While I sympathise on the subtitle issue, I do think you're being a bit mean about the voice acting here.

Yes, a few actors played several parts, however the standard of the acting was generally very high, and even when played by the same person, the characters were extremely distinct and possible to tell apart.

contrast this with say a western drama where you have literally three voice actors for the hole game who don't change their voices too much, or to the dragon cave, where the voice acting is entirely lacking in energy.

The only criticism I'd make of the voice acting, is that I wish they'd recorded a few more taunts for the various bandits you encounter, since there are a lot of bandits in the game and they can come off sounding very similar, though this is only a miner issue in the vale as compared to some games.

anyone remember Grizzly gulch and it's endless procession of the same five badguys?

While I do have my issues with the vale, and can understand why lacking accessible subtitles would make the game hard to play for a non-English speaker, the voice acting, and indeed the soundscapes generally, were imho some of the games highlights!

So basically, you want to rant about how much The Vale sucks, and no one is allowed to say anything nice about it in your topic?

Cool.

Well too bad, because I thought it was still pretty good despite all the issues. A solid 7 out of 10 for what it was. I still play it at least once a year and I never regret it.

Hi.
For me the vale game is one of the best, but it doesn't mean that it is perfect.
one problem that I have is, even if you set the difficulty to hardest mode, you will have an unbreakable shield all the time that can protect you all the time, and even the most hardest attacks by your enemies if you defend it by your shield will not hurt you, or at least hurt you a little.
I'd like this game to be more challenging at hardest difficulty but it really isn't, and you will win the game at last.
even, in a blind legend game, which i like alot, if you use your shield too much in battle, it will finally break and you can not use it until you finish that fight.
and about voice acting, it is good in my opinion, and it is interesting that the voice actor for the abdul rashid character and the Alexandra's brother, the king, is the same, and the abdulrashid's voice has a nice dialect of arabic in it which the voice actor, well done it.

I don't even think the shield is remotely close to being anywhere near breakable in A Blind Legend.
The one game that does have an ability to break armor is Blind Gladiator, which works nothing like as it was advertised on their channel.
I mean every single weapon and shield sounded the exact same, and the way it was advertised had nothing to do with what the game offered at it's launch.

I didn’t notice the voice actor thing, they were all pretty distinguishable, then again I haven’t played the game in a while, so take my assertion with a grain of salt.
As for the difficulty, while yes, it is a bit too easy, I don’t think the main aim is to play through a brutal game, what you’re trying to get is the narrative

The voice acting wasn't a problem for me. I'd even say it's one of the games strong points, compared to other audio games. Sadly, the game didn't really click for me anyways. A game, for me, can have two factors to really make it worth it: The gameplay or the story. It's enough for me if a game excels in one area but isn't great in the other, but it's not enough for me when both are just okay. I started my very first playthrough on hard, because I know those types of games tend to be very easy, and I completed it with two or three deaths in total. It's one of those listen and react style of games, which I believe we have too much of, but still this could be great if at least one difficulty setting would really test you. Maybe even do some soulslike mechanics with equipment or death penalties. Another minor thing that comes to mind here is the lack of challenging achievements. You only get story achievements. Not one single achievement, at least when I played it on release, had anything to do with your playing style or reaction time or anything cool really. You complete the game and do the sidequests, and you're guaranteed a 100% complete achievement list. The story is also okay, but not memorable at all. I usually put story over gameplay, and it's there, but not much more. One thing I really liked about it though is that the checkpoint system has an in-lore reason and deaths change some story parts.

So, in summary, I agree The Vale has many flaws, and I'm frankly not a huge fan of it, but when I clicked on this topic, the flaws mentioned in post 1 were really surprising to me.

Difficulty is pretty relative.
I breezed through the vale twice on easy and hard, indeed my last hard playthrough the final boss was a total joke thanks to my flaming sword.

However, my lady, who is not an experienced audiogamer, tried it and had a fair amount of trouble with a lot of the fights.
it lead to some hilarious exchanges:

her:

"I keep getting killed on the fight in the river, am I doing something wrong?"

Me: "which fight was that."

Her: "the really difficult one with the pirates."

Me: "Sorry I don't' remember that one."
her: "why not?"

Me: "I probably just went straight through it!"

Her (getting exasperated):"No need to boast!"

Me: "I'm not boasting, I honestly don't remember!"

Some of her problems were basic understanding mistakes, EG not realising you had to hold the shield keys, and attempting to attack before the enemy, or not realising the need to hear the different attack sounds for enemy combos and single hits.

However, seeing her play through the game did sort of give a new definition to what counts as "difficult", since  while she's very familiar with crazy party, other than a brief stint at hellhunter while her computer was bust at one point, the vale was the first game of its type she played.

so, while I would call the basic combat repetitive, and while I thought the magic and equipment systems felt more like little adjuncts to play with, rather than essential portions of the game, I can't exactly say "difficulty", was the major issue here.

What I did have a problem with, was the lack of exploration, and the under using of the stealth techniques.

the vale is great for it's amount of side quests and interactable npcs, the problem is, none of these end up feeling too consequential or like real discoveries, since basically all side quests are found through wandering the same hub areas.

It would've been great if there were actually rooms with multiple exits and different paths similar to shadowline, and indeed not too hard to do if some NSEW room exits were added.

I also would've really liked to see the bow used more in the game and the idea of moving stealthily around enemies, since this was a great mechanic.

It sort of got used a bit in the fight with the  seer towards the end, where you had to alternate hitting her with your bow and running her down through her hoards of undead, but there could've definitely been more of this.

