I recently bought Dust at a relatively good price on Steam because I had originally avoided it.

I have to say, I played through the prologue section and came out more or less unimpressed. The art style sits wrong with me, the writing has been children's fare, and while the combat can be entertaining, it has a bad habit of misinterpreting a button press as a hold, screwing up my combos.

Will the rest of Dust be more of the same, or should I stick it out for a full chapter?

You already bought it dude - I'd say give it 1-2 more hours. Give the combat a little more time to click with you. If after some extra time the fighting isn't fun, just walk away. It's not going to magically change.

But again, there is a curve at the start. Not a difficulty curve per se, just a getting-used-to-the-controls curve.

The art style takes some getting used to. I have no problem with it, but the character design does seem at odds with the actual world design which is quite beautiful.

The writing is NOT children's fare. It goes to some dark places. It's not going to make you question your place in the universe but it's well done. It starts off like a light fantasy romp and ends up in some bleak places, including the aftermath of a genocide.

I also thought the voice acting was exceptional for a downloadable game.

Give it a while.

The writing is good. The art style doesn't really change so that how it is. It's well made though.

Moving this to - spoiler - the Dust forum.

@varius: I had some issues with controls doing the wrong thing when I was playing with a ps3 controller, but when I switched to the kb, it worked perfectly. I've only beaten chapter one or two chapters after the prologue so far, but you should go ahead and givee that a try at least because you get to see a some.new mechanics as well as the beginning of that darker tone that moregrammarplz mentioned.

Probably gonna get some hate here, but I hated both the writing and voice acting. Loved the gameplay, music and art style though. Definitely worth putting in a few more hours before making a final judgment, but if it's not for you, it's not for you.

I really enjoyed Dust, I had a great time going from start to finish. I'd say give it another hour or two since you own it and if it still doesn't do it for you then you probably won't change your mind later on.

I think the story picks up a bit as the game goes on, but it never gets great or anything. I enjoyed the art up to a point, but it eventually lost its appeal. The biggest problem for me was that I just got really bored of the combat by the end and that made it tough to plough through the last few hours.

I personally loved the game, and the creator was nice enough to post here a bit and talk about his love for the Giant Bomb crew. Next to Trials Evo, it was my favorite downloadable title of the year, probably tied with Mark of the Ninja.

I just finished getting all the achievements for the game today. It's really spectacular I thought, the art style is quite nice the combat is slick and feels rewarding if you put in the effort to the various systems. The plot and voice acting also really gets you at sometimes. At one point you end up at a 'haunted village' style level and the plot for that bit was real special and touching to me but little moments like that are littered throughout the game.

I just popped up in the forum because I was wondering the same thing. I hear the story is alright, and I am really enjoying the way the game plays. The problem I face is that I do not want to listen to one more word come out of Fidgets mouth, yet I do not want to mute the game or skip every cut scene. The 30 year-old dude pretending to be a female child, baby-doll, anime voice style has to be one of the most annoying and bothersome styles of voice acting imaginable. It's like the voice actor is speaking through their nose, not with their diaphragm.

It is bad enough that I am not sure if I want to continue on with the game. Does anyone know of a way to forcibly remove Fidgets voice acting? I see that all the voices are loose files in the game directory, but there isn't a file labelled Fidget anywhere.

It was a waste of time. I Don't get the love.

The combat isn't going to get any more deep, the art is still going to be the art and the story isn't anything too special. If you aren't enjoying it, it isn't going to get any better. It's still damn impressive for the one dude to put together and I'd say give it a bit more time just to be sure it doesn't click with you.

I got a few hours in. The combat wasn't incredibly deep, but it was pretty fun. I can see how the art style and characters might be off-putting but I got used to the anthropomorphism and I came to think that a lot of the environments are beautiful. And the music was pretty good, too.

The writing has yet to prove itself, but it seems like it might still have some interesting stuff in it.

I say give the game a few more hours. Get to the first town and do some sidequests before writing it off.