Mix Dark Souls and Immortals Fenyx Rising together, then add a dash of bugs, a sprinkle of questionable design choices and a pinch of easy mode.
Story✔️ The story is entertaining for the most part and the lore is deep; your name is Hilda, and you visit the city of Aphes to find and save your father and find out what the heck is going on in this city. You will find at least 250 documents and hidden notes in the world that either adds more to the lore, or some pointless and boring statements/stories that have nothing to do with it. There are tons of side quests that you can find and a lot of interesting characters to talk to
❌ "Every choice and every decision you make matters" is an exaggeration; there are two endings (and side characters endings shown as a slideshow, similar to Fallout), but story is pretty linear, there are no branching paths or butterfly effect, you will fight the same bosses and take the same missions. That being said, for some reason the game shames you for killing a certain boss/doing a certain action, and I thought to myself that there had to be another way, so I loaded an old save and kept exploring the areas multiple times and killing the same enemies, but there wasn’t, and I wasted more than 3 hours of my time. However, picking certain choices and finishing specific side quests can unlock more dialogue and affect which ending you’ll get.
❌ The missions are a mess; at a certain point, the game with you give three missions with their own substories to finish, which you can choose which one you want to begin with. However, each mission stops halfway through (while giving you a poor excuse like “the door is closed, i’ll think of a way to open it later”), and in order to continue you must complete the other two (halfway though as well), then complete an entirely new quest, and then you will come back to them. Not to mention that the quests are heavily scripted and have to be done by the book or else it won’t work. There was one sidequest later in the game, I found most of the notes, I knew where to go, I found the locked door that led to the next objective, and I had the key to open it, yet I couldn’t do so, why? Turns out I had to find one more hidden document first.
This is just me being nitpicky, but what makes a souls-like game awesome is the emphasis on environmental storytelling and not constantly spoon-feeding it to us, which the game does constantly.
Gameplay✔️ Six different weapons with their own unique skills and abilities; staff, daggers, sword and shield, hammer, bracelets and spear, and you can only equip two weapons and four different abilities. You can upgrade weapons and unlock powerful abilities using stardust (aka points that you get after killing enemies) and materials that you find in the world. Not to mention that they are fun to use against enemies. If only they added more ranged weapons other than the staff (such as a crossbow).
✔️ There’s three different difficulties; “story” aka easy mode, “adventure” which is the normal difficulty, and “challenge” which is the dark souls level of difficulty (and sometimes even harder). You won’t gain extra experience/stardust if you choose a higher difficulty, but enemies will do more damage to you. In addition, if you play on “adventure/challenge” diff. you will lose 20% of your stardust when you die, if you choose “story” difficulty then you'll lose only 10%.
✔️ The bosses are great; there are over 22 bosses (main, optional and endgame), and most of them have their own unique design, combat style and music theme. The endgame bosses are difficult so prepare yourself before facing them. I played it on the hardest difficulty and they were pretty challenging to the point that they can oneshot you if you aren’t careful.
❌ Questionable design choices; for example:
Stupid respawn system where you lose 20% of your coins/points permanently (if you choose adventure/challenge difficulty)
Having manual saves in a souls-like is a very odd choice and easily exploitable
Long and unnecessary respawn cutscenes after every time you die (yes, it can be sometimes skipped but not always), it’s annoying.
Having to fire your staff while aiming is uncomfortable (PS5 controller: press L2, aim with R3 and press triangle to shoot).
You will lose stamina when you run, dodge and jump but not when you attack… What?
Can’t use health/mana potions simultaneously, you have to wait until you first potion is used up then you can go for the second, which makes it frustrating during boss fights
Not sure if it’s a bug or that’s how enemies behave, but it seems that they are nearsighted and can’t see you until you get up close to them.
Visuals and Level Design✔️ The visuals are great; the game has a similar art style to Immortals Fenyx Rising. There are a lot of interesting locations to explore, tons of hidden passages and different regions to visit.
❌ The world design is… odd; some doors look openable but they aren't, some platforms look reachable but actually aren't, and some buildings look accessible but they are actually out of bounds.
Technical
RTX 3070, Intel I9-10850k, 32 GB RAM, Windows 10 Home, 1080p
✔️ The performance was great; butter-smooth 60 FPS.
❌ Bugs, some are game-breaking; unexpected camera movement, large enemies fit into tiny doors, game freezes when saving, character disappears when teleporting, odd hitboxes, getting stuck between objects and weird surround sound(?) (fighting an enemy in front of you but the sound comes from behind).
Final ThoughtsAll in all, the game took me about 25 hours to complete, and it’ll probably take 10 more hours if I want to find the rest of the endgame bosses and complete all the achievements. So many cons but I still recommend it; it is a decent game with fun combat, good story, great soundtrack and challenging bosses. As for the issues: yes, I know this is an indie game from a new indie studio, but coming from ex-"Blizzard, X-Legend, XPEC, and Runewaker '' developers, it is still a good game, but it could’ve been better.
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