Baladins originally released back in May 2024 for the PC. A fellow reviewer from Movies, Games and Tech actually reviewed the game back then, praising it for it’s engaging and charismatic writing, its charming visuals, and the amount to discover. However, they did think that gameplay was punishing for solo players.
Almost two years later, Baladins is back! Developed by Seed by Seed and published by Armor Games Studios, Baladins had a re-release for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation on February 19th, 2026. This whimsical game has ventured onto console with the same engagement and charm. After receiving many updates since it’s initial release, Baladins has added more content and improved many bugs along the way.
For those of you who are asking “but what even is Baladins?”, it is a roleplaying adventure game that plays in a boardgame fashion. Players play as one of the five Baladins and can explore the board freely, stopping at points on the map such as cities, shops, or castle. At these locations, you’ll meet a colorful cast of characters, each with their own quests for the Baladins to assist with, most of which having multiple possible outcomes. Supporting both solo and multiplayer up to four, players can collect items, make choices, and test their characteristics. After almost two years, it feels like the right moment to step back into Gatherac and explore what’s improved with its rerelease for console. So, grab a couple of friends, because it’s time to discuss Baladins!
Gatherac and Colobra, the Time-Eating Dragon
The story of Baladins begins six weeks before the upcoming Peace Festival, a celebration of love and friendship. Each week, players can explore the town of Mouliac and surrounding areas with the task of setting things up for the Peace Festival. To make matters worse, a geyser shoots water out from a well all over where the festival is supposed to take place! Your main objective then becomes to either plug up the hole or stop the water. Players have a limited number of movement points and action points, and each week is one turn. On week seven, regardless of where you are at in your progress of fixing the geyser, the Peace Festival occurs.
All of the sudden, a dragon named Colobra comes out of the well! They chide the Baladins, asking if they have forgotten the true meaning behind the festival. As punishment, Colobra eats any items you are carrying and then eats time itself. The Baladins are hurled into a vortex, and on the other side is… six weeks before the upcoming Peace Festival. Initially I was very confused. Baladins isn’t just your typical adventure boardgame. It features a time-loop mechanic, restarting after six turns. Everyone except for Baladins guild members forgets everything. Obviously, the Baladins now have a much bigger problem than just setting up the Peace Festival. Tasked with going to the castle in Hortegarde, the real adventure begins.
From here on, players can now freely explore the entire map of Gatherac. In total there are five areas with multiple locations in each. Baladins is really a game of side quests, as pretty much every character you meet at the different locations will have a quest for you to do. As mentioned, almost all of the quests has multiple potential outcomes depending on which actions you take. For example, one of my favorite quests was the rivalry between a theater owner and a general at the arena. Perhaps you side with the theater owner and sabotage the arena’s fireworks with spices. Perhaps you side with the general and turn the theater owner in. Or maybe you want to see their rivalry end and have them come together to perform the best show ever. All are possible outcomes.
On the seventh turn, the loop repeats. Colobra eats your items, filling up a mysterious progress bar of his “hunger”. He isn’t so cruel though, as he will let players keep one item (each if in multiplayer) to take with them into the next loop, but it will not count towards filling the bar. A statistics screen will show you the total number of items fed to Colobra, the characters met, the rumors heard, and the good and bad quest endings you’ve achieved. Though I like this idea, I do wish there was an easier way to keep track. There are 154 items able to be fed to Colobra, but seemingly no way to know which items have been fed already. An in-game tracker would be very convenient.
Though the time-loop does reset the everyone’s memories, sometimes it isn’t always necessary to repeat quests in the same steps. For example, a miller needs the castle to send him an engineer. After the first time discovering this quest, it isn’t necessary to ‘re-discover’ it in following loops. You can head straight to the castle and request an engineer without stopping at the mill. This is a mechanic that I particularly liked, given the time-loop nature of the game. It makes completing quests easier, especially if you are playing in single player. What I ended up doing is focusing on a quest or two for a few loops in order to try and find all the possible outcomes. It made things slightly easier for me as a player, but of course it is up to how you prefer to play the game.
The Baladins, Items, and Characteristics
Players can choose one of five Baladins to play as for each loop—the cook, the luxomancer, the dancer, the pyro, or the bard. Each Baladin starts with the same number of action points and movement points, as well as ten gold. Along with their charming designs, each Baladin excels in one of the five characteristics—physique, finesse, knowledge, creation, and destruction. One characteristic has a value of 8, 1 or 2 points in three other characteristics, and one at 0. The choices you make in a loop may test your characteristics in a dungeons & dragons style. Three six-sided die are rolled and then added to your characteristic to determine if you succeed. Threshold values come in three different variations— 8, 11, or 18. Locations on the map have practice areas where players can improve a characteristic by 1 and challenge areas that test your characteristics for rewards.
