Thorne - Death Merchants

Thorne - Death Merchants
N/A
Metacritic
76
Steam
62.687
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$1.19
Release date
25 March 2016
Developers
Publishers
Steam reviews score
Total
76 (198 votes)

Play as an infamous mercenary known as "The Crow" in a decayed and corrupt world, find your way out of chains and get paid for your contract, in this enthralling Action-RPG with high production values.

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Thorne - Death Merchants system requirements

Minimum:

  • OS: Windows XP/Windows Vista/Windows 7/8/10
  • Processor: 1.6 GHz
  • Memory: 128 MB RAM
  • Graphics: DirectX 9.0 Compatible
  • DirectX: Version 9.0
  • Storage: 200 MB available space
  • Sound Card: DirectX 9.0 Compatible Sound

Recommended:

Recommended requirements are not yet specified.
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Fen'Harel
Fen'Harel

Nice game, definitely a bit short, but i know how much work making even a short game like this requires. You can feel it's a labor of love. World is full of events and great to explore. Nice implement of MA Quest Journal. Maybe a little bit too much "default" RPGMaker stuff left in for my taste (like that annoying walking sound effect which doesn't sound like walking at all). But every part that was different than usual, like combat system or map of the area was a nice addition.

TigersquashDonut
TigersquashDonut

Combat

-------------------

Thorne - Death Merchants is a fun little RPGMaker game buried under bad combat. It is difficult, but not in a git gud kind of way. Combat just feels unrewarding. Enemies swarm you from all sides. They respawn when you return to an area, or sometimes just infinitely spawn in certain locations.

You can die pretty quickly, from bleeding damage, poison, or being molotov'd to death from a good distance away. A possible glitch(?) means even after using antidote or a tourniquet you can still lose HP to poison/bleeding damage. All this stuff isn't fun and detracts from the game. If you like a challenge, there are better games out there that will really test your mettle and reward your efforts. Thorne - Death Merchants isn't one of them.

If you want to find where your saves live so you edit them: you can search 'Thorne' and you'll find where the are, as they're not in the immediate local file where the game is installed. The rvdata2 files are your saves. There's also a backup Thorne folder so just check you're in the right one.

On Steam Deck the path for me was:
/home/deck/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/451920/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/Application Data/Thorne/Death Merchants/

But once you balance the combat, you'll have a decent time here. Some people will balk at this, but occasionally a bad game needs a little stat boosting from... external sources. Google is your friend and RPGMaker save editors exist is all I'll say. Whether you want to or not for a game that often costs $1 is up to you. But my beefed up Mr 'The Crow' demolished everything in his path and I had a great time doing it.

Controls

-------------------

Thorne runs... ok? on Steam Deck via Proton. The game looks fine on the Steam Deck and isn't super squished out like it can be in full screen on regular desktop. The controls are a bit weird, controller will work but a mouse cursor will hang around. You can move it out the way with the right joystick, but the menu mainly uses mouse controls instead of controller. It made saving and loading a bit annoying but nothing unmanageable.

The Steam Deck's right track pad tends to click automatically in the main menu instead of scrolling properly too. This hasn't happened with any other games I've played on my Steam Deck recently or in the past, so I'm putting this issue down to weird Thorne tomfoolery.

If you want to mainly use a controller you may want to remap the healing and rage actions to a specific button. This is pretty easy to do on Steam Deck, but on regular pc press F1 to view and change controls. At one point I mapped the molotov attack to left trigger, but Thorne would only face right when attacking. It made the Goblin Cave annoying because you have to destroy the circle spawn points by facing them directly then molotoving. Remapping the button to X fixed this weird quirk and I'm not sure why.

Story

-------------------

The game starts by asking if you want to play in English or Portuguese, I played in English. From this, I'm assuming English may not be the dev's first language and it does show. There are grammatical errors, typos and weird syntax abound. It isn't so bad that you have to sit there deciphering what the heck a sentence even means, but if you're precious about perfect grammar it will annoy you.

Once you beef up your merc the unofficial way, exploration becomes enjoyable because you're not getting ambushed constantly. Have a look around and see what you can find. If you get lost, there is an in game map item that I got from a chest near some bandits somewhere off to the right (or check the screenshots page here, I've added one of the map.)

