"While I am a huge fan of Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream's stunning visuals and engrossing narrative, its lack of replayability and player agency make it difficult to recommend at full price."
I must preface this by saying that Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream, is a fantastic game, with gorgeous visuals, excellent world building, captivating characters and an engrossing narrative, however it is not perfect, and while I personally can overlook these imperfections, I would be remiss to not address them in this review.
Without question, Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is one of the prettiest looking isomeric games I have ever played, character models look fantastic, and the world itself feels lived in and authentic.
While I feel that Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream would look even better as a third person narrative title, similar to the Plague Tale games, as a huge fan of isometric titles I am more than happy explore the city of Eriksholm at a distance, despite wishing I could explore it up close and personal.
The fictional city of Eriksholm is brought to life thanks to a massive cast of characters of all levels of importance.
From background NPC going about their everyday lives, to important characters who play major role in the narrative, top tier (for the most part) voice acting, and well written dialogue help to make the city feel alive and keep players engaged with the story, which is without question the main reason to play Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream.
As someone who has loves games like Shadow Tactics and Desperados, I found Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream’s take on real time tactical gameplay to be excellent.
However unlike the aforementioned games, Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream does not allow players much agency when it comes to deciding how to tackle each objective, with almost every puzzle and encounter having a very specific solution, which does make Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream far less replayable that many other similar titles.
While I still really enjoyed my time with Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream, I would have enjoyed it even more if I had been able to find my own solutions to some objectives, instead of being forced to follow a linear path.
Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is rather short, clocking in at around 8.5 hours for the main story, with a 100% run taking slightly longer at around 10 hours.
While this is on the short, almost the entirety of Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream run time is comprised of high quality, filler free gameplay and cutscenes.
While I would have liked to spend a few more hours in Eriksholm, I am ultimately happy with the developers choice to focus on quality over quantity, and I am sure that most other players will be also, once they experience the engaging narrative, enjoyable gameplay, and gorgeous cutscenes, which are some of the best I have seen in any game not created with a massive AAA budget.
Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is an adventure game developed by River End Games and published by Nordcurrent Labs, it released on 15 July 2025, and is available on PC, Playstation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream supports the following peripherals:
Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is rated PEGI 16+ and contains:
Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream looks absolutely stunning, and as a huge fan of powerful narratives, I personally really enjoyed it, however it is rather short, and for the most part each mission and puzzle has only a single solution, which does limit replayability compared to titles that allow players more freedom when it comes to completing objectives.
Ultimately Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is well worth a play for fans of stealth and narrative heavy titles, but for everyone else, I would suggest waiting for a sale, or for it to be added to a subscription service such as Game Pass, PS Plus or Humble Choice, as while I fully recommend playing through Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream once, there is no reason to replay missions beyond collectables and lore snippets, which while interesting, are not worth a replay for most gamers.
We found Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream to be a good game, meaning it is likely to be enjoyable for most players, despite having a few areas that could be improved upon.
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