Items are another way to increase or decrease your characteristics. You can obtain items in several ways: by triggering random encounters on the map, buying them from shops, or earning them as quest rewards. Most items will passively effect your characteristics. The traveling merchant, who wanders around the map near players, will happily buy your items. Selling to him is a great way to pick up extra gold, which you’ll occasionally need when someone demands 50 gold. There are also consumables, such as drinks that increase your characteristics or refill a point of action or movement. Don’t forget that Colobra allows each player to keep one item between loops. It’s important to keep the right items if they will help in a quest, especially when playing single player.
Single Player vs Multiplayer
I wanted to dedicate a section on my review to discuss specifically the single player vs multiplayer aspect. Many reviews, including the one here back in 2024 when Baladins originally released, claim that the game heavily favors multiplayer. I’ve even seen some say that not everything is possible to achieve when in single player. Though I can’t say that this is true, I do have to agree that multiplayer seems to be the intended way to play.
In multiplayer, each player takes a turn wandering the map and taking actions. Players can be anywhere on the map. During a player’s turn, they can teleport to or summon another player to your location at any point. Players can share items with each other, though this is limited to once per turn. When making a big decision, players can vote on what they should do, which is a fun little quirk as well. And as mentioned, each player will be able to keep one item between loops. It is important to note that the kept item is tied to the Baladin. Single players can keep an item on one Baladin and switch to another between loops. Make sure you don’t obtain that item a second time though. The game will pull it away from the other Baladin, and it disappears if you don’t reclaim it.
Multiplayer can be played both locally and online with a code. Admittedly, I’m not entirely sure if both players will need to own a copy when online. My guess is yes which is unfortunate since on PC it allows players to play without a copy. I am also not sure about cross-play. For local multiplayer, it seems that only a dual set of joy-cons or a pro-controller work. I tried docking my Switch 2 and playing in multiplayer with the two joy-cons separately, but it didn’t work. Eventually, after failed attempts at persuading my partner to play with me, I grabbed the two pro-controllers and just played in multiplayer by myself.
There isn’t really anything gained when playing in single player outside of an extra action and movement point. Though I can understand this, I do think single player makes gameplay a lot…harder? Harder doesn’t seem like the right word as the difficulty in this game is little to none. It definitely will take you way longer to complete and achieve everything though. More strategy will also be required if you want to complete some quests within the loop.
I’d like to give an example of what I mean by more strategy. A farmer is plagued with lavender that keeps growing and needs the player to find a buyer and stop the lavender from growing. In order to complete this quest with the best possible outcome, players will need to have two encounters along the map—a king with a stolen drawing book and a crying child missing her drawing book (her crying magically makes the lavender grow). These encounters trigger somewhat randomly across the map, but each one still belongs to a specific area—for example, Mercazon. Though there are other ways of stopping her from crying, giving her the drawing book is the only way to receive a rare item.
At any point, you will need to stop and talk to the farmer to get a sprig of lavender. Then, travel to the next town over and give the lavender to to a boutique owner who says they will buy more. Then, it’s back to the farmer to tell him the good news and receive his scythe item. In single player, performing all of these tasks took an entire loop for me. This isn’t a terribly long time, loops might take you 15 minute tops, but in multiplayer, a quest like this would be way easier and faster. With item swapping alone, players could easily complete this quest in a few turns, with enough time to explore other things as well.
So yes, though it may not be entirely impossible to achieve everything in single player, it does make things way more challenging than they need to be. I wish that we could fill up the party slots in single player as an optional setting, without needing to have multiple compatible controllers. I can appreciate the game encouraging players to game together. However, I can’t help but feel like they didn’t need to make things as challenging for those that can’t or simply don’t want to. Both options should feel like viable ways to play without the dramatic spike in strategic gameplay.
A Re-Release is Hopefully Good News for Baladins
In conclusion, though I can recommend this one, I don’t think it will be for everyone. I think there’s much to wish for in this game. I would love for them to make single player slightly and optionally easier by allowing players to control multiple Baladins. If I ever want to dive fully into this game, I’ll need a more detailed tracker. There’s no way I’m keeping a personal log of everything I’ve fed Colobra. I wish I could view the map before getting into a loop. Though I can select my starting location, I have already forgotten where things are located many times. The same could be said for the quest log and other achievements. My hope is that this re-release breathes new life into Baladins and that Seed by Seed takes another look into improving the game further.
On the other hand, I loved the game’s charm and whimsy. It is simple, light-hearted fun that would be great for those interested in board games and dungeons & dragons. I found myself playing into the evening a few times even though I typically do my gaming research during the day. I enjoy diving into an adventure packed with side quests to tackle. The wacky and wonderful characters I meet along the way stand out, and their stories are consistently well written. If you have family or friends that you think would enjoy this, then I can especially recommend it to you. I was always more of a fan of co-op rather than competitive in multiplayer, and this fits right in. Gather your friends locally or online and treat it like you would a dungeon and dragons campaign!
Thank you for reading, now go feed some items to Colobra!