The story in this game is actually decent, if short. A village needs your help and you're the mercenary in need of coin, give or take some other stuff in between of course. If you stray from the beaten path there are side quests here and there. Don't go to the McArthur Estate straight away, have a look around first. Maybe check the helpful achievements guides if you really don't want to miss anything. Check the cute little Encyclopedia in the menu to see a sentence or two on enemies or NPCs.

If you're stuck in the Estate section interact with the angel statues and the gargoyle. Pick up wiggling items in the rooms and pull a curtain lever thing. After you've found some gems and put them in the marble statues, you'll need 3 key fragments to open the mansion doors to get to McArthur. I think you'll find them in the garden, the curtain lever and a bookcase lever from the room that opens up from the marble statue.

When I finished the game (killing everything in my wake and somewhat rushing) it took me about 2.5 hours and I ended up missing half the achievements. I'd guess it would take maybe 3-6 hours depending on how thorough you are and whether or not you fudge your stats.

Final Thoughts

-------------------

This might seem like a lot of effort for a random RPGMaker game, but there's something to this one. It feels like a 2D proto baby discount Witcher almost, it just needs balancing to get there. If you can be bothered to do that, give it a shot.

If you like the RPGMaker style, check out these games with some of the aspects I liked from Thorne:

Ara Fell - turn based RPG with good exploration.

The Deed series - dark storytelling where you need to execute the perfect murder.

The Last Sovereign - 18+ very NSFW! turn based, amazing story about politics and war (no seriously). In early access but free with hours and hours of content.

Slayer says "HV vai valo lok"
Slayer says &q…

I am sucker for pixel graphics game in medival theme.This is a hidden gem.Beautiful presentation,nice story.The combat is not so good u have to dodge and attack ez to master tho.Some areas seem explorable but r not.The interesting thing is the achievements because all of them r hidden. Here is a guide that helped me to cmplt 100%. (https://gameplay.tips/guides/thorne-death-merchants-achievement-guide.h…) .Again this game was very much enjoyable.Thumbs UP !

Kloodge
Kloodge

30 Minute Quickie Impressions:

It's well done. You can tell they spent a lot of time making it.

It's easy to get surrounded and die. The combat is fast-paced.

It needs another round or two with the spell checker.

It's currently $1.79. That's a large order of fries. Go for it. You don't need those fries anyway.

Jargonaut
Jargonaut

I loved to play RPG Maker games, especially those that has good storylines and that have some unique features that is different from the run-of-the-mill type games.

Well, I had a wonderful time with this game, Thorne.
The game mechanics is very unique, as we do not have he regular leveling, or armors, etc.
What it has is a single weapons, and a number of different accessories slots.
So, it is quite refreshing.
The fighting itself is also different as well.
Instead of turn-based, 1-action-per-turn combat, you actually move your character around to try to avoid being hit, and press the attack button (direct combat or range combat) to try to hit the enemy. So the combat mechanics is slightly different.

Another really interesting thing is the 22 Steam achievements. Although you can finished the main quest in 2-3 hours, I actually spend 10 hours, playing the game 3 times, and trying to figure out all the different achievements. This is because the activation of certain events are not too obvious and trying to figure out how to trigger them is part of the fun of the game. There are also different type of exploration puzzles, hidden items, partial keys, etc, that make the game interesting as well. I loved this game.

The only shortcoming that I can think of for this game is : IT IS TOO SHORT :).
However, as I understand it, this is Part 1 of an 8 part episodic game and that we would be able to carry forward our save game to the next episode.
This is really excellent. Furthermore the price of slightly more than $1 for such a game is defintely worth it!!
I love this game, and would look forward to buying and playing all 8 episodes.
Keep up the good work, developers... and I definitely recommend this game.

Karmic_Kitten
Karmic_Kitten

The game ran exceedingly slow ... for example going in between areas could take a full minute of a black screen while you waited.

Also the controls feel pretty wonky and there really aren't any useful instructions that you can refer to in-game.

This might be OK if it got cleaned up a lot, but right now it's not a very good game.

Allow Me To Realize
Allow Me To Realize

I don't recommend this game, but I also don't not recommend this game. I just more don't than I do.

