HIGH Stomping the Dungeon boss as the Order.

LOW Basically every time I fought the frustrating Keep boss.

WTF Why is the river such a weak terrain?

Given the opportunity, a random number generator will screw a player over. Games that lean heavily on randomization, such as roguelikes, fundamentally must balance the inevitable frustration of busted runs with a compelling experience of play. Many games meet that standard, but unfortunately Drop Duchy falls just short.

Like most roguelikes, Drop Duchy is built around performing repeated runs — in this case through a lightly-randomized series of combat rounds and resource pickups, and three fixed bosses. The setup for combat will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played Tetris – tetrominoes appear at the top of a field of play and can be rotated before dropping them to the bottom to build complete rows.

The tiles consist of various kinds of terrain and the buildings that interact with them. For instance, a Farm transforms surrounding Plains tiles into Fields, giving a bonus to a Watchtower that gains more units from the latter terrain type. As enemy buildings drop too, arranging tetrominoes so that the terrain benefits the player and not the enemy is a key strategic goal.

In Drop Duchy, completing a row harvests the resources of the terrain (such as grain coming from Fields or Plains) rather than making it disappear. An empty tile prevents harvest, and there’s no way to “uncover” a mistake. Once the tiles reach the top of the play area, the round ends and the player can send military units from his buildings to take on those in enemy buildings (with a classic rock-paper-scissors vulnerability system). The reward for victory is a selection of new buildings or technologies that give passive boosts.

The individual rounds can vary greatly depending on the array of terrain available, but are generally unlikely to end a run and feel too relaxed. The bosses have unusually-shaped fields of play and mostly depend on penalizing the player for putting tiles in forbidden zones. I enjoyed two of the bosses, but I felt that the second boss was poorly tuned, with too much excluded space and penalties that were too stiff for violating it. Many of my runs ended there.

That nonetheless meant that most of my runs exceeded 30 minutes – almost as long as the longest game of Tetris ever played. It’s to its considerable advantage that most games of Tetris are considerably shorter than that: the low stakes make it easier to laugh off the brutal unfairness of the RNG. The time investment of a failed run of Drop Duchy makes it feel inordinately bad to receive, say, an unlucky run of S, Z, and O-shaped tetrominoes in a boss level.

The salve for a failed run is intended to be advancement along Drop Duchy’s progression tree, which is unlocked by fulfilling its many Challenges, which range from gathering certain amounts of a resource to performing particular tricks with certain buildings.

Unfortunately, unlocking new elements didn’t always feel like progress. Gaining the river terrain complicates the earlier parts of the run with few benefits. Most cards interacting with this terrain are not strong and are entirely ineffective if there are less than 15 contiguous river tiles, making them high-risk, mid-reward selections.

New mechanics like Faith have few benefits until the player puts large numbers of the associated buildings into his limited set of tiles. If they don’t turn up, the result is a busted run. Outside of runs with their associated faction, these tiles mostly feel like they’re taking up space.

Even the sheer number of new buildings and techs gets in the way, pushing the encounter frequency of the most useful buildings down significantly. As I got further and further along the progression tree, busted runs where I simply never got offered useful military buildings became too common. When I did get a strategy going, I often found myself in a trap where I couldn’t get the additional buildings I needed to strengthen it. This became another reason to dislike the river — after a while I simply stopped regularly pulling buildings that could make use of it at all.

The unlockable factions are a mixed bag as well. From the start, one can choose the Duchy faction, which relies on small, agrarian buildings that accrue resources easily and are easy to place in the boss fights. The late-unlocking Order synergizes neatly with the otherwise-troubled Faith system and also features a number of interesting upgrade and harvest abilities.

The Republic faction, on the other hand, relies heavily on large buildings and on transforming terrain into “town”, making it unusable for many other buildings. This faction was especially difficult to use against the second boss.

Sometimes a roguelike can pull a player back in with aesthetic components, but Drop Duchy doesn’t really offer anything compelling. The terrain is largely dull, though at least the mountain tiles vary entertainingly. The buildings are nicely drawn but not especially memorable and they don’t do anything interesting like change based on faction or upgrade level. The music is fine, but there’s just not enough character in the graphical design to make that next run feel necessary, and no story to speak of.

Drop Duchy attempts to ease the hard feelings of a busted run with its progression-unlocking Challenges, but the proliferation of new features feels like it dilutes rather than strengthens subsequent runs. As a consequence, Drop Duchy falls too far into the frustrating regime of RNG-dominated games. There’s an interesting concept here, but Drop Duchy lacks the kind of snappy gameplay or compelling aesthetic that would sustain it through the unfairness of waiting in vain for that dang line piece that just won’t drop.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Buy Drop Duchy – PC

Disclosures: This game is developed by Sleepy Mill Studio and published by The Arcade Crew. It is currently available on PC via Steam. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on a home-built Windows 11 PC equipped with a Ryzen 7 processor, 64 GB RAM, and a single GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card (with various 576.x drivers). Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed (all factions and game modes were played and ~80% of the progression tree was unlocked). There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: As of press time this game has not been rated by the ESRB. Beyond simply acknowledging the existence of armed conflict and religious heresy, there’s nothing here to object to.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game has no dialogue nor are there any significant sound cues. Therefore, it is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

The post Drop Duchy Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Cool concept, solid fundamentals.

LOW Demonic, dismal UI. Boring cards. Confusing structure.

WTF Seriously, why is there a story at all?

The hardest reviews to write are the ones for the nearly-theres — the ambitious failures, the unsuccessful experiments, the polished messes, and the well-meaning shambles. They’re usually built on sound principles and timbered with good intention, but somehow, somewhere, something causes the whole experience to sink. Such a case is Knights in Tight Spaces.

This is a standalone sequel to Fights in Tight Spaces, a game that fused small-scale, position-based tactical battles with deckbuilding to evidently well-received effect — I haven’t played it.

KITS swaps out the modern-minimalist martial art aesthetic for a woodcut-inspired medieval world. There are knights, rogues, wizards, swords and boards, wands and wagons, flagons and flechettes, dungeons but, curiously, no dragons. Along with these trappings comes a new structure — a fusion of the Slay the Spire node board with some RPG-esque questing, party-building, and equipment.

It seems like a logical next step, and due props to Ground Shatter for taking something that worked and making an honest attempt at enriching it. But KITS, sadly, completely trips over its sabatons and exposes its whole ass like a character out of Rabelais.

