Reviewing Vagrus is not unlike reviewing an epic "mature" fantasy novel like Song of Ice and Fire - and not only because of the huge amount of text that needs reading. It's complex, layer upon layer of brutality, fun, politics, intrigue, all-too-human behaviour (no matter what race you pick for your character) and of most of all - death after death. It draws a subtle inspiration from many other fictional universes and a few real ones ;) but ultimately manages successfully to stand proudly on its own feet. It's a demanding game in many ways - it asks for a lot of your time, a lot of your attention and sometimes - a lot of your nerves. What it offers in return is something genuinely charming and captivating, which is a bit weird in the modern world of corporate game development that tends to produce legions of soulless clones of some original concept that died a long time ago, but no later than the 90s of the XX century. That's pretty much the summary and if it sounds appealing to you - get the game. BUT! Only do so if you enjoy reading A LOT. There's a very good reason why the team behind it has given an official warning to potential buyers to skip Vagrus if they are not ready to read and read, and read...

Now, some details. The game, roughly speaking, has three main layers.

By far the biggest one of them, which will consume no less than 70% of your in-game time, is navigating through walls of text and occasionally making choices based on what you have read. Vagrus could have failed miserably as an entertainment product if that wall was bland and boring - but it's not. The writing style, even though somewhat inconsistent (I really doubt that one person has written all of... this), manages to transform the innumerable lines into something that does not require a struggle to overcome. It just flows fluently (well... almost all the time) and keeps you interested. The lore of the world, which is the main engine that powers everything else, is original and mysterious enough to make you want to discover more - be it through the hundreds, if not thousands of interactions, or the hundreds of codex entries. There isn't a "story" per se, at least there isn't a "main story", but there are many clusters of interlinked or independent plot lines which ultimately form a very consistent whole. There are many quests on top of the limitless amount of randomly generated "tasks" you can perform, and some of them have more than enough story and gameplay for a full game by the modern standards. Vagrus is meant to be played (and read) for hundeds of hours. I have more than 150 already and I'm still to finish some of the companion storylines and a few other major quests - and I have barely started the Sunfire and Moonshadow DLC, which is allegedly quite big on its own. In short - the reading content is excellent, a major success in my opinion. My only complaint is that some of the stories, even though technically finished as game quests, remain "open" and you're not told how something you have invested yourself in actually ends, or the ending leaves you with more questions than answers.

The second layer is the one for the exploration and trading. The map is enormous and even though you have access to something like 25% of it (20% without the DLCs), you can easily spend 100 hours on it and still have some places to discover and/or visit. The points of interest are camps, villages, towns and cities, where you can re-supply, hire crew for your commitatus and trade whatever goods you're carrying with you - bought elsewhere or transported as part of a contract. These are the remnants of civilization after the apocalypse that happened centuries ago and there you can expect more or less civil behaviour (of course this includes civil backstabbing, civil hypocrisy, civil misery and arrogance, as well as all other wonders of the civilization). Outside of those small islands, you have a vast desert, which you will traverse many times and which will kill you about as many times with starvation, random events and random encounters. There's a number of uninhabited (by nice people) ruins which serve as dungeons to explore and loot - and of course die a few times in the process. The rewards for the exploration are usually good, but you have to plan each and every expedition that is not strictly between bases which can provide you with supplies. You can hunt and forage in the field (and usually fail, even if your respective skills are maxed up), but there are big regions where the success chance for both is virtually 0%.

The third layer is the squad management and the tactical combat. Here come the companions. Each one of them is really unique, with a personal story that typically has a few twists in it. From RPG standpoint there isn't much - each companion has 4 skill, all of which are accessible from the beginning and can only be upgraded. On top of that, he or she has a wider range of passives which improve his/her performance in combat, or during different events. To "promote" a companion to a higher level, as well as to improve your own character, you use Insight. That's basically a currency, which is earned similarly to XP, but only by progressing through the story or discovering stuff on the world map - no Insight from combat victories. It takes quite a while to develop all of your companions to maximum proficiency, but they get noticeably better. Initially each one of them is barely more capable than a random thug you encounter in the desert, while in the end you can take on an entire enemy squad with just 3 of your guys without breaking a sweat. The tactical combat is heavily RNG-based, but it's not really unfair. Positioning is important, as well as upgrading your team members to serve a specific role. That game will try hard to f*** you up no matter how well you think you have planned your battles by throwing more and more waves at you, or changing the rules between the encounters (for example, in the first combat from the series you can deploy 6 fighters, but in the second - only 4), but there aren't really impossible fights - just some really, really tough ones. The combat is fun overall.

Vagrus fancies itself a difficult game and technically speaking - it is. But it has built-in exploits that make it much easier than it has the right to be. The game auto-saves every day in the desert and also when you leave a settlement. All encounters, except the story-based ones, are completely random and the chance for them to occur is being calculated when you step on a certain "node" on the map - this essentially means that an encounter which kills you, robs you or generally makes your life very miserable in some way, can be completely avoided by reloading an auto-save and going the same way (the game will re-calculate something and this time you'll safely pass through the exactly same route, which destroyed you before the reload). Additionally, you can grind yourself out of any financially perilous situation by doing easy trade tasks between relatively safe locations. The game likes to squeeze tons of money from you during some of the quests, sometimes a bit surprisingly, but you can make thrice the amount by just ignoring the plot and spending half an year making money (if there are timed quests in the game, I haven't reached any of their deadlines).

There's a lot more to say, but Vagrus already offers enough to read. For me, that's one of the best games for this decade, but I can fully understand that some people won't even dare touch it - and they'll be in their right to do so.