I played 9 minutes of this game. Here's what killed an already uphill battle for this title to win me over:

Full Screen - although a mouse click was sufficient to make selections in the title menu, I had to use arrows/directional keys to select Full Screen, this was not explained. So I think a good 5 minutes of the my play time was actually just trying to get to full screen, which was found through a forum, and the answer wasn't even, "oh yeah, you gotta randomly use arrow keys all of a sudden in that particular menu, which is contradictory of 100% of your previous experience... the previous menu". Nah, man. They dropping some alt+enter knowledge.

(alleged) Full Controller Support - so I must have missed class the day that the exact meaning of full controller support was covered, but my frame of reference that was crafted through countless hours in other games told me that when a game says it has "full controller support", that it's going to be a seamless experience, probably with such perks as when I flip on my controller, all of a sudden all prompts, commands, etc, transition to be relevant to a controller. Such is not the case with this game. Not only does the controller need to be on prior to launching, I just can't seem to find where the fuck Q and W are on my controller. I'll keep searching. I hope I find some support.

Character Voice Mod Technology - one thing not advertised, but a quirky feature nonetheless, is that Thorne/TheCrow/Aragorn shrieks through a drive-thru window voice mod device each time he attacks. That's just what I'm trying to listen to in an arpg. My character screaming with some mild distortion/static ad nauseum while I pile the bodies high.

My_Monkey_Balls
My_Monkey_Balls

Solid "classic feel-like" action RPG.
A little rough on the edges with some aspects, but it's a proud for brasilian true indie production.
Music is great, and a dark atmosphere is a relieve from dull phantasy games like this.
Works great with the script.
Kudos for the developer o/

Senior Joe
Senior Joe

Just another bad game made with RPGMaker.

IAmJakeSauvage
IAmJakeSauvage

After actually sitting down and playing through this game I definitely have a few gripes...

*PROS*
- Great mapping/atmosphere
- Witcher-like feel

*CONS*
- Really easy to get cornered/obliterated
- No autosave - and no queues to some boss fights
- Chock full of spelling/grammatical errors

The game starts off pretty strong - and it had a lot of potential but it's far too short to deliver a sense of accomplishment. You're basically in this one town and you get a few quests (about ten including side quests) to learn some history of it's residents and the surrounding country...the game just felt like just an introduction - there was no real climax or ending.

EDIT: Was experiencing major lag - but after upgrading to Windows 10 the problem somehow fixed itself, so...

JoMYoung
JoMYoung

Do not like the battle system of this game, far too easy to get cornered and killed, what's wrong with the usual battle system of most greatr/good rpg.

I managed to ply 13 minutes and that was enough, couldn't see me even trying to play so requested a refund.. Now for me that's a big one as I've only ever requested a refund on one other game so that shows how bad I thought this was just based on the battle system.

Give us a starndard battle system and I probably would still have the game.

daymon74
daymon74

This game is vulgar. There's no reason for it, and it certainly doesn't do anything to add to the game. Whoever created the game had a great idea, but they need to put on their big boy pants and leave the over the top vulgarity where it belongs. In the gutter. Shame. Had good graphics, and put me in mind of Zelda.

time2wander
time2wander

Albeit short, this game was fun. The plot is intriguing and the characters are believable. The dialogue is both mature and entertaining. I could definitely see a sequel to expand on the current plot.

The game is a little flawed though:

1) The grammar and spelling could use some polishing.

2) Manipulating the wolf is a rather wonky process, as he tends to get stuck behind obstacles and keep a rather long distance from you; I guess he likes his personal space? It would also be nice if you could point to where you specifically want the wolf to search within a reasonable distance of the main character.

3) You really don't have a need for much of the game's currency (Rowens), as you can often find things to survive by just roaming and defeating enemies, or having the wolf search for things. Might want to improve on that for the sequel.

Some optional interaction with the ladies who take payment for a good time (can't write the W word here lol) could be fun too but that feature would likely offend many players.

On a side note, the rhythm of the Hornhold theme makes me think of "Exes and Ohs" by Elle.

danielpg1984
danielpg1984

Imagine if you will some company from the 16-bit era tried to make The Witcher. Congratulations, you just imagined Thorne in a nutshell. A real time RPG with an enjoyable story, and optional side quests if you want to spend a little extra time in the country of Rowen. I look forward to other episodes coming out.

DT
DT

fun game but incredibly short . good gameplay and easy controls decent storyline. hope they continue the game with something longer.
would wait for a sale to buy if you are interested . 5 dollars for a 2 hour game isnt hardly worth the price. but on the positive side after completing the story there are still 12 more achievements to complete so a second run through would be easy to finish the extra content .

