Fireside Review (PC)

The radiant heat from the crackling campfire is keeping me awake, as are the honeycomb wisps and nexus of stars that sprawl out across the night skies. It’s peaceful here—harmonic, even, and without a single foe to confront or underlying catastrophe in sight, it’s safe to say that, as a fledgling traveling merchant, the future is looking increasingly bright. The dawn of a new age is approaching, and the wears in my pouch are bursting at the seams with the hopes that, come morning, a new friend will come along and carry them forward. This is, for the most part, my role as an aimless wanderer, and if Fireside is anything at all, it’s my muse to carry the torch forth to new and exciting worlds.

At its core, Fireside is a beautifully hand-drawn “cozy” adventure RPG, one in which players fill the boots of a weary traveler whose sole purpose is to venture far and wide and provide those in need with the tools, relics, and warmly advice they so desperately require. It goes a little further than that, for sure, but at its heart, it is, and pleasantly so, a love letter to the art of conversational storytelling, and not to mention a well-written passage that conveys a genuinely heartfelt message of hope and communal warmth. Again, I’m scarcely scratching the surface here, so for the sake of lathering a bit of additional context over the flames, I ought to take it back a notch. Care to join us as we plunge a little deeper into Emergo Entertainment’s latest adventure? Then let’s jump right in.

Lighting the Way

Fireside strives to achieve one basic goal: to generate a calming and utterly atmospheric experience that, while not entirely without its own share of obstacles, refrains from using any form of combative action, violence, or unnecessarily harsh learning curves. This isn’t that sort of game, and so, if you did have high hopes of delving into a rich and relentlessly complex universe with infinite waves of bosses, dungeons, and raids — don’t, basically, for this is another form of fantasy, and one that doesn’t aim to capitalize upon the usual trappings of an action-oriented experience.

While on the subject of the experience, Fireside paints the portrait of an unlikely traveler—a cloaked hero who, in the wake of setting out to embrace the vast open wilds of an idyllic world, makes the journey to befriend the local villagers and establish a place to calm home. In this vibrant adventure, you carry the weight of a rather small nexus on your shoulders—a duty that involves having to fulfill basic scavenging requests, cook delicious cuisines on an open fire, and craft various components to either evolve existing blueprints, or create new ones. As I mentioned earlier, there are no combat encounters in this quest of yours, but rather, a series of stepping stones that take you through the motions of your chosen trade. In other words, you won’t have anything to stress about, except, perhaps, not having enough hours in the day to witness everything.

This World of Mine

Aside from the scavenging—a task that fleshes out the bulk of the journey—, there are several other duties that also fall within your routine; for example, you also have the option to build your own home, as well as collect all of the right resources needed to upgrade it, too. As with a lot of exploration-based games that incorporate the function of allowing you to create structures from the ground up, each upgrade that you apply to your home has the power to provide you with additional incentives—a bigger fireplace for cooking meals, being one of the most important things, and so on and so forth. Alas, these are the gradual steps that you take over the course of your expedition into the wilds, where you’ll either be left to gather items, meet the locals, or rustle up new recipes for various perks and popularity points.

It goes without saying at this point, but at the center of these fairly common deeds lies a homely sense of belonging and spiritual identity, which mostly orbits from the hearts of those you come into contact with during your adventure. The people of Fireside, who stretch from mythical creatures to elegant bards, each have their own agendas, as well as their unique outlook on the world and the things that populate it. For all of these hands that I shook during my quest to become something of an all-seeing patron of the world, I discovered something new with each passing word, if not at the foot of a gloomy forest, then at the roaring campfire of a makeshift settlement. Without giving too much away, I was always learning, and without realizing it, often finding new ways to unlock more lore and secrets — of which there were plenty.

I’ll Trade You

Don’t get me wrong, but there can be a lot of reading to scroll through here, so you ought to be prepared for a rather hefty amount of dialogue and text-based milestones to shovel through over the duration of your journey. Aside from that, though, there isn’t too much to worry yourself with. Well, tell a lie — there is the trading system to figure out—a feature that comes in the form of a weighing scale, with which you must balance out by exchanging the appropriate items of a similar value and what have you. In a typical scenario, you might find yourself haggling with another character, or forking over a set amount of produce in order to acquire one key item for an overarching quest — or something along those lines, anyway. But that’s about it as far as “challenges” go — so you needn’t fret about tutorials or impassable borders.

Of course, Fireside is a bit of a slow burner (if you’ll pardon the pun), as the vast majority of its experience is merely tied to exploring at your own pace, and examining areas with a fine-tooth comb for relics and avenues of conversing with other locals. But to be fair, I had no issue with that; I didn’t step into the game with the intention of sweeping it beneath the rug in a single sitting and simply moving onto something else, for I knew all too well right from the get-go that Fireside was to be a gradual stroll through the park, and not, for example, a straight dart for the exit with little to no substance. Its melodic soundtrack, too, coerced me to flow with the narrative and take respite at any campfire I could stumble across. On that note, I had nothing to complain about.

Verdict

Fireside is a real sight for sore eyes, and arguably one of the most laid-back journeys I’ve have the pleasure of embarking on in recent weeks, for sure. From its striking visuals to its cute and elegant crafting system, each step of the adventure was unique in its own sort of way, and, when combined, were enough to keep me trucking forward and discovering fresh things to enjoy for all the while I chose to sport the cloak and pouch. Gameplay-wise, it wasn’t anything particularly unusual, given the fact that we have indeed seen countless—and I mean countless—games adopt the same sense of progression, but that isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy marveling over the rich aesthetics that it employed from dawn to dusk.

It doesn’t take much for me to sing the game’s praises, to be fair, as it does indeed include a wealth of great content, none of which is marred by a strenuous stream of monotonous jargon or overbearing quests. It’s a simple little number, for sure, and one that I could quite easily recommend to anyone looking for a soothing experience that doesn’t take its toll on your mindset. Is it an original piece of art? From a gameplay standpoint, no, it isn’t, and to be honest, I think if I was to bundle it into the same haystack as a lot of other titles of its kind, I’d struggle to identify it. However, if I was to commend its visual effects alone, then I’d happily spend numerous hours praising its quirky character designs and backstories — and that’s saying something.

To cut to the chase — yes, you should take the time to spend a few hours in Fireside, if not for the sake of completing easygoing quests, then for its radiance and warmth.