Stygian: Reign of the Old ones is a turn based exploration game with RPG elements. This game is another game in line based on H.P. Lovecraft writings. You play as a troubled individual amidst of a black day when dimensions start to collide in the small town of Arkham. People went crazy, streets are filled with criminals and lunatics, your goal is to escape the madness and find a certain individual who holds all the answers. You start the game as one of 8 classes with 4 archetypes, you can then pick your skills and start playing.
There are interesting skill choices like occult, investigation, science etc. for overall decent playthrough it is best to take one combat skill like melee or firearms, you will need psychology or medicine as your support skills and one for the dialogue options skills like investigation or occult. You can also chose your belief system which can increase your sanity in dialogue options, you can be a religious type, pragmatic, scientific, the game really gives you nice roleplay options for your character. Sanity is essentially your mana with negative side effects if it drops low, it will drop due to supernatural occurrences that will make you slowly insane. Like this familiar face.
Art style of the game really compliments it's dark and dense atmosphere, crazy dialogues, monstrous companions and interesting quests. Game is designed to be replayable multiple times, there are a lot of skill checks and alternative quests resolving solutions. Itemization is one of the great parts of the game, you must pay attention to items and resources you will find. Combat will remind you of Heroes of Might and Magic 3, here unfortunately combat is very sluggish, you are unable to speed it up. However it does have it's good sides when you combine all the perks, spells and weapon you can use. One interesting aspect of combat mechanics is that you can run for your life and still get the loot if you are capable of killing few enemies.
There are a lot of bugs though, it is hard to play a game that is released in such an unfinished state. You can also expect poor explanation of game mechanics, you will have no clue at times what certain debuffs and spells can do and how to get them. Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones is a Lovecraftian game that somehow ended up not scary at all. Add that to another list of fails. This is another in line of unfinished products even though it had a very interesting premise, unfortunately it failed to deliver. Game definitely has it's strong points but overall it is just unfinished. Score: 71/100!