Gharren
Gharren

Thorne - Death Merchants is a game that really stands out amongst most other RPG Maker games on Steam. You can see that some real effort and thought went into character design and a coherent world that reminds me of a grim fantasy setting in the style of The Witcher. Instead of the usual turn-based combat, Thorne features real-time combat that is really neatly implemented within the limits of the engine. Albeit the english translation is a bit clumsy at times (could definitely need a language assistant), Thorne introduces some really interesting characters that make me curious for future episodes. Also, the developer listens to feedback and keeps updating and improving the game, which definitely is a plus.

feetfur
feetfur

Okay, that was it? that was my thought when i finished it.

It is by no means a bad game, just not very great. Feels quite generic, that being said it\'s quite cheap and for a game of this type it is very well polished, and at the end of the day engaging enough to play through to the end. But i was surprised by the story being all it was which was a bit generic sadly, and i know this is probabaly partially the fault of the translation, but it comes of as quite cringe worthy at certain key moments.

I thought towards the end of the story it had some potential to pick up and become interesting and spark curiosity but then it ends. Not surprised, nor am i annoyed it was okay, but ultimately underwhelmed.

6.5/10, i still recommend it for the price, at the end of the day i still had some fun.

GaNoo
GaNoo

Thorne is an interesting idea for an RPG Maker title. It's set in a dark fantasy setting as opposed to your standard anime looking world. In fact, the world feels more like something ripped from a George R.R. Martin book! So, the setting is incredible! Unfortunately, that's where my enjoyment ended!

The English version of the game is full of spelling errors! Nearly every paragraph has a few misspelled words. In fact, sometimes it is difficult to understand what exactly the characters are saying. This to me, is a game breaker in an RPG! If a game rips you out of your immersion, so you can try to decode what the characters are saying, then it's NOT a good RPG. A role playing game, should allow you to lose yourself into the fantasy world. This however does not.

The controls seem awkward, and even moreso when using a gamepad! The second battle in the game, pits you against 4 enemies. The enemies are easy enough to defeat, but they are on you quickly. They can and do push you all the way to the back entrance of the map. Forcing you to fight them while locked in the corner since the only way out of the entrance passage is up....and up is where they are standing.

Overall, the game had potential, and could have been good. It just infuriated me more than entertained me.

Seneschul
Seneschul

Interesting initially. Rough around the edges.
Remember that - this game is rough around the edges.
On a scale of 1 to 10, it's a six.
Engaging story.
Nifty mechanics that have been added on.
But if you can't handle playing a game that's trying to push it's envelope a bit - that needs polished, but hasn't been, don't play this game.

MERCALATOR
MERCALATOR

Its actually a great game. Reminds of when games were great. Story line keeps me reeled in. need to make this much longer! need more thorne !

Big Jake Kope
Big Jake Kope

Fun 2d rpg game. Story line was entertaining and kept me interested. Looking forward to playing the sequel and longer game play, story and further development. Cheers! - Jake

Count Moldy
Count Moldy

A lot of problems make for a poor package. Combat and menu's are extremely clunky. Full screen looks poorly stretched. Natural window is tiny and cannot be resized through convenient means. Writing actually isn't bad what I played of it. Payed a buck. I wish I hadn't but not enough to refund it. I just recommend caution before purchase.

LIONHEARTE
LIONHEARTE

Dialogue is horrible. Give players options of making choices. I bared my teeth for ten minutes of "crow" and his extremely hardman, special snowflake attitude. 10/10 would refund

1337stephen
1337stephen

Dialogue is shoddy, combat system is complete crap. Only took me a few minutes to uninstall.

☁ Hyde ☁
☁ Hyde ☁

So after around 4 hrs playtime and one playthrough here is my review:

first of all i rly enjoyed playing this game.
its some kind of Van Hellsing/ Berzerk - like game.

pros:
-good story
-love the indie/2D-style
-runs on lower systems perfectly
-if u started u want the progress
-good mixture of battle/story/riddles
-at the end u have a cliffhanger, so im lookin forward for the next parts
-after first playthrough i have 12/22 achievements (so i want to play it again with a bit of distance)
-u just have a view items to switch inside ur inv, so u dont need hours to collect/ build ur char

cons:
-the biggest minus is, that i clipped 3-4 times on flowerpixels or something else during fights -> bit annoying
-to me its sometimes a bit too pressed inside the quest ( although i just got 12/22 achievements the first time..so its just could be me that sucks at this game lul)
-during the game u just evolve 1 lvl even if u do, so maybe its an option to not even put in a leveling system

so afterall i would say its worth every dollar/euro u spent, IF they can make a even bigger story out of it in the next parts :)

enjoy gaming ppl :)!