First and most grievously — for a game that is ostensibly finished, the KITS UI and general readability is shockingly bad.

KITS takes obvious inspiration from Into the Breach, in the sense that its battles unfold in cramped arenas (they definitely delivered on the tight spaces) and positioning is key. Enemies move and telegraph their attacks, and then the player takes their turn. This is where the deckbuilding enters the formula.

Every character action is represented by a card, every card has an energy cost, and the deck is cycled through as the fight progresses — I really, really dislike saying “It’s basically like game X,” but, in a post-Breach, post-Spire landscape, all of this will seem Quite Familiar… KITS is one of those titles that finds its own identity by dovetailing signature mechanics from other games, and there’s nothing wrong with that — in principle.

Whereas both Breach and Spire transmuted the underlying density of their mechanics into beautifully luculent, readable interfaces, no single scrap of key information in KITS is where it should be, arranged how it should be, or at hand when it needs to be. Tiles where an enemy attack will land are marked with a subdued reticule that blends in with the rustic hues of the maps. Barring projectile attacks, there’s no way to tell at a glance which attack is coming from which well-cuisse’d cuss comprising the opposition.

In fact, nearly nothing can be seen at a glance. HP is not constantly displayed, there are no static damage prediction values, and the color-coding for cards and enemy archetypes is riotously borked. Characters have equipment that modifies the parameters of cards and those values are thus altered on the cards, but there’s no easy way to tell what piece of equipment or what skill is increasing/decreasing these values, and by how much. Enemies also have equipment, by the way, which modifies their attack/defense values, and god help the gormless player who wants to see that equipment, because they’re about to take a trip to sub-tab-within-a-tab Land, which I don’t need to point out is one of the worst theme parks in recorded history.

These may sound like nits, but there are a lot of nits, and eventually they swarm together and coalesce into whatever the nit equivalent of a rat king is — it’s a pulsing, pullulating, crawling mound of KITS nits.

Unfortunately, this confusion isn’t a symptom of any additional depth. In fact, there’s a leaden shallowness to KITS’s battles. They just… aren’t that exciting. Too many cards are tepid variants of other cards with numbers slightly tweaked. Positioning never has the razor-edged, nightmare chess energy of an Into the Breach. There’s an aching dearth of Power Turns where, through rigorous analysis and eloquent play, the golden thread of victory is seized and followed through a seemingly unwinnable tangle of dire enemy threats.

Also, far be it from me to kick a knight when he’s down, but I gotta say, the graphics just aren’t doing it for me.

The idea — tavern-smokey woodcut – is great, but the execution seems like RobinGoodfellowWoodcut.tex laid over Unity store rudiments. The characters don’t emote or react, and their faces have less emotional range than a blacksmith’s anvil. I don’t even think the ‘cinematic’ attack sequences are cool — there’s no pugilistic flair, no thudding frisson when sword meets gorget. Also, I think it’s just kind of dumb that fully armored knights are hopping around doing martial arts kicks — I wonder if some of these animations were brought straight over from FITS, because they seem incongruous to the setting.

“Setting,” by the way, would be a strong word for the world in KITS, much like “story” is a strong word for the narrative elements, or how “cutscenes” oversells what the text exchanges between the static medieval archetypes here achieve. I quite literally do not have the space, and mentally do not have the patience, to elaborate any further on the story trappings here. Come for the gameplay or don’t come at all.

That said, there is something worth coming for in KITS, somewhere. I sense there’s the makings of a good game in here, just below the surface. It shimmers at the periphery sometimes, when a particular turn almost lifts itself out of the morass of near-tedium, or when I nearly forget the messy menus and nigh-omnispresent obfuscation and can make my cool sword-guys fight other cool sword-guys in cool sword battles in cramped sword-spaces.

That’s all I wanted.

Maybe Ground Shatter will get KITS there after a few patches and updates, but right now, anybody picking this one up is in for a rough knight.

Rating: 4.5 out of 10

— Ben Schwartz

Disclosures: This game is developed by Ground Shatter and published by Raw Fury. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher. Approximately 8 hours were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game has not been rated by the ESRB. There is (obviously) a lot of fighting going on, and some comic book-adjacent blood and gore effects to go along with it. Some of the attacks have an element of pronounced brutality to them, but the game doesn’t linger on the suffering in any way and when a character dies, they fade away quickly. All in all, the mature elements are fairly low-key in the grand scheme of action/adventure media.

Colorblind Modes: Nothing officially called a ‘colorblind mode’ is available here, but there is an option to remove backdrop color.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All of the narrative elements in the game are text-based and not spoken, but the dialogue text cannot be resized. Enemies and player characters make sounds when attacking/being attacked, but KITS is a turn-based game so these sounds do not play any role whatsoever in comprehending the action. Text size for the card descriptions can be scaled up to 160% of their original value. I’d call it fully accessible.

Remappable Controls No, the game’s controls are not remappable. KITS can be controlled with either keyboard and mouse (or just the mouse), or a controller. In the former setup, clicking with the mouse accomplished pretty much every necessary function. The most important non-mouse action is using the Q key to rotate the map in quarter increments.

When using a controller, the left analog stick is used to flick between cards, select targets, etc. It ‘snaps’ to actions rather than merely control a cursor. The A button (or its equivalent) is confirm/left-click, while the other face and shoulder buttons fill hotkey functions for other common actions: the shoulder buttons rotate the camera, while right trigger and left trigger pull up the draw and discard piles, respectively. The Y button ends the turn and, while the controls cannot be altered, the game offers an option for making a long press on the Y button necessary to end the turn, rather than a single tap.

The post Knights In Tight Spaces Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Unique setting and tone. Charming aesthetics.

LOW Lackluster quests and NPC interactions. Frustrating combat and farming mechanics.

WTF Not having a grid for interior design is a huge blindspot for a cozy game.

Mirthwood is a new farming sim/sandbox RPG from Bad Ridge Games in collaboration with V Publishing.

At first glance, it would appear to be nothing more than medieval Stardew Valley, but that’s neither wholly accurate nor a fair thing to say, even if that might have been what the developers were going for.

In many ways, it follows the formula established by its predecessors — the player starts by creating a character who then travels to a faraway place where they receive the deed to a remote homestead to do with as they will — but it differs in setting and overall tone.

Everything looks as if it were pulled straight out of some Eyvind Earle concept art, between its storybook-like character models and layered forest scenes that seem like setpieces on a stage, allowing the player to be swept off to their very own farming fantasy.

