"Lots Of Effort, Low Quality"

Now I know this game was almost entirely made by one guy (besides the voice acting and a few other supplementary pieces), but I had my doubts upon starting it up. The art was solid but looked a bit blurry at times. The combat felt fine at first but quickly deviated into a mindless button mashing action fiesta. The upgrade/inventory system seemed somewhat deep, but again boiled down to something that didn't really matter at the end of the day. The story already didn't sound very promising, but a combination of incredibly weak writing and weird voice acting made it an unenjoyable slog. Pretty much every component of this game failed in a major way, and it resulted in a dud of a game in my opinion.

You play as Dust, a warrior who wakes up with amnesia in a forest and is found by Fidget, a guardian of the Blade of Ahrah which Dust happens to be in possession of. Fidget was a quirky and fun sidekick character at times in the story but was also very annoying throughout the experience. On the other hand, Dust and the Blade of Ahrah (yes, the sword can talk) are incredibly dull and cookie-cutter protagonists. The story follows a very generic combination of fetch-quests, killing some bad guys, and liberating an oppressed group known as the Moonbloods. On your journey you encounter an assortment of awkwardly placed characters, many of which don't even match thematically in the world.

The characters are really weird either in art design or voice acting. Many are some weird anthropomorphic styles that border on Tumblr furry art I've happened to come across before (not a furry, but no problem with it if that's your thing). They also have out of place accents, some being Australian or Spanish while others have tinges of country, old-timer, or "mysterious" (think the shop vendor in "Resident Evil 4").

All of this combined to feel like a child's idea of a fantasy world yet lacked a lot of charm that the best children's stories contain. There are very simple explorations of morality, warfare, and destiny, but nothing here is anything you haven't seen before in other mediums.

The presentation is fine but lacks polish. The visuals look detailed, but assets feel repeated and washed out in appearance. The music is also not memorable, just typical fantasy music you could find on YouTube.

The gameplay system revolves around a very simple combination of two-button attack patterns, magical abilities, and dodging/parrying. It's surface level and doesn't really combine to feel incredibly engaging, but it's passable enough. Unfortunately, the upgrade system feels tacked on just like the inventory system. There isn't a whole lot of loot to diversify your loadout, so you'll easily find the best items and roll with it. The game is also insanely easy even on the second highest difficulty, and there are actually many revive gems that will straight up save you from death constantly. It also would have been nice to combine the story and gameplay in an interactive sense, say through a choice-based system. There is a SINGLE mission that had this as an option at the very end of it, and it was one of the better missions in the game. This didn't have to apply to the main plot but could have spice up the side content had it been expanded upon more than a simple one-off mission.

The game just felt like it went nowhere throughout the 6-ish hours I played through it, and I honestly got bored of the drab story, mindless side-questing, and lack of gameplay evolution. The game remained the same experience for those six hours, and it likely would have remained the same for the next six hours (I assume I stopped playing at around the halfway mark of the narrative). Exploring felt tedious since there wasn't a reliable fast travel method besides going to the edge of each area, and it was annoying to have to try and remember which secret items were in locations so that I could return for them in the future. The characters just weren't enjoyable enough, and the world was basic and uninteresting. I expected a bit more from an indie game that was promoted as a PS Plus free monthly game, though this was back when the service hit a bad slump (around 2014-2015). I would Not Recommend it even if it's on a deep sale, as it's just not something that differentiates itself from other high-quality titles that offer very similar systems. I guess if you like anthropomorphic characters, then sure, go for it? It just wouldn't end up surprising you in any other way besides that...

Final Verdict: 4/10 (Below Average)

i should never have picked this game back up after the 7-8 year gap from when i first played it. absolutely putrid, reaching the impressive height of "mid" several times and falling to its absolute worst right at the end with one of the worst endgame areas and final bosses i've ever been through in a video game. you can't skip fights unless you get lucky with enemy ai so the game wants you to fight a million enemies over a million screens with its shitty shadow-the-hedgehog-in-sonic-06-ass slow and dull battle system in a section where any enemy can kill you in a range of 1-4 hits and can hit you with 2 hit combos to effectively only need to hit you twice to kill you at most. fuck that shit. fucking 4 stage boss battle too where the only way they knew how to make him 'difficult' was to give him constant i-frames and a bunch of sometimes unkillable lackeys who can still 3-shot you. speaking about this game makes me hate it even more.