Master Ghaleon
Master Ghaleon

Choppy controls and some minor spelling/grammar errors, but overall an enjoyable story.

Root
Root

The part that sold me is that is the fact that this is an action-rpg.

But the controlls are way too weird for me to enjoy the action.

I really didn't go far enough in the game to say if it's good or not, but I'm not having fun. :/

RetroRainbow
RetroRainbow

could be good. but controlls, Keyboard and Controller are S**t

wrb41977
wrb41977

This is a fun little game. It has an interesting combat mechanic. You play as "The Crow" a hardened mercenary known for being a bit... vicious with your foes. You have been captured for a crime you did not commit. And now you need to be freed to put an end to the foes who framed you.

Note: this appears to be the start of a series of such games (Episode 2 is currently out as well). Take that into consideration, if you wish...

Dirt-Between-Toes
Dirt-Between-Toes

Buyer beware, the Full Controller Support is false advertising. Fiddled with getting the Steam Controller to work for more than half an hour, eventually gave up when no amount of re-mapping buttons seemed to help in any way.

Shame, game looks interesting, but if developers can't be arsed to sort simple stuff like key-mapping, they shouldn't be in the business.

Drakevarg
Drakevarg

A dark fantasy RPGMaker game that isn't half as clever as it thinks it is, Thorne - Death Merchants is nonetheless a respectably tight package that doesn't bog itself down by turning itself into a hundred-hour epic like its most obvious inspiration, The Witcher. However, despite its focused approach - the entire game is set within a short walk of a single small village - the game is still heavily flawed.

The main character, Thorne aka "the Crow," is a fairly bland grizzled badass who loves to spout his grim grumbly fortune cookie wisdom, despite seeming pretty close to an average guy within his profession.

Additionally, the game is fairly poorly directed. There are numerous side quests that the game never even hints you should go out of your way for, despite that making up nearly half the content. A few villagers will offhandedly mention plot hooks but your character never has any reason to investigate these leads besides "it is a videogame." At least one achievement-worthy cutscene can only be obtained if you head to the far end of one of the wilderness areas before making any progress in the story beyond basic exposition, despite the fact that you have literally no reason to go that way. Also, the game's namesake is never even hinted at until the very final cutscene of the game. I honestly thought "Death Merchants" was a euphemism for mercenaries up to that point.

And finally, the RPG mechanics are almost entirely superfluous. None of the items seem to give you more than a +10% boost to an attribute, and apart from one which is basically essential for one of the side bosses they could be removed entirely without any meaningful change to the game's balance. Healing items are similarly useless as your character heals over time out of combat and in combat you can heal much faster by just backing up long enough for your quick heal power to recharge, which does every ten seconds or so.

Despite me ragging on it pretty much constantly I still might try out the sequel, Son of Slaves, eventually. Death Merchants mostly sits on the flawed end of passable, and while playing it I wasn't bored or frustrated so much as zoned out. A bit of refinement here and there and the series could turn into something fairly solid.

Rammsteniako
Rammsteniako

Fully recommend this game, nice story (influenced by The Witcher) and the sprites reminds me of the online game Tibia :)
The soundtrack is also nice, main character is a badass :D

9/10

duamuteffe
duamuteffe

A very enjoyable little RPG love-letter to Conan and King Kull. You're the titular Thorne, a mercenary for hire, who finds himself imprisoned for a death he had nothing to do with (for once) in a town full of desperate people at each others' throats. The story is fine, the dialogue suffers a bit from ESL woes but the point comes across (and there are smirkable moments) and the realtime combat is very doable once you get used to the controls. As a tip, doorways to other rooms are not always immediately visible indoors; you may have to run against some walls to find where you need to go.

Vergesseneinzig
Vergesseneinzig

This is the first episode of Thorne's adventure, I like the sountrack,gameplay and story but this episode is really short.

