Taival Early Access Review – A Trivial Trek

Taival is an open-world action RPG, currently in Early Access, that includes exploration, quests, combat, gathering, fishing, crafting, and, if desired, co-op play. The word “taival” in Finnish means “journey” or “trek,” and I have to say, this trek, unfortunately, was not for me. The character selection started out well, and I had high hopes going into the game for what lay ahead. But overall, I was left wanting a lot more from both the story and the gameplay.

First, players design their character and pick whether they would like to be a Goblin or a Lumiling. Players have a decent amount of customization they can do to their avatar before entering the world. Once character customization is complete, the player heads into a colorful, block-like fantasy world. It is adjacent to Minecraft‘s block-based appearance, but it is not as straightforward and clean as Minecraft‘s blocks. The goal of the game is to find out who destroyed the Heartstone of the Henki, restore the Heartstone, and also guide and assist your magical companion friend, Henki, back to its home. This journey can either be done alone or in co-op with up to four players online. There’s also a split-screen multiplayer option for local play.

The gameplay is similar to a classic RPG in an open-world format. You and your entourage go between different regions, speak with various allies and characters within villages, complete quests, collect equipment, fight creatures, and unlock abilities. Your Henki companion can assist you by healing you and also transforming into creatures you have found along the way thus far. These different forms give you advantages in exploration and combat. Combat takes place in real-time, and you fight with basic attacks with your selected weapon, character abilities, and your Henki companion. When the player is not engaged in combat, they usually follow quest markers, scour the environment, collect resources, and explore the vast world across its regions.

One very interesting concept is that both the player and the Henki companion have their own skill trees. Therefore, players can explore different setups and builds, even when playing alone. Progression comes through choosing upgrades that assist you along the way, making you stronger and much more capable of completing quests.

The more I played Taival, the more confused and lost I was. As soon as you get past the character creation, you are dropped into the open world and are able to start exploring. One of my biggest peeves with this game is that they provide no explanation of what you are supposed to do when you first start. It does not give an introductory cutscene explaining anything, nor does it give you instructions when you first land in this mysterious world. I will give credit where credit is due: there are occasional pop-ups on the side that give you hints and explain what some things do, like how to access your inventory and other small, helpful items. However, my group felt very underwhelmed with the instructions, or rather, the lack thereof.

Once we got going, we started to find random items like Henki Scrolls and healing items. The only way we knew how these items healed, though, was by checking our inventory and seeing the effects they had. There was a plethora of healing plants that were helpful to take, with a 40-minute cooldown. For long-term gameplay, I can see how these would be rather helpful, especially with the ability to come back to respawned plants if you have been fighting often.

Speaking of fighting, at the beginning, we had only found level 1 and level 2 weapons, mainly swords. Every combat encounter felt extremely easy, either one-shotting or two-shotting any given enemy. These enemies would then drop something of a similar level, and it just did not feel very worthwhile.

Another issue with the combat was how much the current bugs are affecting the game. One of my group members was using a bow, and the glitches were extremely hard to ignore. When you shoot the arrow, you would expect it to stick in the body of the target; however, the arrow would hit their invisible hit box and randomly float there. Another group member tried to use a magic weapon, and it was practically impossible to aim it. It would shoot at random 45-degree angles, out into nowhere. The starting weapon damage was also very off-putting and unbalanced. The starting wand did two damage, yes, two; meanwhile, a sword does around 25 damage. Lastly, one party member used a large, two-handed hammer-like weapon, and when they would swing the weapon, they would often clip their entire character into the ground and get stuck in the middle of combat. This would only be “fixed” by fighting on completely even ground, of which there is hardly any throughout the entire game.

Even the game itself was hard to load, as all three of us launched it multiple times, and it would crash before we even got into the game or clicked anything within it. Even for an Early Access game, I expect there to be way less bugs and crashes than this. I do think there is a player demographic out there that will enjoy Taival once it’s fixed, and there have been daily updates for the game thus far, so it seems like the developers are taking user feedback and implementing it to fix the issues at hand.

Overall, Taival did not impress me much in its current state, but I do see how those who enjoy open-world RPGs could enjoy this game once it releases into 1.0. For my group, we felt underwhelmed with the story, quests, and combat currently available, and I believe that having a stronger throughline that connects the story and quests would greatly enhance the game’s clarity and playability.

Angel reviewed Taival in Early Access on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game that was available at the time of writing, and our score will not be changed.