The adventure opens with a brief cinematic before launching into a prologue where the player will learn the basics of movement and interact with NPCs before a horde of bandits descends upon their family home. At this point they learn the basics of combat, fighting their way to the nearest ship bound for the Free Lands.

As one might expect from a title that is a farming sim first and a RPG second, the combat is basic — there’s a light attack, a heavy attack and the ability to block or sidestep. It resembles fencing in that the player must be lined up with their enemy in order to attack or evade, which wouldn’t be a problem if the game was entirely 2D. However, because it’s isometric, such limitations make combat frustrating as the engine will sometimes lock the player into attacking in a certain direction even after the enemy has changed position.

Once the player arrives in the Free Lands, they can set their own pace as they develop their homestead, harvest crops, chop wood, forage for plants and mushrooms, explore the surrounding environs, aid NPCs and find their footing in pastoral medieval life — warts and all.

Once at their homestead proper, the player will be greeted by a mysterious plague doctor who says the player can do whatever they wish with the property. I started with the first items of business — gathering the resources needed to restore the dilapidated cottage and planting seeds for what would become the garden.

I used my starter axe to chop down enough wood to replace the worn-down floorboards and my basic pickax split enough rock to replace the crumbling walls which instantly turned what was a dirty hovel into a cozy cabin.

Just as one would do in something like Animal Crossing, I started adding decor that I had crafted, like a cooking pot, chest and wardrobe to make it feel homey, but I was disappointed to find that there was no grid to help guide my interior design ideas, and no ability to change viewing angles or use anything except for the very back for wall decor.

When I finally made my way into town, a host of NPCs flooded the screen, greeting me as I passed by. These greetings opened up multi-path dialogue chains with options such as romance, gossip, joke, etc. While there were plenty of people to interact with, nearly all of them left me wanting as they lacked any semblance of depth or nuance, which are key components for any farming sim/RPG worth its salt. Meeting back up with the enigmatic plague doctor was little better — the quests he offered me were underwhelming, amounting to glorified fetch quests.

However, there was one side quest that I was invested in — investigating what happened to the Medville family meadery outside of town.

Arriving on the scene, I fended off attacking bandits and poked around the ruins, finding a few letters written by the owner, Duncan Medville, who described a tragic chain of events that led to the fall of the meadery in harrowing detail. The second part of fulfilling this side quest was to venture across the continent to track down the owner’s surviving wife and deliver the news of her husband’s passing.

Rather than receiving a weapon or armor set as one might in a typical RPG, however, she gave me a lucky rabbit’s foot which merely buffed the efficacy of other equipped items — the equivalent of going through all that and getting a t-shirt emblazoned with “I traveled all the way across the Free Lands and all I got was this shitty rabbit’s foot.”

From that point on, I became all too aware of the feeling that I was wasting my time in Mirthwood, which in my mind, is the mark of an experience that is mediocre at best.

Ultimately, I see a lot of unrealized potential here. Blending cozy gameplay with dark subject matter, Mirthwood offers an experience that is pleasantly familiar, yet distinct enough to stand out from other games of its ilk. That said, it’s not an experience that appeals to me in its current state. Once some changes are made to the combat mechanics and NPC dialogue, perhaps I’ll want to return to the Free Lands and finally see my crops bear fruit.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was developed by Bad Ridge Games and published by V Publishing. It is currently available on PC. It was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 5.5 hours were devoted to the campaign mode. The game was not finished. There is no multiplayer mode.

Parents: This game is not yet rated by the ESRB but there is some blood and violence. The player will frequently encounter enemies in the wilderness who will attack them, as well as commit acts of violence against other NPCs. They will have to fight to survive and make decisions about whether or not NPCs should be executed. Thus, the game will likely be rated T.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game features dialogue presented in text format. Incoming threats are indicated by exclamation points flashing above attacking enemies and there are no sounds that affect gameplay. This title is fully accessible.

Remappable controls: The controls cannot be remapped.

The post Mirthwood Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Seamlessly interweaving high art with toilet humor.

LOW Unclear point-and-click limitations.

WTF The protagonist’s matchmaking skills should put him in jail.

How far will someone go to receive their inheritance? Can the promise of millions turn someone from a lowlife into a stand-up guy? And would all that effort be worth it? Death of the Reprobate does its best to answer that question, stringing together an adventure full of misfortune and crass humor animated with a virtual flipbook made from thousands of Renaissance-era paintings.

In the latest entry of Joe Richardson’s artsy point-and-click titles, the plot is simple. The story begins with the tyrannical protagonist Malcolm the Shit administering cruel and unusual punishments to his subjects. Suddenly he finds out his father, Immortal John, is on his deathbed — but the player has no interest in him, just his inheritance.

Upon their meeting, John finds his son so ungrateful and miserable that he commands him to do seven good deeds before he can receive his inheritance. From this point, the rest of the experience asks the player to solve puzzles, talk to chatty NPCs, and travel the painted world of Death of the Reprobate.

As one can tell from just a glance, the main selling point in Death is the art style. Quite literally, every single scene is taken from of an existing Renaissance-era painting and animated to fit in with its characters, which move in a vaguely puppet-like manner.

Death’s gameplay consists of solving problems for the residents of the hamlet where the protagonist’s father is living, which usually involved me finding items and giving them to certain NPCs. These “good deeds” ranged from breaking up a couple to match them with other partners, helping a tired maid turn her well into a hot tub, and scouting for a hunter as he killed the entire population of birds in the area. But, while it’s interesting to see how the art interacts with the puzzling in clever ways, some of the solutions won’t be obvious to average players.

In one example, there’s a small house that contains a father with four screaming children. I had to grab a bucket, put it under a cow, give the cow strawberries, then it excreted “strawberry milkshake” from its behind, after which I gave it to the kids. It’s not like I don’t understand the humor here — because it is objectively very funny — but not in a million years would I think up a solution like that on my own.

This frustration goes hand in hand with the limitations of the point-and-click genre. There are tons of items that Malcolm has to pick up and use in unfamiliar ways, such as putting a pumpkin on top of a chimney to smoke out a conclave of wizards. Even when I did solve a puzzle correctly, I never felt smarter for it — it was more like luck. The player is  allowed open access to hints in the form of a Turkish man smoking a hookah next to the tavern, but using hints made me feel guilty for not giving it my all and toughing it out. That said, it was often a struggle between knowing when I had truly exhausted my options and when I had simply given up too early.