Robmachine
Robmachine

Bought it because of the good reviews, was disapointed. Controls are horrible and they are not ajustable.

MAJLich
MAJLich

Simple graphics from 1990's- yes, simple controls- yes, easy game play- yes, Fun- YES! Sometimes simple is great. What's unique about this game is a great story line. the story made me want to play non stop. I really enjoyed the detective/investigation style the DEVS included. I bought the game on sale, certainly worth your hard earned money and even worth the full price value.

Hagger
Hagger

Mediocre game and dev keeps spamming "news" about his other games. Don't buy

ROLLINKUNZ!
ROLLINKUNZ!

Wooops.

This one isn't even $0.50 polished.

YPRPG
YPRPG

Thorne - Death Merchants is an action adventure game made in RPG Maker. It takes 3 hours to complete, and has an open world with numerous side quests.

The story follows an assassin-for-hire with moral standards as he helps the people of a small village deal with a problem. The game is very short, but is intended as Part 1 of a continuing series with the same protagonist. The characters and dialogue are well done, and the plot is interesting, although the spelling and grammar are bad at times.

Enemies appear on the map, and battles are fought in real time using the keyboard. Q allows you to heal HP, but there is a wait time before you can reuse it. You can also access the menu during battles to consume HP-healing items. Some enemies are strong enough to kill you, but it takes long enough that you can easily survive through item use. Your only real enemy is over-confidence.

The world map consists of a town, a military outpust, a noble's mansion, and the wilderness in between. The main adventure takes you to several locations, and thoroughly exploring the open wilderness will dig up a variety of side quests and other secrets. The game does very well at satisfying an explorer's palette.

This is a good game all around with a great story, and lots of side quests, but it's kind of short.

NicyRaider
NicyRaider

quit a good game.. got it for 39cent... its really worth it!!! can`t await to play the second one after finishing this one!
but you need to know that this one is a really realy hard one!!! yes you can save everywhere but when you die the game is OVER!!! no respawn or else.. just like in the good old times!!!!

Toad Master X
Toad Master X

I usually write longer reviews but I didn't really need to spend too much time with this game before coming to my conclusion. So, I'll summarize everything as quickly and as generally as possible:

"Good":
-Graphics and Character Art is nice
-Music is okay (For the most part, though auto settings have it turned up WAY too loud)
-Interesting Ideas (For whatever that counts for)
-I only wasted 50 cents on this

Bad:
-Horrible and clunky combat (Real time melee combat never works in RPG Maker. Delayed inputs and annoying hitboxes definitely doesn't help)
-An attempt at "Mature" writing that only comes off as edgy (Also, grammatical and spelling mistakes galore)
-An uninteresting story with walking-talking cliche characters
-Lag. Lots of it (No excuse for lag to be in a RPG Maker game. Ever)
-Annoying traps (Some were cool at first, but I draw the line at invisible mines spammed everywhere)

My reviews are always subject to be changed in the future when I feel like giving the game a second chance, but as of right now, I have no desire to continue this poorly designed product. Your $3.99 is better spent on a bag of Funyuns.

Diodra
Diodra

A short interesting adventure with pleasant gameplay. Well written too.

"The Crow", the mercenary protagonist, reminds me of Geralt of Rivia, I think he was the insiration for this character.

_X_
_X_

-- Too short for an RPG. It took me three hours to complete the game.
- Combat system is way too simple.
- Leveling system is really disappointing.
- Very easy difficulty.
- Thorne is white knight idiot and that's why he's gets into trouble. His cynicism is very selective. He is definitely too soft for a mercenary.
- Pet wolf is bugged as hell.
- Nearly useless money.

+ Dark fantasy world. Good atmosphere.
+ Quite a lot of side quests.
+ Good map design.
+ Nice characters portraits.
+ Okay soundtrack.
+ Cheap.

It's not terrible game, but still below average for me.

Adelius
Adelius

Probably the only rpg maker game I finished. It has an interresting storyline and gets even more better, but then it abruptly ends. It is only about 3 hours long maybe 6 if you do all the sidequests.
Other than that i enjoyed my time with this game.

wrygrass
wrygrass

I rate Thorne - Death Merchants 3/5. It’s OK overall. For its price, it isn’t too bad actually. Getting this game makes even more sense when it’s on sale though. If you can get it for just over 60 cents like I did, it might even seem pretty great for the price.

