
And maybe after another few games, The Bearded Ladies will be putting out a few all-time classics. But given a month, Mutant Year Zero is going to be a helluva lot of fun to play. There are also places where the dev team seems to be scratching their heads and shrugging. There’s good writing in this RPG, and clever combat. Developer The Bearded Ladies, a team which includes former Hitman leads and the designer of Payday, bills is as a tactical adventure game combining the turn-based combat of XCOM with story, exploration, stealth, and strategy. It’s certainly not the masterpiece that The Witcher 3 is, but it has all of that potential and creativity of the first Witcher. Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden is currently free to download from the Epic Games Store. A few years later, we got The Witcher 3, the most beautiful, refined, RPG I’ve ever played, and one that was unafraid to leave decades of game design behind in the name of creating something that felt right.

So was the way you had to oil your swords to fight specific beasts. The potion system and meditation was unusual. I remember playing the original Witcher and seeing the bones of a Bioware RPG, but also something entirely unique.

It was the original Witcher game from CDProjekt Red. Developers The Bearded Ladies are an indie studio from Sweden, and I can’t remember the last time I played a non-English import with such good writing.
