Skyrim meets The Witcher in new RPG you can check out free

A very exciting upcoming game that looks like a mix of The Witcher 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, with Dark Souls 3’s combat, just got a free demo on Steam… and, well, I hope you’ve got a beefy PC if you wanna run this properly.

Vindictus: Defying Fate is an upcoming online action RPG from developer and publisher NEXON, and this one has been on a lot of people's wishlists for a while (including my own).

I have probably watched well over a dozen different gameplay videos and trailers, prior to the release of the demo, and came away thinking the same thing every time; this game looks too good to be true.

Well, thankfully, we can finally figure out if this game truly is everything that its trailers have promised, as the demo for Vindictus: Defying Fate literally just dropped.

And what’s the consensus on Steam? Ooh, uh, it's bad. Like, real bad.

As of writing, the demo for Vindictus: Defying Fate is currently sitting at a "Mixed" score, with over 2,750 reviews (46% of which are positive). So what’s the problem?

Ahem, well, it runs like crap.

“The game is incredibly fun, and I've always been a pretty big fan of how combat was handled in Vindictus. Clearing dungeons coop is probably the best part and it's nice to see it return here”, writes reviewer Borble Jonklet.

“However... The performance is abysmal. RTX 3080 Ti, and I'm frequently dropping to 30FPS with graphics on High (Not even maximum), and DLSS on Balanced mode. All this while playing at 1080p. If the performance isn't fixed at launch I can't recommend it.”

“The game is poorly optimized. Graphics settings are extremely limited—you can only choose between "Low," "Medium," or "High" with no finer control”, states reviewer Mimi Akane.

“In the village area, the FPS drops dramatically, like falling from heaven straight into hell.”

Well, thankfully, it is just a demo. Hopefully, these technical issues will be ironed out for the full release.

Speaking of, no idea when said full release is, so, perhaps it’s a good thing they’ve got plenty of time left to optimise things.