Dark Devotion is the debut game from French developers Hibernian Studios. It is a Souls-like, Metroidvania, Roguelike with strong religious themes much like Blasphemous. You play as a female Templar exploring a fallen temple in search for answers about the truth of her religion and the god she worships.
I'm a big fan of the Metroidvania, Souls-like and Roguelike genres of games so I figured this would be up my alley, but it's just not a good game, I wish it was, but it isn't.
I played all the way through the 10 hour story and honestly didn't have much fun with the game at all. The religious themed lore is pretty cool and interesting and the way it tackles theology is unique, the praying/using faith as a currency to heal, open locked areas, remove curses etc is also cool and there's a few well designed bosses, but those are pretty much the only positives I can give the game.
The negatives far outweigh the positives because the controls and combat feel very clunky, the hitboxes are incredibly inconsistent, there's an RPG-like attack miss % mechanic and it's so infuriating (Who the hell thought that was a good idea in a Souls-like?), the way the dialog appears is weird and slow (Even when you hold the interact button to make it scroll faster), there's a lot of artificial difficulty and poorly placed traps in the level design (Which is very forgettable by the way), the roguelike elements are very barebones and hinder the gameplay more than anything else, tons of the weapons that provide "build variety" are just downright useless, so are most of the skills you unlock, there's no leveling or stat increases aside from with equipment. Every time you die going back to the blacksmith to get equipment you previously unlocked was also tedious and annoying.
Overall there's just so many design choices that clash with others in this game and I feel like it tries to blend too many elements of different genres together and the team just didn't know how to do it in a good way, it's unfortunate because there is potential here for something good, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.
I'm a big fan of the Metroidvania, Souls-like and Roguelike genres of games so I figured this would be up my alley, but it's just not a good game, I wish it was, but it isn't.
I played all the way through the 10 hour story and honestly didn't have much fun with the game at all. The religious themed lore is pretty cool and interesting and the way it tackles theology is unique, the praying/using faith as a currency to heal, open locked areas, remove curses etc is also cool and there's a few well designed bosses, but those are pretty much the only positives I can give the game.
The negatives far outweigh the positives because the controls and combat feel very clunky, the hitboxes are incredibly inconsistent, there's an RPG-like attack miss % mechanic and it's so infuriating (Who the hell thought that was a good idea in a Souls-like?), the way the dialog appears is weird and slow (Even when you hold the interact button to make it scroll faster), there's a lot of artificial difficulty and poorly placed traps in the level design (Which is very forgettable by the way), the roguelike elements are very barebones and hinder the gameplay more than anything else, tons of the weapons that provide "build variety" are just downright useless, so are most of the skills you unlock, there's no leveling or stat increases aside from with equipment. Every time you die going back to the blacksmith to get equipment you previously unlocked was also tedious and annoying.
Overall there's just so many design choices that clash with others in this game and I feel like it tries to blend too many elements of different genres together and the team just didn't know how to do it in a good way, it's unfortunate because there is potential here for something good, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.