Players take on the role of a messenger who had been tasked with delivering a letter to the head of the local church. Waylaid by the enigmatic Crimson Flame Brotherhood, you are tossed into conflict with demons promising power and influence once the time arises. While you don’t remember your own past and the context of your letter due to your injuries, you set out and become involved between the various factions vying for power among a looming apocalypse.

PoA has high stakes from the outset; your character being singled out by great powers does a good job of immediately enveloping you within the setting, especially between the various factions. Regrettably, I did feel like the player lacks a bit of agency during the story. You can frequently choose a distinct side to ally with or pick a route by which to pursue your next objective; however, those choices only ever felt like having an immediate effect on the current map. For instance, I may choose to side with paladins or a mercenary guild, and it will determine which NPCs are friendly to me in that combat situation but have virtually no repercussions further.

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Similar criticism expands to your companions, which I felt were mostly compelling, especially Elantia, your Necromancer Mage, whose personal quest strides that line of cold pragmatism thematically very well. Nevertheless, your actual agency during companion dialogue is similarly vapid, typically ranging from a very warm, supportive, and even romantic tone to completely dismissive and insulting. Any of these will advance their stories and keep them in your party just fine, which devalued the common notifications of whether or not my responses raised or lowered their affinity substantially. This also led me away from my roleplaying a lot, as I eventually just leaned towards always offering the nicest response to my companions, as their dialogue only ever affected the affinity of whoever was talking to you at that time. For instance, you may chat with Elantia about your how naive the church is, and how you will do anything to accrue knowledge—all within earshot of your kind and good-hearted priest, who may even interject but simply does not care a lick about any of it unless the dialogue is directly with her.


PoA is a turn-based RPG that borrows a lot of its mechanics from, very specifically, Baldur’s Gate 3. It attempts to mimic the progression of its DnD-adjacent ruleset, with unique abilities, talents, and feats, as well as prominently featuring dice rolls for most of its gameplay elements. However, while the core of this system works and translates surprisingly well into a coherent gameplay loop, it is also presented rather poorly. My main gripe here is not that PoA is overall just “less” of Baldur’s Gate 3, which is perfectly natural for a game of its scope, but that it is also poorly balanced. Something that the game itself acknowledges in its class selection during character creation by denoting the difficulty of a class, and that is further exacerbated by a lackluster UI.

The game never really explains most of its mechanics to you. I do not know how HP growth works; I do not know, nor can I check enemy resistances; spell descriptions are ambiguous and do not properly convey what keyword effects actually accomplish; hit chance is deceiving and dependent on enemy type properties, which are equally obtuse—all of which are elements that discourage experimentation. Numbers in PoA, that is, statistical values, are very low, which leads to an awkward difficulty curve in which your own tankiness is gradually outpaced by the growing damage values of enemies.

This led to a steep difficulty spike at around level 7, at which point all enemies gain an extra attack per turn (as do your own martial characters). At that point, my party was still at level 6, which led to a couple of extraordinarily painful dungeons in which my party was brutally outpaced by the same types of enemies that I had no issue with beforehand. Similar spikes occur later in the game as well, which ultimately results in a weird sense of the player always playing catch-up in terms of numbers.

Enemy AI is almost nonexistent and is very exploitable. This is mainly due to the fact that every enemy in the game always attacks whichever character is closest to them—be that your frontline warrior, a mage, or a summon—which makes it very easy to funnel attacks to the most convenient target, as well as to position enemy units favorably for area-of-effect spells and abilities.

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Outside of combat, there are also typical social skills, such as Survival. These are, likewise, never explained in the actual UI and only ever occasionally come up in seemingly innocuous dialogue checks, which, to my experience, have never fundamentally altered how a quest plays out. Regrettably, quest and dungeon design are where the game is at its worst, with each location representing a relatively small and repetitive dungeon and a handful of combat encounters with next to no variety in between. While this focus on dungeon crawling isn’t necessarily bad, it devalues the otherwise confident writing by contrasting it with sheer monotony.


PoA’s graphics are a bit mixed. The actual character models look quite bad; enemy models repeat a lot, and animations are neither very varied nor do they feel impactful. Background details are better and especially shine in the denser areas such as Mirrorsea Town, the biggest hub area of the game. Character portraits, however, are gorgeously detailed but are rare. There is a single portrait for every major character within the player party, which is a courtesy not extended to other plot-central NPCs.

The sound is atrocious. While the ambient music is broadly fine, combat effects are abysmal and unfitting, with some abilities having none at all, and a total lack of any voice acting.


PoA, at the time of review, is currently plagued by a variety of technical issues. I have encountered multiple crashes, graphical glitches, and certain quest flags not updating. None of which has kept me from progressing in the game, however. The most annoying issue is the inconsistent translation. Certain abilities and many quest titles are not translated at all, and far worse, area and character names are mismatched. You may receive a quest that tells you to investigate “Exile’s Shore”, but the actual name of the area on the map is “Vagrant Beach”—something that becomes a real issue with character names.


