Dissimilar Review
Dissimilar is a smart, unusual RPG adventure with rough edges you can’t ignore.
Dissimilar. Credit: Opal Grave Games
Dissimilar from two-person team Opal Grave Games is a compelling blend of narrative mystery and tactical turn-based combat. It’s a small, unusual game with a clear identity, and one of the more interesting RPGs I’ve played recently.
Amelia, a Parisian student from a wealthy family whose mother is a tech industry titan, is kidnapped by her best friend and forced to return to The Haven, the castle her family used to vacation in as a child. Once there, she’s made to participate in a mysterious game she doesn’t understand, surrounded by advanced AIs in robotic bodies role-playing figures from her family’s long history. She isn’t told the rules, the stakes, or even why she’s there; the AIs running the game refuse to answer her burning questions about what’s actually going on. That uncertainty is the hook, and it works. The mystery held my attention all the way through.
The writing itself often gets in its own way. The story is framed as Amelia recounting these events in an interrogation to shadowy figures who periodically interrupt her with questions. It’s cliché and unnecessary. Every time the game cuts away to this framing device, it breaks the flow. Instead of deepening her perspective, it undercuts what could be more emotional moments. The core premise is strong enough to carry things, but the writing around it is uneven. Dialogue often feels overwritten and leans heavily on ellipses as a crutch for pacing, which gets irritating fast.
Dissimilar. Credit: Opal Grave Games
Combat is where the game separates itself. Encounters are fully deterministic. Enemies follow fixed patterns, and the challenge is understanding how those patterns interact with your positioning. You build a team of fighters with distinct abilities, place them on a grid, and learn how enemies respond to both your units and their own placement. Every fight is a problem to solve. You’re not improvising so much as studying the system, testing it, and refining your approach. Losing is expected; you reset, adjust, and go again with better information.
The balance system works against that design more than it needs to. You start fights with reduced energy because some doors cost energy to open. Resting restores your energy, but also resets the fights and those same doors, so you can’t recover without paying the cost again. It’s meant to be part of the puzzle, but in practice, it feels like unnecessary drag, especially when you’re already expected to repeat encounters to learn them.
The quality of the controls is in sharp contrast with the game’s smart combat design. Movement is sticky. Amelia catches on walls and edges instead of sliding along them, which constantly interrupts navigation. It’s not a one-off annoyance; it’s baked into how the game feels to move through. In combat, selecting spaces on the grid with an analog stick felt unreliable, snapping in directions I didn’t intend. It’s enough of a moment-to-moment irritation to negatively impact the experience.
Dissimilar. Credit: Opal Grave Games
The hand-drawn art is technically strong but flat. The isometric castle is cleanly rendered, and there’s clear skill behind it, but it often feels sterile. Character animation is stiff, and the designs don’t leave much of an impression. It gets the job done; it’s just not a strong selling point for the game.
Dissimilar is a thoughtful, unusual RPG that fully commits to its ideas. The combat is smart, demanding, and I was genuinely absorbed in it, while the story’s central mystery is strong, effectively motivating me to keep playing just a little longer each session. But the writing, structural interruptions, and rough gameplay feel are hard to ignore. There’s something here worth experiencing if you’re willing to push through the rough edges.
Dissimilar
Dissimilar is a smart, unusual RPG adventure with rough edges you can’t ignore.
