus.

Stranger of Sword City excels at one thing, and really flounders at the others. It’s a rewarding experience if you’re a fan of challenging RPGs and gameplay depth. If you’re a fan of well-written dialogue, engaging music or proper difficulty curves though…well….there are a lot of other video games out there that may suit you better.

Stranger in a strange land

A small army of first person dungeon crawlers has emerged in recent years, many of them trying to emulate the feel of something from thirty years ago. This one succeeds in its aim of feeling like something from the previous century, though that may not be a good thing.