Broken Roads Review

Developed by Drop Bear Bytes and published by Versus Evil, Broken Roads takes place in a post-apocalyptic Australia where 80% of the population has been wiped out following an attempt to end a war. Broken Roads has received some high praise, with one outlet comparing it to Disco Elysium, Fallout and Baldur’s Gate. After seeing this on the trailer I was hyped and was ready to be blown away. The reality, however, was very different.

After the initial cutscene you’re greeted with character creation. Here you choose between 4 origin backgrounds; Hired Gun, Surveyor, Barter Crew and Jackaroo. Each origin will give you a different starting bonus to certain stats before heading out. The third tab there is where the Morality compass comes into play. To start there’s a small quiz which will set you up how your character can behave in scenes (more on that later) then you just have to decide your starting stats and off you go.

Depending on what you picked you’ll get one of 4 different origin stories to playthrough which will last an hour or so depending on how much you explore and interact with, after which you’re thrust into the world…well, not quite, as it took until completing act 2 to be able to freely move between places. The last achievement is for completing Act 4, which means it potentially takes until you’re halfway through to be able to freely choose where you go. As well as being able to freely move around the world map, the day/night cycle feature also starts, and it flows automatically so standing still with the game unpaused can lead to unintended consequences. It’s not mentioned but some quests are time sensitive; I had a quest to free someone but I was way under-levelled and had no chance in the fight (more on that later). To my shock, after completing a few quests the guy I was building up to rescue escaped by himself and the quest failed.

More on the Morality system now and I was looking forward to seeing how this played out. From the outside it seemed like an upgrade on the usual Paragon/Renegade you find in most games. Based on the questions you answered when choosing the background for your character you’ll likely be split between 2 types, but as it’s a compass there are some types you’ll be locked out as.

The 4 types are Humanist, Utilitarian, Machiavellian and Nihilist, and depending on the type of personality you want your character to be you have access to different bonuses. For example, if you want your character to be a Nihilist then you have access to a trait called ‘Lone Wolf’ which gains you an initiative equal to your character level if there are no allies within 5 metres. However if you intend to play as a Humanist, you’ll have access to the ‘Critical Healer’ trait, which makes you more effective when healing an ally.

This is where the positives end when it comes to the Morality compass as you’re pretty much locked into that playstyle, and no matter what if you’re mainly a Nihilist when trying to converse you only have those options available. An example of this is when I was asked to defuse a situation, and as I was split between a Nihilist and Machiavellian the only option I had to defuse the situation was to shoot the guy dead. The same went for the opposite playstyle but the ending was much happier, so be prepared to stick to a certain style once you’ve chosen as there are few opportunities to change which direction your character goes.

 The maps you can explore are small but are well made and drawn, there’s lots of little details you can get lost in and I’d say you can have conversations with at least 90% of the NPCs on any given map. A word of warning though there is I of text – I was hoping for more voice acting as the little you get is great. Whether genuine accents or not, it does give you the feeling that you are in an apocalyptic Australia and not just any old wasteland. To help you understand some of the ‘Australianisms’ (as I call them) in the text they are highlighted as yellow and give you a brief explanation as to what it means, so now I know that ‘sprog’ means kid.

The worst part of Broken Roads is easily the turn-based combat as it feels so slow and clunky. Also, some of the battle maps are used over and over. Travelling from one town to another I was ambushed by a bunch of ‘angry dingo’s’ and was able to fell them. Not too long after on my way back I was then ambushed by some bandits. The dingo’s were standing there semitransparent in the battle positions from where the previous battle started, they didn’t move or attack but were just an annoyance.

More frustrations in battle are being behind cover. It seems as though it’s one rule for you and your allies and one for your enemies. When enemies are behind cover you can’t attack them and have to try and get into a flanking position to hit them, however your enemies can take shots and more often than not will connect with their shot.

Even more frustrations with combat include the camera. You can zoom in and out but you can’t rotate in any sideways direction, and this can lead to frustrations when an enemy will be in the middle of two of your characters and you can’t select the enemy you want to attack – and of course if you try and move out the way they’ll get a reaction attack against you. More problems here include if one of your characters is near an enemy and you try and target said enemy, often you won’t be able to shoot because it says your ally is in the line of fire. Often this won’t actually be the case and just adds to the list of combat frustrations.

It took an absolute age to be able to win a fight as well. Once I was able to roam around to different towns, I got a warning every time I entered combat that this was a ‘tough fight’ and was advised to retreat. Of course, curiosity got the better of me as I wanted to test it, with no difficulty options to select from there’s no way of making fights and easier or harder. My team was decimated, we stood no chance. I went looking for other fights to see if there was any fight I could win, there wasn’t. I was at a loss, so I went to a vendor to see if I could upgrade my weapons.

Despite having completed a few main and side missions and scrounged around areas where I could, I was still way off the price of an upgrade, upgrades don’t much either and all weapons are given generic names like rifle, rifle+1 and rifle+2.

I dug in and figured that levelling up was the only way to help with fights, I completed a load of quests that didn’t involve fighting and got to level 9, going back to those battles I finally stood a chance. Something else which rubbed me the wrong way was one combat had ended; Allies fully heal themselves meaning as long as you win the fight, there are no consequences.

One last thing I’ll mention about combat is the hit rates. I’m not sure if perhaps the percentages are wrong or broken, but the number of shots I missed that were 88% or higher was unreal. The disbelief that went through my body when I missed 2 shots in a row that was said to be a 95% hit chance destroyed me.

When it comes to levelling up allies, they level themselves up automatically, meaning you can’t customize your squad to a certain way. Some allies will always be melee, and some will always be longer range meaning a load of RPG elements just disappear.

The last thing I’ll talk about before signing off is the sheer amount of loading in Broken Roads. Now as someone approaching the magical ‘40’ milestone, I’ve had to sit through my share of loading screens, but some in Broken Roads just seem unnecessary and way too long. If I’m in a town and go into a building it takes around 45 seconds to load into a tiny room, and once done, another 45 seconds. 45 seconds may not sound like a lot, but they soon add up and I often found myself reaching for my phone especially when every loading screen is the same. Another thing that puzzled me was if you wanted to look at the world map…that’s another 45 odd seconds and if you wanted to load back to the same town…another 45 seconds.

Conclusion

There is potential for Broken Roads to be a great game with features like the morality compass being innovative for RPGs, but too many issues soured my experience and ultimately left a bad taste.