While not without issues, Dark Envoy is one of the most promising indie CRPGs in over a decade; unfortunately, due to its poor sales and crushing competition from Baldur’s Gate 3, much of its potential will be left unrealized.
Singleplayer.
Unfortunately, Dark Envoy did not sell as many copies as it should have due to limited marketing and overwhelming competition from Baldur’s Gate 3, the media darling of 2023 and undisputed best cRPG for the year and likely several years to come.
As a result, Dark Envoy is unlikely to receive long-term support, DLC or sequels without outside funding or a substantial increase in sales figures.
Dark Envoy is one of the best-looking indie cRPGs on the market. While it is not as pretty when viewed close up during cutscenes, very few cRPGs look good from a similar vantage point. With that in mind, I can easily say that Dark Envoy is one of the prettiest role-playing games on the market, and with a little more polish could easily rival (while not surpassing) even the best the genre has to offer (Baldur’s Gate 3).
Dark Envoy’s moment-to-moment gameplay is extremely rewarding and quick-paced, sharing many similarities with the MOBA genre, with each hero having access to a fair-sized pool of upgradable passive and active abilities.
Being able to pause combat or slow it down to 12% speed is a great way for newer or under-levelled players to tackle more dangerous (and lucrative dungeons) and most importantly, for a game of this type, loot is abundant and very diverse, allowing players to customize their party to their chosen playstyle.
On the topic of party members, there are four playable base classes in Dark Evoy, each with three specializations, allowing for a total of 12 playable builds, ensuring that players are given plenty of options when it comes to engaging in combat, which is just as well considering that players will spend most of their time engaging in it.
When not fighting enemies or engaging in negotiations, players can use their hard-earned resources to craft, upgrade, and enchant various items to enhance their party’s combat abilities.
While Dark Envoy may lean a little too heavily on its excellent combat mechanics, they are very enjoyable, and a constant stream of loot will ensure that players keep returning for more.
Dark Envoy allows players to set individual members of their party to autonomous, aggressive or defensive behaviour, which in effect turns Dark Envoy into an auto battler while still allowing players to use skills and manually control their party members if they wish; this is a great way to play Dark Envoy, as it allows players to focus on upgrading their party and dealing with epic bosses while leaving the smaller, less interesting encounters up to Autonomous stance.
All in all an excellent addition and one I would love to see in more cRPG.
I must preface this by saying that the dialogue in Dark Envoy is not terrible, and at times it is pretty good.
However, like most indie games, it is lacking in places, and the dialogue between the siblings Kaela and Malakai is particularly cringe-inducing at times, appearing to have been written by someone with no siblings and based the entire relationship on early 2000s sitcoms.
Occasional cringy dialogue aside, the narrative is surprisingly good, the war between the Empire and the League is interesting, and being able to influence the direction of the story by your choices feels rewarding; all in all, a story worth experiencing even if the “witty banter” between siblings does get a little annoying at times.
While many indie cRPG forgoes voice acting altogether, Dark Envoy is fully voiced, and for the most part, many of the voice actors do an excellent job of portraying their chosen characters; that being said, like most cRPGs, the protagonist’s voice acting is at times a little shakey, and more than once I groaned aloud as the cringy dialogue was delivered in a way that made it feel like the voice actor phoned in their performance.
However, these times were an exception to the norm, as for the most part, the voice actors did a very good job, and I could not have asked for better voice acting, even from a AAA title.
While Dark Envoy does not advertise itself as a cooperative title on Steam, the game can be played cooperatively. Unfortunately, very few people play Dark Envoy, and finding an open lobby (or any lobby at all) is next to impossible.
However, Dark Envoy is a great introductory cRPG for those with friends, with easy-to-pick-up controls and surprisingly high production values for an indie game.
Several female NPCs in Dark Envoy have large and often exposed breasts, with even mature characters such as Merchant Hellas displaying a ridiculous amount of cleavage.
In addition, all female characters wear push-up half-cup bras while not wearing clothing, something which is first noticed on the character creation screen.
Admittedly, this is not a game-breaking issue; however, it is not respectful of the feelings of female gamers and seems to have been designed in such a way as to inspire lust in young and lonely male gamers.
While some may dismiss this as a non-issue, I feel strongly that making content purely to titillate is wrong, and while there is a time and place for nudity in games, making every female character eye candy is offensive, and for those who are prone to acting on their lust, dangerous.
Dark Envoy is a role playing game video game developed and published by Event Horizon, it was released on 24 October 2023 and retails for $29.99.
Dark Envoy is available exclusively on PC.
On average Dark Envoy takes between 18 and 30 hours to complete.
Estimated completion times are derived from various sources and may vary based on the skill level of each player.
The following peripherals are officially supported:
No game title specified.
Dark Envoy is a very enjoyable cRPG that is a great introduction to the genre for new and casual players. While there is some problematic content, I fully recommend it for those who can handle such content maturely and understand sexualizing female characters purely for the sake of making them attractive to male gamers is offensive, wrong, and, for some people, a gateway to more serious sexual sins.