Despite being frustrated at times, those issues were minor compared to the art style and Death of the Reprobate’s other selling point — the humor.

The world “reprobate” is defined in the Calvinist religious tradition as “someone destined for damnation,” and Malcolm embodies this in almost all of his interactions. He tries to help the people out of the predicaments that they’re in so he’ll contribute to his good deed count, but he ultimately knows that no amount of goodwill he gives will help. These caricatures are so comically abhorrent and stuck-up it’s hard not to laugh with most dialogue options. For example, Malcolm tries to play matchmaker with the men in the town and his client is so picky that she chooses her ex. Another is when a dad fakes a fishing trip with his kids with Malcolm’s help, only to have his kids call him a deadbeat (among other things.)

Those were just two examples, but every character is just a testament to how strong the writing in Death of the Reprobate is. Richardson somehow interweaves physical comedy, dumb gimmicks, and clever wordplay together to create an intricate (and crass) world full of weirdos. This perspective seems to suggest that while the Renaissance was a time full of artistic revival and scientific ingenuity, people were also really stupid and gross.

Death of the Reprobate offers both artistic complexity and simple humor. It’s a journey full of laughs, jeers, and disgust — and at the end of the day, isn’t that all someone could want from a trip to an art museum?

Rating: 7 out of 10

— Jack Dunn

Disclosures: This game was developed and published by Joe Richardson. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PC. Approximately 3 hours of play was devoted to the game. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game has not been rated by the ESRB, but it contains Nudity, Blood and Gore, Violence, and Strong Language. This is not a game for kids.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available for this game.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are no audio cues that will affect gameplay, as the game is entirely text-based. The subtitles cannot be resized. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game’s controls are not remappable, as it only uses a mouse in the point-and-click style of play. There is no controller map.

The post Death Of The Reprobate Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Great puzzles!

LOW The combat is dull.

WTF Why does it get so difficult in co-op?!?

Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy is the latest installment in the long-running 2D side-scrolling puzzle-platformer series that brings back a trio of linked characters for a new adventure.

The story follows the Heroes of Trine once again as they are framed by an evil queen and her army of robots who are trying to conquer the land. Amadeus the Wizard, Pontius the Knight and Zoya the Thief are all that stand between the evil queen and the fall of their beloved kingdom. There’s not much more to it than that, and to be fair, Trine was never famous for its story. As usual, the script acts as setting for the aspect that really shines — the puzzle solving!

Amadeus, Zoya and Pontius are similar to how they were in Trine 4. Amadeus can lift objects with his magic, Zoya is the long-range specialist with a bow and grappling hook, and Pontius has a deadly sword and shield. As the heroes journey, they unlock new abilities that will allow for more complicated puzzles and combat scenarios. For example, Pontius will learn to throw his sword at wooden walls and use it as a springboard to jump higher, adding more verticality to upcoming challenges.

Trine 5 can be played solo or with up to two friends in co-op, both online and local. With that in mind, the puzzles adjust to the number of players. Playing alone, the challenges are not so difficult, but as the number of players grows, the tasks become significantly more complicated.

Change in the puzzles range from simple escalations like adding more switches or pedestals, all the way up to more complicated situations. For example (when solo) the player needs to hang from a lever that opens a door, and the switch for keeping the door open should be shot from afar. When playing the same area in co-op mode, the switch is replaced with an exploding barrel that requires one player to blow it up with fire while the other keeps the door open by hanging from the lever.

While the puzzles work well for the most part, combat is still Trine’s Achilles’ heel.

Pontius is generally the best option to directly engage with queen’s robotic henchmen, but Amadeus’ magic can’t be used in combat until later stages, and only after upgrading his abilities multiple times. Even then, his combat skills (such as raining ice shards on enemies) are difficult to handle and not so useful. Zoya is the most balanced character, able to shoot airborne targets that Pontius can’t reach with his sword and adding a more dynamic approach to combat than just simply marching forward with a blade swinging in the air.

The adventure has quite a few boss fights, and honestly, I wish all the combat was designed the way these encounters are.

Unlike the general combat sections, boss fights contain puzzle-solving elements. For example, when facing a mechanical dragon, Amadeus can use his magic to lift exploding barrels and throw them at the creature while Pontius deflects its fireballs with his shield. Although not so complex, the creative approach taken during these skirmishes feels like a breath of fresh air and more in line with the clever nature of this puzzle-platformer.

Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy is a welcome addition to the series. While it doesn’t add or change much when it comes to gameplay mechanics, it’s still enjoyable and challenging enough to be worth a look from anyone who likes an old-fashioned fairytale adventure with a twist.

Score: 7.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game was developed by Frozenbyte and published by THQ Nordic. It is currently available on  XBO/X/S, PS4/5, Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 10 hours of play were devoted to the single-player and local coop mode, and the game was not completed. There are local and online multiplayer modes.

Parents: The game is rated Everyone 10+ by ESRB and contains Fantasy Violence. The official description reads: “This is a puzzle-platforming game in which players control three heroes (e.g., wizard, knight, thief) as they attempt to save their kingdom. From a side-scrolling perspective, players solve puzzles, avoid hazards (e.g., chasms, spike pits), and engage in bursts of combat. Players use swords, arrows, and magic spells to defeat fantastical enemies (e.g., mechanical knights, rat men, skeletons). Fighting can include brief explosions and short cries of pain.”

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can be altered and/or resized. There are no necessary audio cues in the game. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Controls can be remapped.

The post Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

Witchfire is a roguelike first-person shooter with a fantasy theme. Its world is under attack from witches and his holiness the Pope has sent witch hunters to deal with them with magic and firearms.

Players take control of a hunter, and like many other roguelikes, must go through the same level over and over, upgrading their equipment and abilities to the point that they can finally defeat that level’s boss and unlock the next one.

Witchfire offers a few semi-open world maps that need to be unlocked one by one. Players can wander around the maps, cleansing the area of the witches’ minions and gathering perks and upgrade points that will make their weapons and magic more powerful.

The nice thing about this open world is that the boss fight is available right from the start, so players can go for it whenever they feel ready. They can also return to their hideout using portals found across the land, or continue gathering resources more at the risk of death and total loss. This risk-reward system is quite similar to most Soulslikes in this way, and I appreciated it.

