Swords & Sorcery – Now With Woodland Creatures!
HIGH Effective worldbuilding. Engaging dialogue. Endearing art style.
LOW Overused levels. Erratic difficulty.
WTF Did the badger lady kill the previous owner of the smithy or what?
Willow Guard is an unconventional hack-and-slash/deck-building/visual novel hybrid from the minds of MiTale, a Finnish publisher and developer that prides itself on its “passion for interactive storytelling and serious games” — and its latest work definitely reflects that passion. Fans of stories centered around knights-errant and anthropomorphic woodland creatures (Redwall anyone?) will delight in the charming aesthetics and darker undertones of the narrative.
The player controls a battle-hardened badger-man named Ghweros who, not unlike Geralt in The Witcher, belongs to an ancient order known as the Willowguards. They’re oathbound to protect the willow groves surrounding each settlement, yet they’re often derided by the townspeople. Ghweros has been sent forth into the world of Tersa to determine what’s been causing a sudden uptick in monster activity and put a stop to it.
The first stop is Woikos, a remote lumber town that appears ordinary but, as the player will learn from their forays into its mysterious ruins, was of particular importance to the Willowguards of antiquity. No spoilers here but the story is strong enough to be a visual novel with well-written dialogue and each area being peppered with tantalizing bits of lore just waiting to be pieced together.
Having spent years as a thankless mercenary, Ghweros has a gruff demeanor, but the player can make different choices to alter his personality. These then affect his relationships, or “Affinity” with others via different responses (empathetic, rigid, neurotic etc.) just as one would in games like the recent Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
These types correspond to opportunities like observing details or interacting with objects in static environments that are essentially point-and-click areas. Choosing certain actions — such as investigating a sinister presence in tall grass — increased my neurotic Affinity enough to grant me access to an otherwise inaccessible area. An event that affected my empathetic Affinity was triggered by clicking on a point near the foundation of a roadhouse as Ghweros took a moment to appreciate the effort and care put into its construction and maintenance.
While all of these elements get us off to a good start, it’s unfortunate that Willow Guard‘s combat isn’t up to the same standard.
Starting with the good, I appreciate the developer’s choice to switch from charming hand-drawn animation during story sequences to nostalgic 16-bit in the combat, which offers relatively straightforward mechanics with a few interesting deviations in formula. As I got more familiar with the gameplay loop, it was satisfying to clear room after room, getting more powerful as I went along.
Once past the visuals, I was soon dismayed by the awkward controls, unbalanced difficulty spikes and lack of variety in terms of level design.
Playing Willow Guard never felt natural, even after changing the key bindings. Also, basic attacks and visual cues for enemy attacks did not reflect their actual areas-of-effect or hitboxes, so I had to memorize where their attacks actually landed after learning that information the hard way.
Repetition is also a concern. The rooms and areas where combat takes place lack variety, and rather than being procedurally-generated as in some of my favorite roguelites, they’re just arranged in a different order. Also, some quests had me retreading the exact same ground as I’d already done, just with harder enemies. Exchanging loot for materials to upgrade gear and create new cards did help between quests, but the difficulty spikes were sometimes extreme, particularly by the time I reached the late-game areas.
This endgame zone instantly reminded me of classic Zelda dungeons thanks to its puzzles, enemies and challenges. However, I was disappointed to find that some puzzles were embarrassingly easy or non-existent — a room with spikes that would only trigger if I stepped on them hardly constitutes a mental challenge, as I was able to simply follow the path and arrive in the next room totally unscathed.
Other rooms were more tedious than challenging. One had a brief window during which enemies could be attacked, but after that they couldn’t be damaged unless they were hit by sentries that fired at me. I would have to dodge out of the way as the sentries launched their attacks. Then I had to wait for it to happen again, and again, until all of the enemies were finally destroyed and I could pull the lever to open the door to the next room.
In terms of production there were a handful of issues, including the fact that Willow Guard would sometimes freeze mid-dialogue, such as when I asked Ajati, the badger-woman blacksmith about the shop’s previous owner. The dialogue boxes dropped out completely and I had to quit the game. When I returned and tried asking the question again, the same thing happened.
I suppose I may never find out what happened to the former smithy owner, but putting that unintentional cliffhanger aside, my overall feeling is that the developers of Willow Guard largely accomplished what they set out to do — it just ended up a bit lacking in the execution.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Buy Willow Guard – PC
Mhr>Disclosures: This game was developed and published by MiTale. The game is currently available on PC. It was obtained via publisher and reviewed for PC. Approximately 8.5 hours were devoted to the campaign mode. The game was not finished. There is no multiplayer mode.
Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB but most likely, it would be rated T for fantasy violence, blood and gore. The player wields a sword and is able to cast an array of spells while many of their foes splatter pixelated blood and gore upon death.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game features exclusively text-based dialogue and no audio cues that impact the gameplay in any significant way, making it fully accessible.
Remappable controls: The controls can be remapped.
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