Prophecy of Ashen is quite disappointing. I had tempered my expectations already a lot since I just love the idea of tinkering a little bit more with CRPG mechanics in other narrative-driven titles but found PoA’s implementation of such terribly anemic. The writing, while serviceable, is dragged down by a lack of player agency and a slew of translation issues, which were a constant drain on my immersion. A lot of these issues can, and certainly will, be fixed with updates post-launch, but regrettably, I do not think those fixes would be enough to excuse its sheer repetitiveness.

Acknowledgement

This game was provided for review purposes by the developers. Thank you!

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Prophecy of Ashen, developed and published by hhyuGame, is a dark fantasy tactical RPG that leans heavily into choice-driven storytelling and deliberate, turn-based combat. It presents itself as a morally complex journey through a crumbling kingdom rather than a power fantasy, and that restraint defines much of its appeal. From the opening moments, the game signals that survival, belief, and consequence will matter just as much as raw strength or mechanical mastery.

The story unfolds in the fractured realm of Rattalan, a land scarred by religious absolutism, political oppression, and open rebellion. You begin not as a legendary hero but as a lowly courier tasked with a routine delivery that quickly spirals into a fight for survival. This grounded starting point gives the narrative a strong sense of escalation, as the player is gradually drawn into conflicts between the authoritarian Hall of Sacred Adjudication and the radical Ashborne movement. Neither side is portrayed as purely righteous, and much of the narrative tension comes from navigating competing truths rather than choosing an obvious “good” path. Themes of faith, corruption, and desperation are woven naturally into quests and dialogue, giving the world a bleak but believable texture.

Player choice is one of the game’s defining strengths. Decisions made early—whom you trust, which factions you aid, and how you resolve morally ambiguous situations—carry weight well beyond the moment they are made. Alliances shift, characters react, and the tone of the world subtly changes based on your actions. These choices are not always signposted as major turning points, which adds to the sense that you are living inside a reactive world rather than steering a clearly marked branching narrative. Multiple endings reinforce this design philosophy, encouraging replay not through novelty but through reflection on different ideological stances.

Combat is firmly rooted in turn-based tactical traditions, emphasizing positioning, terrain usage, and careful ability timing. Encounters are designed to punish reckless play, rewarding players who take the time to assess enemy layouts and environmental advantages. Elevation, choke points, and spell placement all matter, and even small mistakes can snowball into defeat if left unchecked. Enemy variety is sufficient to prevent combat from feeling repetitive, and battles often feel like contained puzzles that must be solved with the tools and party composition you’ve chosen.

Party management plays a crucial role in both combat and storytelling. Companions are not interchangeable units but characters with their own motivations, backgrounds, and personal conflicts. Recruiting them expands tactical options, but it also deepens the narrative, as their perspectives frequently challenge your decisions or reinforce your chosen ideology. Progression systems strike a careful balance: skill trees and class paths offer meaningful specialization without drowning the player in excessive complexity. Equipment choices and ability synergies allow for experimentation, but the game consistently emphasizes thoughtful builds over brute-force optimization.

Exploration supports the game’s themes of decay and instability. Towns, ruins, and wilderness areas feel worn down by years of conflict, and optional side quests often reflect the same moral ambiguity as the main story. These diversions rarely feel like filler; instead, they provide additional context for the world’s suffering and offer small but meaningful opportunities to influence local outcomes. Lore is conveyed through environmental details, dialogue, and quest consequences rather than long exposition dumps, allowing players to piece together the setting organically.

Visually, the game adopts a restrained pixel-art style that prioritizes clarity and atmosphere. Character sprites and environments are expressive enough to convey emotion and tone without sacrificing readability during combat. The somber color palette reinforces the game’s bleak themes, while subtle animations keep scenes from feeling static. Sound design and music are understated but effective, enhancing tension and melancholy without overpowering the experience. The presentation may not be flashy, but it is cohesive and purposeful.

The game is not without imperfections. Pacing can feel uneven, particularly during stretches heavy with dialogue or exposition, and some interface elements show the limitations of a small development team. A few encounters may feel unbalanced depending on party composition, and new players to tactical RPGs may find the early difficulty curve demanding. These issues, however, tend to feel like areas for refinement rather than fundamental flaws, especially given the ambition on display.

Taken as a whole, Prophecy of Ashen is a confident and thoughtful tactical RPG that places consequence and conviction at the center of its design. It rewards patience, strategic thinking, and engagement with its moral dilemmas, offering an experience that feels heavier and more introspective than many genre peers. For players who value meaningful choice, deliberate combat, and dark fantasy worlds shaped by ideology and sacrifice, it stands as a compelling indie achievement that lingers in the mind long after the final decision is made.

Rating: 7/10

Game is now locked as me character is glitched out and incapable of attacking or using skills. He does the animation, just nothing actually happens, I still get wrecked by the enemies though.