However, my favorite parts of Witchfire were random events and calamities. The random events might be a lost soul or a cursed place that works like an arena or miniboss fight that rewards extra resources. In calamities, players have a limited time to reach a specific point, but if they fail, a horde of super-powerful enemies will hunt them down. There’s also a recurring, roving miniboss called Warden that searches for the player — it’s a bit like Mr. X in Resident Evil 2.

In terms of gameplay itself, combat is focused on gunplay and the use of magic is limited. Three guns and two types of magic can be equipped during each run. The guns are nothing out of the ordinary — just the same sort of rifle, shotgun, and SMG combination seen in most titles. There are different types of spells to use, magic takes a relatively long time to recharge and I generally forgot to use it in combat.

Unfortunately, while Witchfire manages to find its own identity in terms of theming, when it comes to gameplay it feels and plays like so many other titles out there. On the plus side, Witchfire is still in Early Access, meaning the developers still have time to polish things up and add some spice.

Currently available in Early Access on the Epic game store, no official release date has been announced.

The post PREVIEW Witchfire appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH A novel concept whose limits…

LOW …the game merely scratches. 

WTF Wait, how am I using a crossbow if I’m blind?!

Echoblade is a first-person melee-oriented game set in a medieval fantasy world. The player begins locked behind bars and it’s up to them to find a way out of their subterranean dungeon. As expected, the place is full of armed guards constantly on patrol and ready to squash any prison-breaking attempt with extreme prejudice. And on top of that, the player has to accomplish that goal while being blind!

Luckily, (as the name implies) we can get around the world thanks to our echolocation-like ability that uses sound waves produced by our own footsteps (and other audio sources) to bounce off of other hard surfaces. So, while each step we take produces a noise (and sprinting is even louder, obviously) we have to risk attracting the attention of guards in order to move forward. Otherwise, our stillness will result in literally nothing, as the screen will sink towards utter blackness until we take the next step.  

Granted, the system is quite generous, and figuring out the geometry of a given area is not an issue — each sound ripple we send instantly ‘lights up’ a good chunk of what’s in front of us. Still, we have to remain vigilant of the various floor traps and lethal contraptions that trigger upon being stepped on. Another good aspect to the echolocation is how the player’s footsteps remain etched on the ground for a good while, effectively serving as markers informing us which corners of the dungeon need more exploring.

That type of helping hand is quite necessary for play, as due to this premise, everything looks very, very much the same. The entirety of Echoblade is dominated by the default deep blue-ish tint of its numerous game walls. The only things that introduce a splash of color are the enemies (guards that stand in our way, emit a stark red contrast), the traps (most of which don’t produce a colored soundwave at all, until we trigger them red) and several basement levels that suffer from green-ish poison gas pollution. 

In terms of progression, most of the levels task us with locating a specific key that unlocks the door to the next segment. Finding such keys usually requires defeating guards that carry them on their belts or solving a simple puzzle to reach a semi-hidden area. Unfortunately, neither the combat nor the physical riddles in Echoblade managed to grab my attention to any worthwhile degree.

The guards we face attack us head-on and I never managed to sneak up on them, but they’re not challenging due to a limited moveset offering a few easy-to-read strikes and close-reaching spinning moves. We can quickly dispatch them with one or two timely horizontal or vertical swipes with our two-handed sword. The strength behind these moves eats up the stamina bar, and so do the defensive maneuvers we can use, yet, this is not a soulslike in the slightest — there aren’t many moves to master here. Aside from the close-range strikes, we can also attack with a crossbow, surprisingly enough, though its ammunition is scarce. 

The puzzles are as rudimentary as the combat, most often requiring us to move some blocks around or stack them on top of each other to build ‘stairs’ we can jump on. Furthermore, as we defeat foes and progress through the campaign, we gain skill points that unlock a fairly basic skill tree. It’s a run-of-the-mill stuff here, with perks like “gain more stamina”, “fire more arrows at once” or “take less damage while blocking” taking up the majority of those choices…

Other than that, Echoblade consists of multiple interconnected rooms, each serving as a separate level. Once we reach the end of one, there’s a loading screen that takes us to the next, and if the payer was to turn back and re-enter the previous level, they’ll find all of the previously solved puzzles un-solved again. I can only describe much of this as unnecessary padding that contributes little to the experience. 

As such, Echoblade‘s interpretation of a blind protagonist is a novel concept, but the experience offers only the barest leveraging of the premise — there simply isn’t enough complexity and not nearly enough enough moving parts here to add up to a significant gaming experience.

Rating: 6 out of 10 

Disclosures: This game is developed by Sunset Arctic Games, and published by EastAsiaSoft. It is currently available on PC, PS4/5, XBO/S/X and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4 Pro. Approximately 6 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game has received a T rating by the ESRB and contains Blood and Violence. It is played from a first-person perspective and due to the main character’s blindness, all enemies and traps are depicted as glowing red silhouettes. Each strike we land has an impact on the enemies, and upon defeat, their bodies remain visible on the stage. There’s very little blood, however.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Dialogue is scarce in this game, and there’s written text for everything communicated to the player. Sound is completely unimportant for playing due to how each potential hazard is highlighted by colored waves that clearly comminute danger. The human enemies don’t ever try to creep up on the player, instead making their proximity known at all times while directly approaching the player head-on. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: This game does not offer a controller diagram and the controls are not remappable. The analog sticks being used for moving around, the shoulder buttons for blocking as well as quick, heavy and ranged attacks, and the face buttons for dodging and interacting with the environment (i.e. picking up objects, unlocking doors with previously discovered keys, etc.)

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HIGH Inventive and satisfying mechanics.

LOW Running errands at camp.

WTF Lifeless, blank stares.

Let’s get this out of the way – I think Lost Eidolons is kind of ugly.

That’s likely to be a controversial take. Part of its appeal is that it is a sort-of-Westernized turn-based strategy title in the same vein as something like Fire Emblem, but it trades in anime-style, primary-color hairdos for more lifelike 3D renderings, and for me, that aesthetic choice subtracts a substantial amount of charm. Characters look like they’ve just stepped off the Polar Express, dead-eyed but decked out in chainmail. It may come as a surprise, then, that despite its unconventional, unappealing appearance, Lost Eidolons is a true contender in the SRPG genre.

Artemisia is a land of swords and spells. It’s essentially medieval fantasy but missing the usual dwarves, goblins and elves, and instead populated by troublesome humans and fearsome monsters. Players take on the role of Eden, the affable leader of a brotherhood of mercenaries – think Robin Hood and his merry men – who gets caught up in a rebellion against a tyrannical emperor who mercilessly rules the known world.

