Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream review for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X

Sometimes it’s important to start off a review by stating the obvious thing: Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is absolutely stunning to look at. Whatever else there is to be said about the game, its visuals are simply gorgeous. Whatever we’re talking about the cutscenes, where the game looks like a well-shot live-action movie, or the gameplay bits, where the game’s world is shown in insane detail despite being having a top-down view, I don’t remember the last time I played a game that looked as good as Eriksholm.

It’s almost a pity that at a certain point, you have to stop looking at Eriksholm and start playing it. That’s not to say it’s a bad game – it’s not. It’s just that the visuals are so impressive, it’s hard not to wish that Eriksholm had equally outstanding gameplay to match.

The problem – to the extent it’s even a problem – is that Eriksholm’s stealth gameplay is a lot less memorable than its visuals. The game is focused on telling a tight, linear story about a girl trying to find her brother, and to that end it delivers tight, linear gameplay: you start off at one point in a level, and you need to figure out how the game wants you to get to the end of it without being spotted.

I used that phrase – “you need to figure out how the game wants you to get to the end” – intentionally. It’s because the stealth puzzles at the heart of Eriksholm generally have one solution, and one solution only. Even if the game’s world may be rendered in exquisite detail, the game’s developers had a very firm idea of how they want you to get through it. Fail to do exactly as they want you to do and you’ll fail the level and be sent back to the last checkpoint.

It’s an annoying approach precisely because Eriksholm looks so great. It’s hard to look at this world and not want to explore, to find your own path through the level to get to the end. Instead, the game ensures that there are always police standing wherever it doesn’t want you to go, or walls blocking your way with no way around them.

To be fair, it’s also an approach that ensures that you’re constantly moving Eriksholm’s story forward – and if I were the developers, I’d also want people focused on the story. Not only does the game look great, it also features some pretty solid voice acting. What’s more, Eriksholm’s world is filled with all kinds of details that push the story along, so I can understand why they’d want to keep people moving rather than risking that they’ll find a shortcut and miss an important piece of the story.

In other words, the key to enjoying Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream is to think of it not as an open-ended sandbox, there for you to discover all kinds of secrets, but as an intricate diorama, just waiting for you to set things into motion. You may not get the same kind of satisfaction of figuring out inventive ways to solve problems, but you will get to look at a game that’s simply beautiful – and all things considered, it’s a fair trade.

Nordcurrent Labs provided us with an Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream PC code for review purposes.