Thorne - Death Merchants is a fairly simple, very short, third-person perspective, Zelda-styled adventure game (seemed very similar to the visual style of the Super Nintendo Zelda game). Unlike Zelda, Thorne is filled with crass and vulgar dialogue along with the occasional typo. Also unlike Zelda, your character is a cynical, reluctant anti-hero supposedly out for his own profit (but with a heart of gold).

+Excellent atmosphere with nice, simple graphics which find an interesting balance between serious and cute. Nice, simple atmospheric mist and lighting effects. While not always beautiful, this game is seldom ugly.

+Interesting and fairly complex characters throughout. The characters are oddly more interesting and complex than most of the plot line they are bound up within.

+The game doesn’t simply come out and say which quest is the main quest. This encouraged me to do more side quests and learn more about the game world than I otherwise might have.

+Action in this game is NOT turn-based. Action in Thorne is more like in a Zelda game. It is real-time unless you pause the game and use stuff in your inventory (also a lot like Zelda on the Super NES). If you liked playing the Super Nintendo version of The Legend of Zelda, you will probably like playing this game too.

+/-Mediocre music throughout.

+/-Plot is interesting in some places but can be boring in other places and ends with a strong sort of ‘meh’ feeling. The game’s plot does stand very well on its own. Interesting and fairly complex morals and messages in its plot.

-Somewhat unresponsive controls. It is fairly normal to get stopped by objects need to walk around them. It can often take several key presses before the game seems to know that you want to swing your character’s sword or throw something (it’s probably best to just press the action keys as quickly as you can during battles). The fairly simple combat mechanics could have been a lot more fun had the controls been a bit more responsive.

-No alternate endings. There are optional side-quests but these merely grant additional money or additional items and do not alter the game’s ending. No replay value as a result.

-Fairly small area to explore.

-The game ALWAYS started in windowed mode in a small window. I had to enter the settings menu and change the game to full-screen every single time I played it.

-If your character dies you are punished for it a little bit in 2 ways; 1) You have to watch the company’s logo slowly appear the screen and wait for the main menu to show up again (as if the game was opening again). 2) You will lose all progress since your most recent save. Saving in this game is a manual process. There are no autosaves.

-Controls for your character are best handled with a keyboard but the menu is best controlled with the mouse (well partially anyhow) It is best to select things in the menu with the mouse.

-Pretty much every female character is, at some point or another, referred to in dialogue by at least one other character as either a ‘whore’ or a ‘bitch.’ However, most male characters are referred to by other characters at some point or another as either “bastard” “son of a bitch” or “a coward.” You have been warned. Or, thanks to Steam censoring certain words, maybe you haven't.

-Uninspired enemies.

-Feels like the first part of a much larger game. There is a sequel out there.

ozzy
ozzy

it's a 3 hour game, basic but has a good storyline. I already sold trade cards and gain more then price of this game at discount.
I highly recommend this game

Mr Fantastic
Mr Fantastic

I really like this type of dark gitty story. Game is kinda short at 4h but it's super cheap and they have a sequel already released and another 5 coming. From what I see we can use the game clear save from a game to the next one.

Would be cool if the game had some basic crafting instead of materials being only for sale purposes.

If you want to do the achievements look them up in the discussions, some are time sensitive.

Looking forward to play all the sequels.

MyChaos
MyChaos

A game that reminded me a bit of "The Witcher", although the protagonist has no powers, but because he is a alone traveler who works for money. Despite being a small game there are some side quests to do if you want to. Perhaps the downside of this game is the combat system that becomes a bit frustrating for the player because he have to be face to face with the enemy to hit.

Luna
Luna

This is a very different experience to the JRPG am used to play. it's so much better I wasn't expecting it and the plot twist was even better however the game is extremely short but I look forward to the upcoming chapters. 10/10 would recommend

update: episode 2 was so much better albeit just as short as the first one. I hope the next episodes will be much longer, I'd love to dive deep in a good long episode.

Resnick Rahl
Resnick Rahl

You have to like RPGmaker games, but it is pretty well done, the story is pretty decent and there is enough action so that you do not get bored.

The game is easy, but it is also easy to die.

I recommend reconfiguring the controller to match your personal preferences, I know I did.