At nearly 20 hours in, I still feel like I’m in the early stages of the plot, but it’s already won me over. World-building is rather blasé (I have not been motivated to read through pages of supplemental text) and yet Lost Eidolons is still a grand, multi-layered story – sprinkled with some classical tropes – and capable of surprises, particularly in the moments when Eden’s good cheer meets the reality of warfare and the noble ideology of revolution is tarred by hate-driven actors and Machiavellian machinations. 

But that’s all fluff. SRPG fans are often willing to suffer through the most threadbare plots and cardboard characters for satisfying combat crunch, and Lost Eidolons proves its mettle there.

The genre, alongside its close cousin the JRPG, can often be weighed down by complex management mechanics that leave players spending as much time scrolling through menus as commanding units. While Lost Eidolons’ user interface is nothing to write home about, its systems are sophisticated without being overly complex. 

Classes and their requirements are straightforward while inventory is limited in scope and without an accoutrement of modifiers, meaning a player won’t be fumbling around dozens of different swords to find the best min/max. The magic system is also solid, as spellcasters will equip a grimoire (Dark, Elemental, Light) and decide what spells they’ll bring into battle beforehand, offering a slew of strategic possibilities rather than just another Wizard casting variations of a fireball.

Meanwhile, battles on the grid require the usual tactical frame of mind – in some ways, even more so, because attacking units always land hits. That makes decisions less a roll of the dice and more a careful game of chess, putting the right pieces in the right places without relying on lady luck for a save or for a kill. This required strategy is made even more apparent by the fact that units cannot pass through a space adjacent to an enemy, even if it’s unoccupied. This encourages players to move units in formation and stops engagements from devolving into a chaotic flood of backstabs.

Special moves are also constrained. Rather than using MP or some other spendable attribute to be recharged by a handy elixir, each move can only be used a small number of times during a battle. However, that’s not to say it’s all limits and borders.

Non-magic characters can carry both a primary and secondary weapon, giving units the chance to switch up their mode of attack when needed, without making each a one-man-army. Weapon proficiency will also play a part, and players will still need to consider their choices – take along a bow that’s effective in punching through a spellcaster’s tunic, or an axe to chop some poor chap’s leather britches? These are just a few of several clever ideas and flourishes that give Lost Eidolons its own character among an ever-growing horde of indie SRPGs.

There is one major caveat to my adoration for the gameplay, however – the camp. Like Fire Emblem: Three Houses, players must navigate a home base between battles to carry out conversations, set out training plans, and build bonds with their party (no mini-games, though). I understand why this section exists since it offers opportunities for characterization or to access side quests and optional battles, but it just feels like such a grind after all the delights of a good dust-up. Luckily, the developers have tried to make the process as painless as possible with the ability to fast travel from a map menu and using icons indicating which interactions might yield more reward than just another conversation – and there are a lot!

Despite its shortcomings, I ended up liking Lost Eidolons. It’s an indie title that aspires to be a big budget epic, whose worst qualities are more than compensated for by a strong story and inventive – sometimes brilliant – gameplay mechanics. As the old saying goes: don’t judge a game by its characters’ lifeless, blank stares.

– Stephen Cook

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Ocean Drive Studio. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 18 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB. There is mild violence. Humans wield weapons and magic against each other and monsters with some blood. Language and sexual content are appropriate for younger gamers but there are adult themes around war and death. 

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can be resized. Sound does not play any key role. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls for controller or keyboard and mouse.

The post Lost Eidolons Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Incredibly immersive RPG experience.

LOW Persistent technical hiccups.

WTF The game can’t render as fast as my horse can gallop…

Though it caught my attention when it was released back in 2018, I was correct to assume that diving into Kingdom Come: Deliverance would demand a clear schedule. This open-world first-person adventure is a behemoth of an RPG, with a ton of systems to learn before one can truly appreciate it. As such, it’s a rare example of a title that boldly swims against the current, aiming to evolve with the player while never ceasing to offer a huge, fat zero in terms of immediate gratification. Instead, it’s up to us to carve a path through the obstacles and pay attention to the rich world that can actually meet our aspirations.

Set at the start of the 15th century in Bohemia, we play as a young lad named Henry whose destiny soon becomes dominated by the ensuing war between two princes that divide the land, both offspring of the legendary King Charles IV. In the utterly engrossing opening (and tutorial) that exceeds an hour of dedicated play, we glimpse the main foundation of Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s world – we get better only by actually performing the thing we intend to get good at.

For example, leveling the strength stat requires completing laborious tasks, upping agility equals spending more time sprinting, improving horsemanship means we’d have to get a horse first, and so on. Interestingly, gaining levels in any of the dozen categories earns us the right to pick one of the many perks that slowly unfold. Though most of them offer convenient bonuses like being able to carry more items at once or using sturdier lockpicks, some of these cancel each other out — we can either gain charisma bonuses while in the wilds or when in a village, but not both places at once. Regardless, the perks don’t funnel us into a specific ‘build’ due to Kingdom Come‘s fixation on realism above all else.

While it may seem that this attempt at strict realism can only result in a game that steps on its own toes, Kingdom Come: Deliverance wastes no time in becoming a playground for us to find appropriate joy in.

An early lesson comes when Henry’s mom interrupts his wish to sleep ’till noon, so we take control of our slightly-hung-over hero as he tries to explain (or cover for) last night at the bar. In this exchange, I quickly learned to carefully weigh how my answers may sound to the other party, since the NPCs are not simpletons and will make accurate deductions based on what Henry spits out. (Naturally, correctly assessing how to shape the conversation’s outcome will earn the player a level up in the Speech skill tree.)

Once our forgiving mother directs us to speak to our father (the local master blacksmith), Kingdom Come frees us up to tackle the first of the many story quests. Due to plot-related reasons, the passage of time and the day-night cycle are halted at that point, allowing one to wander around the beautifully-realized town of Skalitz, perched atop a small hill next to a narrow river. The quests direct us to haggle with at least three merchants of various guilds, trying to produce a sum of coins equal to what a certain local drunkard owes Henry’s father (but refuses to give to his timid-looking son.)

Personally, I headed to the nearby prairie and collected herbs and flowers, which I later sold to the correct merchant. This raised both my Herbalism and Speech stats. However, Kingdom Come: Deliverance doesn’t hinder the player’s creativity in the slightest. There was nothing wrong with borrowing a few lockpicks from Henry’s mates and breaking into said drunkard’s house to rob him blind. Similarly, there was nothing stopping me from doing a favor for my three buddies before asking them to join me in a hand-to-hand fight against the poor fellow, and looting the key once we knocked him out.

