Pillars of Dust is a wacky low-fi RPG. It plays out in episodic chapters in which you have some control of selection. Meaning, you can focus on Carlton, the regal character, or Gregg, the poor character or switch back and forth between them.
Each chapter sets goals like earning currency and finding secrets. If you meet these goals, you get stat bonuses. I applaud this mechanic, and dig the currency and orb collection, but I HATE the secrets. It turns you into a Link meme, destroying all the pots in sight. With the secrets it turns a joy in other games into a chore. After a couple of beers, I successfully loosened myself up enough to skip ahead without reaching the secret goal.
Sound, music and art are NES era on point. The music is up tempo which coincides nice with the game, which is very fast paced for an RPG. And I like it. Dialogue is short and sweet, character movement is fast. Battles! Fast! For a light-hearted wacky game, this is perfect.
Battles are simple and your HP/MP refills after every battle. This is a great touch so you can go all out, but... you don't need to until bosses. If I could changed something about this game I would make less battles but make them harder. This is a first hour review though, so keep that in mind. Maybe I just did the equivalent of a tutorial. For the record, I did both Carlton and Gregg's Prologue and Carlton's Chapter 1. Each prologue took less than 10 minutes.
All in all, I will come back to this game but it's not high on my priority list to finish. Really, I wish it was a mobile game.