Indeed, I'm quite sorry the vale hasn't received a sequel, since not only did the story leave possibilities wide open to continue the story (the hole Fey war thing), but also it'd be the perfect chance to expand gameplay and exploration, building on the first game, since of all of these sorts of  audio rich, story heavy, well acted but essentially short audio adventures we've seen over the years developed by sighted devs, Terraformers, a blind legend, echoes of livia, a western drama, apotheriosis, the Vale has definitely done the most!

It's 2024 and we don't have localizations for other languages, surprising...

Honestly, do you think voice actors work for free? I doubt the studio had a lot of money to throw around at hiring a giant cast. Even some triple-a studios re-use voice actors, especially when it comes to minor parts.

Be that as it may, my biggest problem is the game felt light on the RPG aspects I was hoping for: customization of gear, unique weapons, robust magic and class system, etc. And, as #14 mentioned, exploration was shallow at best.

It was an alright first attempt, but the game just felt like a slightly interactable audio book to me. And, I am just kind of tired of audio games feeling it necessary to explain away the lack of graphics by saying the main character is blind. It's a trope.

I don't want to give the developer who put a lot of time, money, and hard work into making it too much grief though. I'm glad they made what they did, and I don't regret supporting them. It just wasn't the game I hoped it would be.

@17, i'd buy that for a dollar!

Back on topic, there are plenty of linear games in the mainstream market, so the vale being mostly linear is fine. I don't even care that Alex is blind, and actually think that the way devs portray dying or failing an objective is rather clever. Never seen a game do that before, and its actually a good excuse to shorten cutscenes between death and resuming gameplay, whereas in other games you have to either watch a long ass cutscene again, or skip it. I'm even happy that this game got what mainstream media coverage that it did, that its available on multiple mainstream consoles. Someone shared an article/podcast about a sighted person audiogaming and I immediately thought about this game. Heck, without me even bringing it to his attention, my sighted uncle told me about the game and got it for me, so clearly, something that has garnered such recognition deserves some respect. Some of you guys only play audio games, so you have high expectations for what an audio game should be, but consider, too, when sighted players are introduced to audio games, and how differently they might engage with them. Reading some of these posts, one might think that the vale is shit, that it follows old overplayed tropes. I'll just say that it's not as terrible as some of you make it out to be. Its really not a bad first effort by indi devs, and that it gained what recognition that it did is a pleasant surprise.

@jim pickens, the undead you fight at various points, but I was specifically speaking of the ones you fight while you're taking on the Odettan seer, who is almost the second to last boss of the game.

@JasonBlaze, in fairness I will say as an Englishman; IE a native English speaker, I  do realise that I tend to get an easy ride in terms of games and language, and I can see why it would be irritating to those who don't have English as a first language if there are no translatable subs, heck if I have to play games in other languages such as Shadowline I turn the  voicing off if I can so I can hear the translation .

Certainly I don't speak any other languages well enough myself to play games in them; which is a bit bad when I'm married to someone whose %100 fluent in German, and also speaks pretty good French, quite a feet for someone who grew up speaking only Americanese .

As to the vale, would it be cool if it had crafting, and mining, and carpentry, and ship building, and hunting, and fishing, and skinning, and candle making, and tailoring, and dragon farming, and zebra riding, and topiary!
Not to mention 3000 spells, 7000  skills and attacks to learn, and took 500 hours to complete only the main story with another 500 hours of side quests as well!

Well of course it would! but that would go for pretty much anything!
With the vale specifically, my criticisms are more in matter of how I wish it had used the systems it already has, EG scattering npcs through explorable locations and having a little need to find your way, having armour and weapons play more of a roll in the game (possibly tying into stealth mechanics), or being able to use the bow a little more in the overworld and avoid enemey encounters, than wishing explicitly it had something it didn't.

Obviously we can always wish for more things, equally obviously, when dealing with indi devs or indeed audiogames, there is a limited amount of content that can be created for any project.

the Vale does a pretty good job with  some elements of what it has, but there are some areas where I think it could've done a better one.

Which is why I would, as I said, love to see a sequel!

I believe the necessity of this topic is, at best, quite unfounded. I'm not saying that talking about a game, especially a game like The Vale, is unacceptable. No, far from it, but it simply gives the impression that @1 woke up wanting to criticize something negatively, not constructively. And no, there's no need for any defense here, but just analyzing the way the topic was presented gave that impression, even if that wasn't the intention.
Localization is completely plausible to be in our desires. I speak from my own experience as another Brazilian also learning English and studying like crazy every single day to achieve fluency. And why am I saying this, you might ask? Because I know it’s not going to happen. I know that many developers and companies are not going to localize their games into Portuguese, especially audio games. Moreover, since I can't change the world, I will change myself by learning the language that has the most content available to me, a blind gamer.
And this is not limited to games. Just look at a site like ***, for example, where various audio-described contents are available and think about how much hasn't been audio-described in other languages.
Point duly made, I believe one thing that bothered me in The Vale was the fact that we couldn't simply store a weapon we had before buying another to re-equip it. Example: I started playing with axes and heavy weapons, switched to short swords during my gameplay, and when I went back to heavy weapons, even though I was still two acts away from finishing the game, I couldn't go back to the short sword, which I missed due to its low stamina consumption and superior speed. Did it stop me? No, I still finished the game and loved the soundscape, the story, and the gameplay, even though it was quite familiar, it was still enjoyable, but these are issues within a game context that I, as an RPG player for years, both narrated and electronic games, found in terms of gameplay.
In conclusion, it’s not perfect, it could be better, but it won’t be changed.
I'm sorry if my post sounded arrogant and somewhat incoherent, but I tried to describe things that were important in my mind, and including my personal experiences in all this might have made my initial approach somewhat incoherent.
Sorry for the long post and for any mistakes in writing or expressions.