Book of Travels, art and role playing | Tried

Book of Travels

We have seen quite a lot of experiments and strange videogame hybrids in recent years, but there is no doubt as to how Book of Travels is one of the most interesting. The work of Might and Delight is in fact something that goes far beyond experimenting with some simple mechanics, proposing itself as a sort of MMORPG strongly marked by roleplaying and endowed with a unique artistic style. In short, Book of Travels is something that has captured us since its announcement and which we are finally ready to tell you about in conjunction with its early access launch on Steam.

We tested the game with the following PC:

GPU: Zotac RTX 3070 Twin Edge OC MOBO: Asus ROG STRIX Z370-F RAM: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16GB DDR4 3200MHz CPU: Intel i5 8600k 3.6 GHZ SSD: Sabrent SSD 2TB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 Keyboard: Corsair K70 LUX Red LED Cherry MX Brown Mouse: Fnatic Flick 2 Headphones: Logitech G930 Monitor: Samsung C27HG 70 Quad HD 144Hz HDR

Tiny Multiplayer Online

Book of Travels is not a real MMORPG, but to be exact a TMORPG, that is a "tiny" online role-playing game, in which you run into other players with a dropper and every single encounter can prove to be the source of incredible adventures. The latest effort of Might and Delight is in fact heavily focused on what roleplaying is, made up not so much of long speeches and precise information, but of summary indications by way of emoticons and various symbols. Which, although on paper it may rightly arouse various doubts and perplexities, the proof of the facts works very well and it is a pleasure to see the spirit of communication and cooperation between the members of a group of travelers who gradually learn to know each other increasingly refined. .

Such verve focused on the characters and their stories is evident from the very rich initial editor, in which it is necessary to create your own digital alter ego based on a large number of characteristics, such as background, personality, appearance and many more. Something that has all the credentials to turn out to be profound, especially considering how Book of Travels will be expanded over the next few months. All this information and options, as well as being potentially disruptive for those who have the desire and time to immerse themselves in the work of Might and Delight, are not currently supported by a valid tutorial, which allows you to make informed decisions.

Problem that also recurs in the actual gameplay, where the player is practically left to himself and the meager explanations given are not enough to make people understand the importance of many details. Why should we, for example, learn recipes and whose prodest to get hold of so many objects of dubious usefulness sold by merchants? All questions that, after hours and hours of play, are fortunately answered, but which at the beginning are more than legitimate and could discourage more than one player, especially in combination with a deliberately very slow pace of play.

For the rest B ook of Travels is already characterized by undoubted qualities and by a gameplay along the lines of the old graphic adventures, that is, by the classic point and click mechanics, which turns out to be perfect for what is orchestrated by Might and Delight. Perfectly in line with the whole then the system to level up, which is based on the exploration and discovery of the game world.

Game world which, needless to go around it too much, is one of the main points of strength of Book of Travels, with the various locations of the title that leave nothing short of speechless and know how to turn out to be real paintings in motion. An indisputable beauty, of which you too can be witnesses simply by taking a look at the images accompanying this first trial of the game.

Technical inaccuracies

The indisputable goodness has been ascertained on the artistic side of Book of Travels, on the technical side, however, the latest effort from Might and Delight definitely leaves the side uncovered to various criticisms. Despite the certainly not cheap configuration with which we decided to try the title - you can find it at the beginning of the article - in the course of our hours of play we have in fact encountered much more than a few slowdowns, with the average framerate that never quite has us satisfied . Of course, we played with maximum details, but it is truly inexplicable how a work like Book of Travels, beautiful to look at but not for a graphics system full of effects or other particularly expensive features, struggled so much with an RTX 3070. To make it even more enigmatic is the fact that we only played in Full HD and not in Quad HD, as for some strange reason Book of Travels just didn't want to start at the native resolution of our monitor.

Present at present, then, numerous graphic glitches, which break the magic created by the irresistible artistic system of the game, such as a train in desynchronous motion with the smoke produced by the locomotive and other small details . The animations should also be reviewed, which often start late and are not always fluid.

In short, if on a playful level Book of Travels seems to have the phisique du role to prove to be an egregious experience for lovers of roleplaying, there is still a lot of work to be done on the technical one. The hope is therefore to see in the coming months, but also years, not only always new stories and personalities to enrich the enchanting world of Book of Travels, but also many optimization interventions, in such a way as to facilitate even more the player identification.

Did you want to try Book of Travels in Early Access? Get a copy in Early Access on Steam now!