Roughly seven years in the making, and nearly all made by one mega-talented man, The Pale City brings a world and narrative inspired by works such as Planescape: Torment, Xenogears, and more. In addition to its story, The Pale City makes an effort to really test your ability and skill in its turn-based combat, often requiring careful decision-making by the player. While fairly short for an RPG, and lacking in optimization, The Pale City is absolutely worth a try if you’re into weird and unique titles.

You take the role of a man named Vasek, a blunt and jaded man who lives in the Sink, a grim city of deceit and filth, where nobody lives easy, and where sensitivity is drained from all. Life in Vasek’s world is brutally tough, and the characters, environments, and writing of the whole game reflect that fact well. The Pale City radiates an oppressive atmosphere through its visuals, music, etc, successfully capturing a uniquely desolate feeling all it's own. It is important to talk to everyone and examine everything, as it often leads to minor stat and exp increases.

The story of The Pale City isn’t all too of a happy one either, rather, it is a story of unearthing some sense of value in a universe where even the gods fail to find purpose. Vasek’s character is of an original nature, morally ambiguous and devoid of many admirable qualities that are commonplace among other RPGs. Opening when Vasek is tasked with the mission of finding the necessary parts to resurrect an ancient golem, events soon follow that turn into a chronicle of manipulation, betrayal, and regret. Vasek’s journey of labelling himself as an ethically questionable mercenary to someone who is in truth perhaps severely emotionally stunted is both engaging and poignant. The prose is strong, which is to be expected coming from a successful author, even when it can drag at times only by a negligible amount.

The Pale City uses a turn-based combat system that is more than what meets the eye at first sight. While contrary to screenshots, for the majority of the game you’ll be playing with only Vasek in your party, whereas at most you’ll only have two in the group. Of course, this might seem like a small turn off for people who enjoy having multiple people in the party in most other turn-based RPGs, but The Pale City will still bring quite a lot of challenge and difficulty to someone who isn’t prepared.

Fights often require you to bide your time and wait for the exact critical moment to strike. You’ll be mostly relying on defensive manoeuvres, especially so in the latter half of the game. Combat works mostly by attacking and parrying. While this might seem simple at first, whenever you do an action that warrants it, you’ll build up something called TP. When you build up enough TP, you can execute a useful skill or ability that will greatly raise your chances in combat by debuffing the enemy or doing large amounts of damage that you couldn’t do normally. If you have played one of The Pale City’s inspirations, Xenogears, the TP system is extremely similar to the AP system, whereby holding off on an attack would give you the ability to execute a much stronger attack later on. Another awesome thing that separates The Pale City from other RPGs is that buffs and debuffs play a much larger role. Normal attacks can inflict the bleeding status, which can be either a godsend or your worst nightmare depending on who is on the receiving end of it, and healing items are not nearly as abundant as a lot of other titles either.

All of that will understandably sound intimidating, and fortunately there is an optional Story Mode for those who simply want to experience the narrative of the game without much trial and error, but even then I would recommend you to overcome the difficulty as it is normally, just to experience the design essence that was intended.

While only being about 10 hours or so, and a little rough around the edges, the ideas that spring from The Pale City is impressive and telling of the vast imagination of its main creator, Kyle Muntz. If you’re a fan of uncommon RPG settings, worthwhile character studies, or rewardingly difficult combat systems, then The Pale City will not disappoint you.

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Rare to find a modern RPG with any balls.

Graphics are sub-Arcanum, satisfactory for a one man effort and suit the depressive atmosphere.

Story compelling enough to finish the game, with sufficient lore and characters in the world to provide immersion. Dialogue and motives of NPCs are darkly humorous yet suited for the environment.

At 50% off, the game lasted 10 hours with all content drained and cost less than a pint.

I did not know what to expect when I initially dived into the Pale city- but I can say I found myself thoroughly invested in the experience.

There is a lot of effort placed into the overall writing, with some excellent bits of prose helping to underline the grimness of the Pale Citys world. It's jarring but in a very human way to alternate between the crassness of normal conversation, before it dives into the chilling bits of monologue which help to underline the natures of the character. And there's an underlying horror to the world at large that would be well at home in a Lovecraft novel- even without the more blatant naming of some of the enemies.

On a more game play related note- it is a truly challenging title on it's base difficulty, with most combat encounters being ended in relative short order one way or the other. The sheer lethality of it actually helped to drive home the games themes, and I found myself relishing the act of solving just how to progress. (I also rather enjoyed making morally dubious decisions in the games various side quests. There's some rather interesting bits of lore and gameplay to unearth if you're diligent, including some neat slices of backstory which culminate in what is by far the roughest boss encounter(s) in the game).

Overall, given the fixed nature of combat and the lack of grinding, I found myself needing to play especially carefully and thoroughly to achieve what I wanted, which was an altogether interesting experience.

Graphically, I had mixed feelings on the game, if only because of the uncanny valley nature of the character portraits, but at the same time, it manages to do it's job well, and for a number of the less human enemies, it manages to provide a decent array of fittingly unpleasent entities to stab.

The sound design, however, is chilling, at least on the music front. I frequently found myself unsettled by the choice of tracks in tandem with the various scenes, or on edge. I -really- enjoyed the way it complimented the narrative in the game.

Ultimately, I'd say that the Pale City is a journey worth taking if you're a fan of story driven adventures- and are seeking something less heroic, and more bleakly contemplative- without the promise of a happy ending. In that regard, it ought to provide a horrific treat.

10/10 - This game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awesome.

It might be a matter of taste but I found it to be an example of my "ideal" game play experience. Story-driven dark fantasy that is mechanically challenging as well. There is a particular way you have to defeat certain enemies. And there are no "random encounters" which I always found very annoying, every fight was part of the plot, to say the least. No grinding or anything.

