Those of you who have played almost any RPG title with some medieval cut will inevitably have passed through a tavern of those who are on the roads in the middle of nowhere, either to collect energy, fight or simply get a new assignment that some of the client, or the owner of the canteen, entrusts to us. This Crossroads Inn is responsible for putting us in the role of this tavern that normally goes unnoticed, to create and manage an establishment, respectable or not, for all kinds of passers-by.
The campaign mode of the game will put us in the shoes of a young man who receives as a “gift” a tavern whose immediate mission is to organize a wedding, so the tutorial will guide us through various basic aspects of the game and as we progress. , our humble posada will become the central axis of the dispute for the throne of the kingdom we occupy, whose position is vacant after the mysterious death of the king.
Hope you are not too lazy as running this place will not be easy so put on your fajina clothes there is a lot to do to keep this business afloat. Let’s see how it goes.
Technical section
One word I could over-use in this review is ‘conform’, and that is basically I can’t say more and it would be very unfair to say less, so I think the verb completely encompasses my concept. in several sections. Let’s see, graphically the game presents by default an isometric view which, with the press of a button, moves to a camera that shows a view completely from above, so that we have a better reference when building and / or the placement of different furniture. The game also allows us to rotate the camera according to your tastes and needs and even zoom when and where we want, so the options are good. Now yes, the level of detail of the characters will not dazzle anyone during the game, but in the dialogues that can be seen in the campaign and in the scenes that divide the different chapters that the production offers us, this aspect is much more neat and in many cases it feels like playing a traditional RPG.
The sound section accompanies the game with medieval type melodies whose volume can be adjusted but that doesn’t really make a big difference in terms of experience. The voices of the customers, still in English, are very successful and together with other sounds of colliding glasses, squeaking of wood and the constant chatter of customers manage to create a very good bar atmosphere.
Regarding localization, the game is available in several languages, including Spanish from Europe, but unfortunately this aspect is certainly not the strength of this production. Some of the menus or options they contain remain entirely in English and some translations appear to be taken directly from an automatic engine intended for a function such as Google Translate, which most likely was responsible for the work. All this led me to carry out the analysis entirely in English. It should be noted that although this is a very improvable aspect, those who don’t get along very well with the English language will still understand everything in the Spanish translation, but not with very good quality.
Gameplay
Crossroads Inn offers three game modes that will not be at all strange for those who are used to this type of management simulation: Sandbox, countryside and setting. The ideal, even for the most experienced of the genre, will be to make his debut in the campaign assisted by a mini-tutorial, since the title has many peculiarities that without a few instructions are not easy to discover.
The campaign allows us to develop our character by following a story with various RPG aspects, like certain skills in the form of dialogue options that we will increase as we put them to use, for example, if we constantly intimidate our interlocutor, even if we fail, this ability will increase until it becomes more effective, the same will happen using lying as a weapon or kindness. Interactions with the different characters generate new possibilities to earn items in the form of recipes for our kitchen or get discounts on purchases of supplies in nearby towns.
In the mode Sandbox We will start to create our hostel from scratch, with a little money which will depend on the difficulty we choose and with the possibility of building as we wish, starting with a main room where our customers will spend most of their time. time. eat and drink. The size of the different sections can be made larger in the terrain space as long as we have enough money to make the changes. Each space has a set of furniture with a wide variety of options that will allow us to store supplies, create new meals and offer new services to individual clients. In turn, our customers will tell us, usually in a very bad way, what they don’t like about our establishment so that we can change or adjust it.
As our tavern gains fame through satisfied customers (or hiring advertising), we will be able to unlock new customers in a kind of progression tree, also very similar to an RPG. Our first visitors will always be farm laborers who prefer basic drinks such as beer or wine or bandits of different kinds, but as we start to offer different options the nobles and other groups of upper social classes will come to our bar willing to pay more for different service.
Besides construction, there are several essential aspects of tavern management. One of them is the hiring and management of our employees and this is where I find one of the main problems with the game. If you are used to life simulators like the famous The Sims, where by clicking on a character we can tell him what to do or what to stop doing, you will see that in the case of Crossroads Inn, the handling is much more complicated. Each of the employees will do what appears to be the highest priority, and while we will be able to access a menu to manage each person’s priorities, it is quite imprecise and does not always work, especially when we have a lot of people in our load. .
Unfortunately, in my review of Crossroads Inn with my Xbox Series S, I had an experience riddled with errors and Bugs that often managed to irritate me a bit. Sometimes my employees were totally stuck against walls or objects for several days without being able to get out even though they were surrounded by doors or with more than enough room to move. As if that wasn’t enough, many times the game froze completely, forcing me to close and reopen it and lose all progress if I didn’t save the game, which I started doing. almost constantly after these problems. Since I was able to perform this analysis before the game hit the market, it is possible that the developers will release a patch to fix these types of issues on day one.
Duration
If there’s anything the title doesn’t disappoint, it’s in the immense amount of hours you’ll be spending playing it. Campaign mode is really long, with over 20 hours guaranteed to complete it and I might be late, depending on how much you want to explore additional objectives and that sort of thing. The mode SandboxIt can be eternal because it has no end and the exploration options to get new items and other things are plentiful, the same is true, although to a lesser extent, with the campaign mode.
In addition, Bugs Moreover, the title is very addicting and will keep you entertained for a long time, I have no doubt.
conclusion
It is a pity that this good idea is, at the moment, full of errors which reduce the gaming experience. The soul of the title is excellent and very original, only maybe The Sims Medieval raised something of a somewhat similar at the time, so if the developers Kraken Unleashed They manage to tweak some details a bit more and vary some features, it could be a benchmark game for a sub-category within business management and life simulation productions.