Prelude Dark Pain Early Access Impressions – A World of

Turn-based RPGs are on the upswing. Just look around and you’ll notice lots of them enticing even players who’d never tried one before. But tactical RPGs that almost cross into strategy territory are a different beast, which is why an ambitious bet like Quickfire Games’ Prelude Dark Pain feels so special. Ahead of its early access launch on Steam, I’ve spent some time in the world of Statera, and now I’m almost sad Act 1 is everything we have at the time of writing.

My recent interview with producer and lead story writer Nacho Requena was a fruitful one, yet one can’t help but wonder if all the promises will materialise when everything sounds good. So far, I’d say Quickfire has good aim, as Prelude Dark Pain walks into the early access period with confidence and style. But of course, expect a few growing pains.

Like in past playtests and preview builds, the first thing that impresses is the clean but familiar, Darkest Dungeon and Mike Mignola-inspired art. It pops during regular play, but the cutscenes stand out with beautiful backgrounds, well-defined and memorable character designs (something that’s particularly hard to consistently crack), and cutscenes which make every major story beat feel like a high-profile comic book in motion. I was told Quickfire’s biggest team was the one dedicated to art, and it shows.

Visually, Prelude Dark Pain also avoids the common pitfall of becoming too busy for what’s ultimately a simple gameplay proposition. It mostly honours tactical RPG classics like Final Fantasy Tactics, but despite its dissimilar art style, it’s similarly uncluttered in its presentation. Reading the battlefields is easy, and the experience benefits from the previously teased changes to the UI based on player feedback. It’s now easier to hover above party members and enemies to get a quick read on what they can do and how they’re affected by attacks and ongoing buffs or debuffs.

Three camera modes (automatic, semi-automatic, and manual) also give players different levels of control over zooming in and out. While playing with a controller (easily my go-to pick for this game), automatic and semi feel natural, but as reported after past playtests, the freedom of the manual option is pretty much a must if you’re sticking with the mouse and keyboard controls.

Prelude Dark Pain’s actual systems and mechanics aren’t groundbreaking, as the devs have underlined they wanted to follow tradition first and foremost, yet it smartly mixes and matches chunks from all over the genre’s rich history. More importantly, it all feels cohesive. It’s abundantly clear a lot of playtesting (both internal and external) has gone into this one. Whether it’s an area attack or a defensive buff, few skills feel like a waste of time and resources, and soon enough I was going all-in on a turret build with Tizon, for example. Even if the gadget doesn’t hit hard, I learned through experimentation it was perfect to block attacks and distract enemies.

The promised build flexibility (also elevated by a simple but effective crafting system) also plays well with purely tactical concepts and decision-making in the battlefield like picking the right spot for a ranged character (height adds modifiers to damage) or just removing foes from the battlefield by literally pushing them off the board. Seemingly impossible encounters can be turned around with smart plays, so Prelude Dark Pain makes a notable effort to avoid becoming a deluge of numbers and artificial difficulty, too.

The watertight (even if balance passes will no doubt come our way) combat experience feels particularly strong during the boss encounters. Again, I was told there was a very conscious effort to make the big bads not sponge-y, and even if their HP bars are clearly bigger than anyone else’s, they don’t take long to defeat once you figure out where your focus should be. Critical devastating moves are underlined when you look at the order of turns, and many of them will continue to summon more enemies if they don’t die first.

It’s an approach that rewards quick thinking and taking care of situations before they spiral out of control rather than an endurance test. Focus on the smaller enemies for too long, and they’ll just eventually overwhelm your party. Use a tank to draw some attention away while the best DPS characters focus on the central fight and you’re likely to emerge victorious. Then again, Prelude Dark Pain has a few surprises hidden even in its first act, and ‘rock paper scissors’ strategies are doomed to fail if they’re overplayed.

I was also pleased by the narrative’s overall nimbleness. There are no walls of text and exposition to overcome here before getting to the juice, as the characters don’t like to overexplain their world or their society for no reason. Like a good comic book, Prelude moves at a rapid pace and only sits down to chat when the tale requires it. This means those looking to make a beeline for the ending of Act 1 will have a breezy experience, whereas those engaging with the game’s surprising amount of secondary content are getting a fuller picture of Statera, the bad guys, and the factions that may or may not join Soren and his band of warriors. Moreover, there’s a clear sense of direction versus opening a hundred different plotlines, which is also refreshing if you’re familiar with big RPGs.

On a not-so-positive note, performance feels spotty at the time of writing. Of course, the game isn’t graphically demanding, yet I wasn’t able to max out my monitor’s refresh rate (180 Hz) as both the GPU and CPU were apparently taking a nap. Hiccups can happen in certain places even if the performance doesn’t tank, too. All to be expected from an early access build, mind you, but the less patient crowd might be bothered by a retro-inspired RPG choking under the hood. On a similar note, Steam Deck feels like a good fit for Prelude Dark Pain, yet some encounters bring the framerate below 30 FPS, and with no graphical settings to speak of beyond the basic screen ones, there’s little we can do at this stage to alleviate such issues.

If you can deal with those bumps in the road and are willing to share your feedback, Prelude Dark Pain already delivers punchy and well-designed tactical RPG thrills that feel perfect for a couple of quick encounters before bed. Act 1 is a generous offering and a strong foundation for what’s to come. Above everything, Quickfire Games has managed to distil old and new lessons to brew something that’s convincing on its own. The colourful roster of characters and classes is the highlight here, but I actually care about Statera and its inhabitants. As someone who isn’t particularly attached to several of its influences, I’m thinking this debut could be a critical strike when it’s complete.