Do not let the graphics fool you. Although I think that they actually enhance the mood of the game, some may skip this title simply because of the graphics. Do not do that. If you are interested in narrative-driven RPGs, you must get this game. It has the same amount of story and value one would receive from a well written book, making it well worth the price. I paid $3.99, since it was on sale, but I may purchase a second copy to send to a friend because I feel that this game deserves it.

My favorite part is how well developed the characters seem to be. They are used to weave a fascinating world and a unique story. I feel like this game is great example of how video games can be used as a narrative art form.

I visited the developer's website, and it says he is a writer. That is certainly true. Kyle Muntz is going places with this project. It also says he spent seven years to make this game. The effort shows. I hope this game wins a much wider audience so the developer can continue to make content.

Edit: I did discover a few grammatical errors, though it by no means affects the story or playability of the game and I am sure that they will be fixed.

While The Pale City might be both grim and dark, but you’d be absolutely remiss to discount it as “just another grimdark RPG.” Immediately indelible, the setting feels like it takes place on a neighboring plane adjacent to Planescape: Torment, and sole indie creator, Kyle Muntz’s story driven narrative is tightly-written, propelling the player headlong into the world of The Pale City, “a city on a platform above an ocean of dark water.” If you’ve got the fortitude, the game offers an incredible mechanical challenge and an instantly lasting impression. Even just under two hours in, I can tell this game is something special and can’t wait to play more!

What a miserable existence. For fans of Fear & Hunger and Age of Decadence.
Don't expect much role-playing, or rich & complex combat, but the writing is what you play for. Highly recommend exploring, interacting with the environment and NPCs, and doing "side quests" for a more complete experience and world-building/characterization.
It's also pretty short (for an RPG), would take ~10 hours to beat.

First, my playtime is not reflective of how long it takes to complete the game, and I was a tester on the original version, so I got this copy for free.

With that in mind, this is roughly a 7--11 hour game (depending on whether you get stuck, and on how much side-content you do), and it *may* be worth the $8 price tag depending on what you're looking for from it.

The Pale City is, like Wooden Ocean, an rpgmaker gem. It leans on stock tilesets, but it makes up for them with its writing and world design. Unlike Wooden Ocean, however, Pale City is bleak and existential. It also starts en medias res, and it feels very much like a playable novel in how it introduces its characters and either wraps up (or leaves unresolved) their storylines.

Pale City takes place in a world called The Platform, a subterranean slum built atop a sediment of aeon-old spontaneously-generated corpses. You control what is basically a typical character for the setting---half criminal, half noble---as he tries to find meaning in his life.

The setting is a weird mix of old-school sword and sorcery, Steven Brust-esque crime-fantasy, cosmic horror, and Kameron-Hurley-style unflinching violence. It's also revealed in dribs and drabs, and it's easy to become confused or lost if you're skipping through the dialog or not talking to the NPCs.

Much of the game is just reading, and I'd almost argue that this is closer to a visual novel in genre, but it does have a combat system, and it's a fairly technical one despite how simple it is. Inspired by another rpgmaker classic, The Way (which is freeware, and very worth checking out, although you should play with a walkthrough), Pale City's combats are basically all swordfights. To that end, you have two stances you can shift between (defensive, where you take less damage, and offensive, where you get an extra action per turn), and a few basic moves that build meter for several more powerful moves.

In a typical fight, you'll cut at your opponent until you've built up enough meter, and then you'll light them up with your special moves and hopefully take them down in one volley. (Un)fortunately, lots of fights aren't just the one-on-one style sword duels of The Way, and the game likes throwing borderline unfair situations at you for you to figure your way out of. You do have extremely scarce consumable items, and you *can* buy new equipment, but you should also save fairly often. There's not a lot of rng, but some fights will torpedo you if you don't know what to anticipate.

While I did enjoy the combat, I think the primary draw here is the writing, and how you feel about it (and about the type of story that's being told) is basically going to determine how you feel about the game. I think if you enjoy post-soviet Russian scifi, or if you like stories that have some lovecraft but aren't going whole-hog on the mythos, and if you don't mind stories that *aren't* going to reassure you that everything's going to be okay, this is worth a try.

If you want an rpg that's more about the mechanical crunch than the narrative, or if you want something quick and easy to get into, probably don't get this.

Again, I liked it, but this is a *very particular* game, and I'm not going to blanket-recommend it to all rpg fans the way I would final fantasy.

Another really fascinating RPGMaker Dark fantasy title. Stacks up very favorably beside fear and hunger and Toymaker, well written and interesting world, with a main character that is very atypical, in that he's very much a character but not a sympathetic, or even empathetic one. Definitely worth checking out, with plenty of content for the asking price and a worthwhile experience. Very interested to see what the creator does next, be it in the same setting or a totally different one.

Really well written. Prepare to immerse yourself into the shoes of a hardened bastard of a mercenary, whose aimless journey can get surprisingly philosophical, as misery seems to follow everywhere he goes. I had a lot of fun piecing together his backstory and the way this weird world works. The dialogue felt very natural and inspecting even regular items could provide surprising amount of info. Combat was challenging, but manageable once you figure out a few strategies. Not awfully long, but the ending did feel somewhat sudden - no epilogue or anything, it just ends and leaves me wanting more.

I think the story makes The Pale City more than worth playing. It's bleak, but it raises interesting questions without feeling like it's too far up its own arse or talking down to you, and I found it very engaging throughout. The gameplay is only ok and there's some roughness around the edges but none of it got in the way, and I would recommend this game to anyone, as long as they're fine with a bit of a depressing story.