Anonymous
Anonymous

This game is short but interesting and fun I enjoyed it immensely and since I got it on sale it was worth it.

johnmnls
johnmnls

First of all let me say that this game is one of the best of the company. I have played many games of the creator (Raphael) in the past and this game truly stands out from the rest, mostly because of the way the battles take place.

The story: It's one of the game's strongest points. It's quite addicting, with a few plot twists in the end. I don't want to spoiler anything though. [9/10]
The battle system: I was very impressed, since I was used to the classic way all the battles were fought in the previous games. It took me a while to master the action rpg battle system. In the end I managed to defeat the bosses very easily. I'm a fan of a good challenge but the game's difficulty level wasn't high enough for me. Nevertheless I really liked it. [9,5/10]
The side quests: They add to the length and we get the chance to explore a little more without the grinding feeling. The rewards are nothing special, except for one or two items. Adding side quests in a RPG is always a plus for me. [8,5/10]
The music: The creator's choices were unique and complemented the gaming experience very beautifully. [9,5/10]
The game length: It's one of the few negatives I found in the game. I would prefer the episode to last longer, however I understand that it's only the first of the series. I finished the game in about 4 hours completing all the side quests! [6/10]
The items: Without exaggeration I didn't need nor used any items. Just the various accessories. Maybe the nature of the battles doesn't favor the use of items, but I think a few pieces of equipment would add more depth to the player's strategy. [4/10]

The game's total score is: [8,15/10]

xxracer
xxracer

Just finished the game. Though it is an RPGMaker game, it is worth the purchase, esp at it's low price. I love the action combat system. Love the characters, and story. If a game's purpose is to entertain, and induce "fun", this game succeeded.

I highly recommend it. To the author / writer, I really loved the character, and the story. Very creative. I hope you keep making this series. I will purchase your other Thorne / Crow game. I hope it's good also.

Patches
Patches

This game has been sitting in my library for over a year and I just around to play it. I really liked this game, especially how the words are not censored and the art style. Can't wait to play episode 2!

avatar_of_tenebrae
avatar_of_tenebrae

So far the graphics and story are better than average, very good. Music is lacking but not bad either.

I'm very impressed with the uniqueness of this game. The store pics makes it appear to be a dark game? Not at all, ex. the towns are pleasant. I do not like action RPGs in general but the action on this one is "light" it doesn't hit my nerve at all.

Since there is another in the same series I'm guessing it's not a very long game to complete. Money well spent though.

FYI I paid $1 or $2 so figure that in.

PS. it works well with the PS2 style joystick: try all your non-movement buttons during (before) battle it isn't like the layout on RPG-Maker game any you may not see help for the layout and there are 2 extra keys needed to do well in battle.

ionrobsam
ionrobsam

If you want to play a game where your killed in the first ten minutes this is for you.

Azure_Kite
Azure_Kite

This little game surprised me for actually what you get with the money it asks for. It's rather short, took me about 4-5 hours to experience all the quests and events. Which doesn't negate its worth of those hours. Some quests/events can be experienced before certain obligatory quests, some might require revisiting certain places, but all in all they add up to the gameplay and to understanding what happens in the location of the adventure. This game rewards exploration. Battles are real time, which means they happen more in a manner of Ys series, for example. But most of those can be avoided with the exception for main story line and quest battles. The only negative thing I found is the dog, which has a horrible AI, though the idea of it has its uses.

antipodeFabricator
antipodeFabricator

I must've been really desperate for quality RPGs when I bought this. Some aspects of the world are interesting I'll admit, but not enough to stop me from saying "This is an extremely bland RPG."

If all you want is a cool story, and you're willing to slog through mediocre gameplay for it, I don't know, maybe try Thorne. I... am not.

unboundedc
unboundedc

the game is rather short but it offers a solid story and characters. Combat is rough at times but I enjoyed my experience.

Potato PC
Potato PC

The good:
+ Fine story with somehow interesting main character
+ Fairly good world building/setting
+ OK soundtrack

The bad:
- No auto save or save prompt just before fighting boss
- Poor collision detection, i often stuck near wall, stairs or other narrow places

The ugly:
* Unique game play mechanics (for RPGMaker game), although it has poor balance and there's no option to rebind keys

While the story/lore has some potential, it suffer from low budget production. Overall it's just mediocre RPGMaker game and i don't plan to play the sequel. If you're still interested, wait for big sale.