loading . . . Cairn: Mathair’s Curse Review Whit's fur ye'll no go past ye
Developer Ross McRitchie's Cairn: Mathair's Curse draws inspiration from retro RPGs and Scotland for an engaging turn-based adventure. While gameplay might not deviate very far from the classic template, its late 1980/early 1990s Alban setting works nicely with a well-paced and interesting story, backed up by a soundtrack that successfully infuses traditional Scottish sound into the SNES-style music. Its 25-to-30-hour runtime holds up nicely for a worthwhile experience.
Cairn: Mathair's Curse takes place across just over a dozen chapters. The vast majority of these follow not-quite-silent protagonist Alex, a young boy hailing from Awnie Island. His mostly quiet life, albeit hounded by some strange dreams, is interrupted when a nefarious group infiltrates the island and ends up kidnapping some of those he holds dearest. Unable to carry on at home, he is brought to the mainland to help search for his missing loved ones, where his strange powers enable him to investigate mysterious and conspiratorial events involving a corrupting darkness. Other chapters introduce characters that later join up with Alex, while helping to further establish the overall plot and build up the conspiracies behind everything.
[caption id="attachment_178677" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Don't make crazy election pledges you can't fulfill.[/caption]
The game manages to hit a sweet spot of pulling on the strings, with plenty of heartfelt moments and emotional events, while also injecting a good amount of zaniness and fun into its proceedings, switching between the two as necessary but never in an immersion-breaking manner. There's plenty of personality to the main and supporting cast, making it easy to root for the protagonists in their ultimate quests to save the homes they find so dear. The Scottish touches are very welcome and go a long way to injecting plenty of character into the world, while the game's generally strong pacing ensures that the story is always progressing in one way or another.
Most of the chapters take place around a particular location, though a number of towns and other major places are revisited. Each chapter usually comes with at least one decent-sized dungeon to explore, with a scattering of optional side quests to be found. The dungeons are well designed, with players rewarded for exploring with plenty of chests that provide useful consumable items, pieces of equipment, or items to progress side quests. There's a solid variation between the locations players visit to help keep things interesting, starting at the rural Awnie Island but swiftly moving to a snowy castle, cruise ship on the open water, an underground facility, and more.
Combat is initiated by coming into contact with any of the enemies wandering around each area. Exiting and reentering an area will cause most of these encounters to respawn, which has both benefits and drawbacks. Certain early parts of the review playthrough provided some frustrating challenges, primarily due to the lack of healing resources in those moments, though the developer has since released an update to help balance this a bit better. Enemies always hit quite hard and require frequent use of skills to be able to take down. The most dangerous part is always the start of the fight when players are facing groups of enemies, so players will want to try and quickly whittle down or disable as many foes as they can. This means that players will always want to try and keep a steady supply of health and skill point-restoring items on hand, but individual battles are generally very well balanced and ensure players are kept on their toes without ever feeling unfair.
[caption id="attachment_178678" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Players will encounter a wide variety of enemies in the game, most of whom can pack a punch despite perhaps being a chest of drawers.[/caption]
The battle system sees a party of up to four taking on anywhere between one and eight enemies, with around three being the most common. Battles are divided into turns, with the order within each turn depending on each combatant's agility. On each character's turn, players choose the standard array of actions: attack, use a skill, defend, use an item, and attempt to flee, though the last option was by and large ineffective during the review playthrough. Each character has a health bar and a spirit meter, the latter used to perform skills, with defending having the bonus of slightly restoring both as well as providing an attack boost for the next turn. There are also various status effects to take advantage and beware of, with players introduced early on to the usefulness of stunning enemies to prevent their actions, as well as some enemy resistances and weaknesses, though nothing that fully nullifies damage or reflects it back.
Cairn: Mathair's Curse operates with a standard experience point-based growth system. Each level-up grants characters an automatic boost to their stats, with various new skills also obtained automatically fairly frequently. There is some trade off in selecting equipment -- some provide more physical defense as opposed to spiritual defense, for example -- to give players some minor tactical options, though the differences might not be as dramatic as some might hope. Players are always able to find a decent cadence of upgrades for their characters, but nowhere near enough for it to ever become overwhelming, and the UI is straightforward and informational enough to make it easy to switch out equipment when desired.
[caption id="attachment_178679" align="aligncenter" width="640"] There's a decent variety of locations to visit in the game's Scottish-inspired setting.[/caption]
The music is easily one of Cairn: Mathair's Curse's strongest elements. It's very enjoyable throughout; the use of traditional Scottish instruments works excellently with the retro format of the music, going hand-in-hand with the pixel graphics. There are plenty of charming and engaging melodies that are easy to hum along to and simply enjoy on their own. Meanwhile, the visuals do their intended job, nicely evoking the SNES era without ever trying to do too much. All of the main characters are distinct with their sprite designs, and the party members all get a welcome, more detailed portrait in the main menu. A few small passages may be a little bit hidden, but overall locations are crisp and clear about where they need to go and what is available to explore, with plenty of little touches to help players keep track of how everything links up within them.
Cairn: Mathair's Curse is a game that's well worth the time invested in it. While its gameplay might not push the boat out very far, it provides a solid foundation for an engaging storyline and entertaining setting. Heartfelt events, a good balance of zaniness and challenge, and a strong soundtrack ensure that those looking for another strong retro-styled RPG, or even just a fun RPG in general, are well catered for.
Disclosure: This review is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.
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