The Lantern of the Laughless Saint Review — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:08] This time bringing you a video about The Lantern of the Laughless Saint, which is a bit of a long name for an indie openw world RPG that released into early access a couple of days ago. Now, I'm primarily taking a look at this mostly

[00:21] me about it, and I figured I would uh jump in and just take a look and see most important hopline stuff straight away, this is an indie RPG that is uh

[00:33] trying to aim to be things like Morowind. There's even a I guess you could call it an Easter egg reference to The Scrolls of Aarian Flight. So, the inspiration there is very on the nose. However, it might come as no surprise

[00:45] then at the same time that especially with this being an early access release, it's a very buggy experience. I played it for about an hour. It crashed on me like five times. you get hung up on geometry a lot. I noticed that if you

[00:58] save and reload, the game likes to uh replenish anything that was like laying So, it's really easy to effectively duplicate items by just quick saving and reloading. And it's a very rough around the edges game that is nowhere near to

[01:11] being done. I would say this probably has another year or two in early access at the absolute earliest. And yet, it does at the same time have some decided to talk about it. But I do think it's a while before we're going to see

[01:24] this game's final form. And the reason for that potential is twofold. I would say a they are aiming to make it multiplayer. So think playing a game able to play it for other people. Though as you would also expect the multiplayer

[01:38] is very very buggy at the moment. And if they can get some of those bugs worked out and actually get all the I would say very ambitious systems they've already things like an alchemy system, spell crafting, just a lot of the stuff that

[01:51] Morowind has to be clear, alongside implementing some quality of life and, crashing. They'll certainly be on to something though it's a ways away. But with that said, what is this game actually about? The name is a bit odd,

[02:04] right? Well, the lantern of the Laughless Saint takes place on an island that has been drawing people here via sort of supernatural calls for help via an entity known as the Saint. This seems to be originating from a tower at the

[02:17] center of the island and everybody on the island is very aware of these again sort of calls that are being made supernaturally. However, most people got to the island only that they showed up here. So, in that sense, you actually

[02:30] know exactly what you're supposed to be doing, which is getting to the bottom of the tower and in particular finding a theater that you've been having visions of. From the Steam page, it's mentioned that the more of the island's

[02:42] inhabitants and uh NPCs, etc. that you talk to and resolve their quests and whatnot, they will show up in the theater at the end for some sort of is meant to imply, but that is the gist of it. And your job is to uh get to the

[02:57] bottom of that situation while also learning about the world, its strange deities, the odd inhabitants of the island itself. All just trying to get by and make their own way while also, of course, advancing your own character.

[03:09] character. There is a character creation. There are different races to choose from. Several of them seem to be different variations of effectively just a human being. However, there are some more interesting ones like the I believe

[03:23] it's ruggite who seem to be saturated with magic thanks to a close proximity to their deity. There are the thra which is your standard lizard people types and then the kaix which are your cat people of course but outside of physical

[03:37] appearance. They also give a boost or minus to individual skills and a little bit of starting ability. That is just a starting point because once you get into skills by performing any old action, they will start improving. And by doing

[03:50] all of that, you will earn experience to actually level up. And when you level your skills and be able to potentially pick a perk. Now, by increasing those skills, you will passively increase things like your magic, your stamina,

[04:04] and your HP. Like, a lot of those give the bonuses to their individual like actual skill. like for instance, one-handed, spear weapons, unarmed, that kind of thing. But in addition to that, they also give bonuses to your main

[04:16] stamina. So, that seems to be the core of the leveling system. Uh, pretty straightforward, the kind of thing we've seen in many games at this point, but certainly not bad. Now, when it comes to exploring the town areas and talking to

[04:30] people, I think the game hits the exact sort of right vibe of odd and strange. you're not exactly unwelcome here because everyone's here for more or less exactly friendly either. And so, it's a bit of an odd juaposition of these

[04:43] people, I would say, just kind of being tense with you. And you're going to have to prove yourself to them by doing things typically in the form of quests and small favors in order to earn their trust and gain access to their services,

[04:55] like the ability to learn or craft magic or just get more information generally. do is grab some clothes so you're not just out here naked. But as with any game like this, you can, if you want to, spend a bunch of time power grinding

[05:08] your skills and maxing things out to become an absolute powerhouse before Whether or not that is something they approach or change in early access, I thing that I guess is a kind of fundamental to the experience of these

[05:22] pans out. But speaking of that typical experience, uh they do mention that most of the quests have multiple resolutions. how you choose to go about dealing with don't, that kind of thing should lead to different outcomes. And while I think

[05:36] it's a little too buggy to explore all of that at the moment, if this game gets think it'd be something worth looking into. Invariably, however, in the process of doing all of those different quests, you're going to upset some

[05:49] people, and that is where the game's combat comes in. And this is where you definitely feel that indie status pretty hard. So, [laughter] uh, right now, at least in my short experience with the game, ranged is definitely king, and

[06:01] that is because of how janky the, uh, back and forth combat is. There's obviously not really any weight to it, which means it's really hard to catch early quests sees you going after this mad wizard who is just running all over

[06:14] up to the guy, and he's casting spells at you the whole time. So because of situations like that and things like the skeleton archers just outside of town, you're almost certainly going to want to lean on a ranged attack at least in the

[06:28] once you get more melee options, you might be able to bridge that gap a little bit, but in the early game, right now ranged is the clear winner and it is not close. Now, I would imagine that magic might get more useful in the late

[06:41] game as well, because early game, it seems like you only have access to a handful of weaker spells that don't seem to be terribly useful. But with some skills and actually learning spells

[06:54] would imagine you can get to a place just because of the spell crafting in overpowered on its own. Add on top of all of that that it's been genuinely pretty fun to explore the island thus far. Outside of, you know, things like

[07:08] absolutely destroyed by enemies, though, is kind of par for the course when it comes to these games. The exploration is lot of those hallmarks. Lockpicking, getting into things you're not supposed

[07:22] to, stealing. Though, I will say the guards do seem to jump just straight to pulled out a weapon in town and immediately got destroyed by like three guards. So, that's another place that I imagine they could uh tighten things up

[07:35] access. But again, there was just a lot of stuff to explore, a lot of things to find as you dug around into the corners of even the first village and surrounding areas. And putting all of that together, uh, basically just what I

[07:48] said right at the beginning there, this is a game with a ton of potential, but realized. And that's not a knock on the developer by any means. I think it's done here so far. This is an indie game being self-published. And the fact that

[08:03] they've already got all of these systems in place and everything, even if they are still in need of refinement, obviously is a really remarkable feat. And you add the co-op on top of that, it's pretty crazy. I can see the

[08:16] potential here in a few years once all of this stuff is actually fully realized. But as of right now, the case is that it's a very buggy experience that unless you are really committed to uh helping them out with, I probably

[08:30] would hold off. But the bones of something great are here, and I'll be very interested in checking this out as it continues to shape up over its period of early access. But as for today, that is really all I've got for you. Not too

[08:43] much more to say about this one. Overall though, really cool idea. I hope it manages to actually make it through the early access period and see a full release and get all this stuff ironed out because if it can, that's certainly

[08:55] a game I'm excited to play. But in the meantime, I'd love to know what you think about it, which naturally means to like, comment, subscribe, all that YouTube jazz. But regardless of any of that, truly just thank you so much for

[09:07] watching. I really do appreciate it. May you wander in wisdom and have an amazing you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day.