there's nothing to redeem it in the writing department and the art style for the characters is one of the ugliest furry styles i have seen in my entire life. the background art is pretty and the animation's nice, though. the music's not half bad either but nothing special.

i wonder what kind of life i'd be leading if i played this shit all the way through almost a decade ago. maybe it'd be better than this one cause at least i might have dropped it back then

Dust: An Elysian Tail is an incredible metroidvania even within the genre with beautiful arts and stunning frantic gameplay, certainly the most different game I've ever experienced within the genre for several factors that will be addressed in this review.

STORY

Dust has in its narrative one of the best stories I've ever found in the metroidvania genre, which is the main reason why I managed to persevere until the end of the game even though I no longer felt the emotion that the first hour of gameplay provided me, being this the central pillar that prevented me from abandoning this game for its 5 hours of gameplay.
Although Dust: An Elysian Tail has what for me is a great story within the genre, it is still far from perfect, some of the scenes that try to be serious and deep end up being silly and shameful mainly because of the somewhat questionable choice of the characters' speeches, but this ends up falling apart with the final chapter where the game brought several very good dialogues and wonderful scenes to follow, even managing to get emotional in the process, something that the rest of the game failed to achieve.

GAMEPLAY

Well let's go, Dust: An Elysian Tail has an INCREDIBLE gameplay, all the combat is extremely frenetic and fun leaving you with your mouth open with what this game can offer, well that's until you play for 2 hours straight and see all that shine if delete, but hey don't get me wrong this game has a phenomenal combat system and quite different from what we are used to seeing in metroidvanias out there, but that doesn't make it flawless, playing massacring several enemies on the way is super fun for a few minutes, but as you advance in the game it becomes extremely annoying because you can't advance to the next scenario if you have enemies near you forcing you to clear everything in your path if you want to proceed.

GENERAL NEGATIVES

Dust: An Elysian Tail is a phenomenal game especially when you find out that it was mostly produced by just one guy and god this is amazing, but again even though it's an amazing feat it's prone to mistakes and believe me that's not lacking here.

- Boring Gameplay: As I said, this game has an extremely fun combat, but due to the lack of diversity it falls into the sameness and becomes boring to play.
-Dumb Enemies: The Artificial Intelligence of the enemies of this game are far from good, many of them have standard attacks without any variation or difficulty making the whole game extremely easy, even in boss fights
-Dated Dubbing: The voice acting of the main characters is very good for an indie game like this, but when it comes to the secondary characters then you realize that the thing is not cool making a lot of dialogue difficult to follow due to the low level of acting taking you out of total of immersion.
-Creation System: Honestly, I didn't see any use for it to exist in this game, because I finished Dust: An Elysian Tail with 8 hours of gameplay without touching this creation system, being completely useless in my opinion, but I leave this one as a additional crit may vary from player to player.
-Not being able to proceed with enemies close to you: This is by far my biggest criticism of this game, trapping you in a scenario where you don't choose to ignore your enemies is completely annoying, after half of the game you just want to know how to run away those annoying enemies that get in your way, but hey this is Dust: An Elysian Tail and if you want to go through some scenario, pray that no enemy has followed you here if not... Well, spend a good time killing each one to be able to follow your path.

OVERVIEW

I still have a few things to complain about here and there, but that doesn't matter anymore because this game also has several qualities that if I were to quote this review here I would have 500 more lines so I'd better stop here and let the player find out for himself put you will notice that even with its problems it is still a very beautiful game made with a lot of love and care with very unique elements in its composition and that even if it makes mistakes it is still a great metroidvania.

I didn't play that much of this so I'm not gonna rate it, but I don't really wanna continue this because it's painfully.... generic in almost every fashion

I did think the gameplay was cool at first but then I realised that
1) It's painfully easy
2) The game gives you almost complete access to all the parts of combat that actually matter right at the start of the game, leaving no real sense of progression to be had which I feel is pretty necessary with a game that is trying to be somewhat metroidvania-like

Verdict: the game is fine I just don't feel any desire to spend a few more hours playing it to finish it, as short as it is