This level of interactivity is the most potent quality that prevents this ambitious title from ever falling prey to mundanity. Supporting it is a superb level of writing, with characters that seem like actual people who can’t help but be themselves, and quests that evolve in organic and logical ways. I often opted to indulge the plea of a mere passerby, only to uncover a long chain of side-quests that took me for a ride.         

One of the biggest highlights I can share without spoiling the story was the time when I had to find a cure for a plague-like curse that had befallen one of the neighboring villages. Trying to uncover the root of the issue meant taking the time to interview all members of the townsfolk that were not yet bedridden. Next, I headed to another, bigger settlement to confer with the scholars before inspecting their library. There, scouring through handwritten parchments that make up the limited medicinal knowledge of the era, I was able to identify what I was dealing with. At least, I think I did? After that, a monk explained how to brew the potion that might cure the ailing villagers, but to do so I had to find an alchemy table and carefully follow his recipe, grinding the herbs and bringing the base liquid to a boil.  

Once I had the potion in my backpack, I went to the village and administered it. Still, I wasn’t sure whether I had chosen the correct medicine for a very long time. Just like in real life, several in-game weeks had to pass (or I had to progress the main quest to a certain point) before Kingdom Come presented the resolution. Until then, all I could do was hope, and that’s what made the whole affair so memorable.

Yet, even if similar adventures that led to mastering pickpocketing, alchemy, and lockpicking were all fantastic quests that demanded incredible nuance, Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s greatest strength lies in its unique combat mechanics. Swordsmanship is so vividly translated here that, at first, I had to get used to swinging or blocking from a first-person perspective – I had to learn how to fight like a medieval knight with a literal hands-on approach.

Just like Henry, I couldn’t hide my utter lack of experience in this area once events began in earnest. Trotting around the woods and stumbling upon a camp of bandits quickly spelled death, and such rapid defeats began chipping away at my spirit. Even as someone who’s platinumed most FROM Software games, I was woefully unprepared for Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s mechanics. Thus, there was no other way to pay back the grinning bandits than to beg one of the men-at-arms to show me the ropes.  

Once he agreed, I spent the next two or three real-time hours in a ring with him, practicing with a wooden sword, shield, ax, mace, and halberd. Though he never hesitated to knock me on my ass, after a while I got the gist and could hold my ground. I noticed how each weapon type differed in speed, reach and stamina consumption. Also, I had to learn how to position Henry optimally before starting the next swinging animation. This gradual change was followed by a feeling of elation and further strengthened my willingness to dig deeper. At the same time, I started paying attention to what type of armor, undergarments, and helmet I wore, since they do impede speed and vision. The result of this invested effort was being able to challenge a handful of bandits and masterfully wipe the floor with them. Pure joy!

While there’s no doubt that Kingdom Come is an incredible achievement, what bogs down the sky-high immersion level of this experience are numerous technical hiccups. Merely booting it up takes full two minutes, and while there aren’t many loading screens after that, the act of reloading a situation to try another approach is far from smooth. On top of that, we can’t even save whenever we feel like it, since creating a separate save file is tied to a drinking mini-game, and doing so in rapid succession will leave Henry in a sorry state.

Similarly, Kingdom Come (on the PS4, the version reviewed) renders at an alarmingly low pace, especially in more populated areas. This didn’t bother me much at first since I expected as much, but after I spent a lot of cash on a heroic-looking white stallion, I was disappointed to witness it galloping through empty streets as the engine struggled to make its assets pop into existence. 

Luckily, such shortcomings don’t mar Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s many strong suits. The historically accurate locations and events paint a somber and genuinely interesting tale of revenge and friendship. The fighting system is so memorable and immersive that it won’t take long before the player starts feeling like Henry and eagerly striving to make a name for themselves. This title certainly takes things slow, but it runs so deep and expands in so many directions at once that it’s hard to label it anything other than a true achievement.

I whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who might consider themselves an RPG fan.    

– Konstantin Koteski

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Warhorse Studios and published by Deep Silver. It is currently available on PS, XB and PC.This copy of the game was obtained via paid download and reviewed on the PS4 Pro. Approximately 80 hours of play were devoted to the game and the game was not completed. This is a single-player only experience.

Parents: This game has received an “M” rating by ESRB, and contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content and Use of Alcohol. The official ESRB rating for the core content reads as follows: This is an action role-playing game in which players assume the role of a man on a quest for revenge against invaders in 15th-century Bohemia. From a first-person perspective, players explore open-world environments, complete objectives, and engage in melee-style combat against bandits and enemy soldiers. Players use swords, knives, and bows to kill enemies; large blood-splatter effects occur during combat, leaving blood stains on bodies and the screen. Players can also injure/kill non-adversary characters, though this may negatively affect players’ progress via a penalty system (e.g., fines, jail). A handful of sequences depict additional acts of violence and/or gore: a prisoner executed by decapitation; an eviscerated corpse shown at a crime scene. The game depicts some nude female characters with exposed buttocks and breasts. Brief cutscenes also depict characters engaging in sexual activity: a nude woman climbing atop a man; a man in the background briefly thrusting against a woman–sexual moaning sounds can be heard. During the course of the game, players’ character can consume alcohol, resulting in drunkenness (e.g., screen-blurring effects, passing out). The words “f**k,” “c*nt,” and “sh*t” are heard in the dialogue.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I’ve played with the sound turned off for around one hour, and it didn’t hamper my strutting around medieval Bohemia. However, some optional side quests revolve around following sound cues.  The menu text and characters’ descriptions are all easily readable, but much of the in-game banter is hard to parse due to white letters drowning in light-blue skyboxes. This game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: This game does not offer a controller diagram, and the control scheme is not remappable. We use the analog sticks to move and look around. The face buttons are for dodging, crouching and interacting. The bumpers are for combat (light attacks with R1, heavy attacks with R2, L1 to block, L2 to parry).

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HIGH It’s one of the richest open worlds ever created.

LOW Endless invasions.

WTF Seriously, how is anyone supposed to figure these sidequests out?

Mike Suskie’s main review of Elden Ring is a great one and it celebrates many of the same things that I would. Seeing that we were of like mind, I was content to take my time and be as thorough as possible, combing every area and trying to see as much of FromSoft’s latest work as I could in a single playthrough — it’s unlikely I’ll be replaying a game of such immense size anytime soon.

Now that I’ve finally rolled credits after 210 hours, I’m ready to weigh in on this magnum opus and I still agree with Mike’s verdict. He captured what was good and right about it, and since he already did such a great job of singing its praises, I’ll instead offer a bit of contrast by offering some criticism on areas where Elden Ring stumbles a bit — it’s a marvelous experience, but it’s not perfect.

Let’s start with the storytelling.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of From’s patented ‘cryptic’ approach, but it’s now a concept that’s thoroughly worn out its welcome — and it’s a shame! The writers have done a great job in crafting a host of NPCs that each have a sidequest to unravel, and when all of the bits are laid bare, they’re largely interesting and compelling. The problem is that it’s nearly impossible to progress the sidequests (or even find them!) without following a walkthrough.    

For example, one of the characters I cared most about was Millicent, the amputee swordswoman suffering from Rot. Her quest started off just fine, with the beginning portion set in a place that would be likely unmissable, and the next few steps were located nearby. At that point, From absolutely lost me as her next events were in places that I had already been to and had no reason to revisit, or they were in places that I wouldn’t see for another 20, 50, or 100 hours. With a world so huge and the possibility of doing so much of it in random order, trying to locate Millicent’s next narrative trigger (or anyone else’s, for that matter) is like searching for a needle in a haystack hidden inside an invisible barn… on another planet.

Complicating things, it’s often necessary to revisit the same location several times in order to get the whole story.

In any other game, a character would give their exposition and impart whatever item or reward was due, and that would be the end of it. In Elden Ring, it’s common to find a character and then have to leave and come back to get the next chunk of the tale, and then to leave and return again to finally get the item that’s needed. In one late-game quest, I had to leave and revisit the same location four times to finish things off, and I only came back so often because a wiki told me to. Because of this absurd requirement I missed out on several things that would have been obvious in any other game — it’s just a layer of annoyance that doesn’t serve any purpose.

Another bizarre decision? There are at least two separate characters who have enriching exposition or key quest steps hidden as menu options that never call attention to themselves. It’s far too easy to overlook one extra option on a page full of them — why not have these characters simply show up and address the player? They sometimes do, so the inconsistency is not only a disservice to the player, I struggle to imagine how anyone felt like burying them in a menu was a reasonable, effective choice. I went more than 100 hours without realizing that I had been missing sporadic messages and in doing so, had inadvertently avoided a key relationship. When the time came for that story beat to unfold, it fell flat because none of the groundwork had been laid.

None of these choices are intuitive or logical — especially with the now-vast and wide-open nature of the world — and these interesting, compelling stories are going to waste thanks to a storytelling system that is critically broken.

My other major frustration has to do with something that is otherwise brilliant — the Ash Summons.

During Elden Ring, players will come across many items which allow them to summon AI characters to assist them in battle, everything ranging from a giant jellyfish to stealthy dagger-wielding assassins. These helpers are key since they draw aggro away from the player and give them a chance to heal, or they provide distractions while lining up a killer arrow or spell. Considering how relentless some enemies are, it’s safe to say that the developers absolutely intended that players use them. Unfortunately, their implementation feels arbitrary in a way that undercuts their utility.

Rather than being able to summon them at any time, players can only summon them when From (apparently) thinks they’re necessary. They’re available in almost every boss encounter, and in some areas which, I assume, the developers think are tough enough to warrant some backup. However, there were many times when I wanted to summon some aid and just couldn’t… because reasons? If there’s any logic to where and when these Ash creatures can be used in the world, I can’t figure it out.

In a similar vein, it’s high time that From stops being so precious with the co-op/player summoning system and just gets with the program. To be fair, it’s easier and better in Elden Ring than basically every other From game, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement. I spent the vast majority of my 200+ hours partnering up with my wife, and we were constantly wishing that we could just join each other in a party instead of summoning each other in specific places. Worse, once the boss of a specific zone is beaten, players can’t be summoned in to help there again. Why not? Who cares if someone wants to explore or just grind for souls with a friend?

But the absolute worst thing about playing in co-op? Non-stop invasions.

I’ve spoken to several Elden players who got through the entire game without ever being invaded by another real player, but when adventuring with my wife, we were invaded constantly. During certain times of the day it was as frequent as every five minutes, and being attacked multiple times between graces was common.

I understand that the idea is to funnel invaders towards people who already have some backup, but this is in dire need of tuning. After being invaded, it would be nice if there was a ‘cooldown’ timer that prevented another invasion for a certain period, or perhaps a limit on the total number of times someone could be invaded during a session would help. We got attacked so often it was a joke, and having boss runs or exploratory jaunts busted up by people who were geared for one-hit PVP kills was maddening.

There are a few other irritations that could be mentioned. Certain areas feel like they could be trimmed back to promote a leaner runtime or adjustments could be made to how so many of the late-game rewards are Faith-based — it’s a huge bummer for non-Faith players to get an item they can’t use after besting a tough foe.

At this point I’m sure readers are getting ready to send some angry comments my way, so let me just restate that this is a contrasting piece meant to shed a little light on places where the experience could use a tweak or two. Criticisms aside, let me be clear in saying that Elden Ring is an extraordinary achievement that is unquestionably at the top of the open-world genre. The vistas are incredible, the sense of exploration is constant and surprising, and the feeling of finally achieving mastery over this immense challenge is second to none — but like I mentioned at the start of this review, Mike said all of that already.

Disclosures: This game is developed by From Software and published by Bandai Namco. It is currently available on XBO, XBX/S, PS4/5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via paid download and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 210 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. The entirety of play was spent with multiplayer features enabled and the majority of playtime was spent with an active co-op partner.

Parents: According to the ESRB this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Language, Suggestive Themes and Violence. There are a couple of suggestive character designs throughout and a bit of mild profanity, but the violence is where Elden Ring earns its rating. This is arguably FromSoft’s most gruesome game to date, with severed parts and mutilated corpses littering the landscape. While it’s fitting with the tone of the world and tastefully portrayed, it’s not for children.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. Audio cues are frequently used to notify players of either points of interest or approaching enemies, and the game doesn’t offer any sort of visual representation of these cues. The lack of visual cues renders an already-obtuse game even more difficult, and forces players to be even more alert. As such, this game is not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls. (PS controls shown.)

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