Damn you're really gonna make this as your first game? Go all in on the Aragami, Dishonored, and Thief style of stealth adventure games, throw in some unique twist on the shadow powers, and roll that wheel? Mad respect, it was pretty good
Going against the norm for these types of games, the worldbuilding was honestly my favourite part. The plot is very generic to the genre it's working in, but the cleanliness of the context really makes up for going through the same plot beats again, especially for resolving problems between mixing magic into a sci-fi world. The patterns for how the story progresses starts deviating once the game is ending, in ways that were both incredibly obvious and synergistic with the gameplay, but not necessarily in a good satisfying conclusory way. It's clear Baby Robot Games really wanna make another game centred around Khepri and the Ereban again, but for a first game this large you gotta put most of your eggs in this basket and commit to a complete experience for this game. I've got more specific complaints (especially with the ending), but this is a spoiler free review so I'm not doing it.
And just as important to the plot being presented is how it's told, which comes in varying levels of quality. Top of the list is the logs, they're consistently great to read and usually filled with either nice little consequences of the world and game design, or a neat little reference to inspirations or earlier elements that this game presents. Next up is conversations between characters, usually pretty good with some stellar voice actors (who get to actually add some characterisation while performing) with some misses in the writing, always fun to see two characters who don't trust each other talk about stuff that matters to both of them though. And lastly is people talking to themselves or to someone who can't talk back, this is consistenly bad for some reason, chock full with bad quips like they're a form of post-marvel lara croft or people saying things aloud so the player can be reminded of something they were told less than a minute ago.
The gameplay is honestly exactly as you expect it to be, or at least it was for me. Trying to emulate the shadow powers from Aragami in a 'tool-kit' of abilities from Dishonored with a mix of straight-forward and exploratory level design from any game in the genre. The fun part, and the mechanic that trivialises everything else, is shadow merging (which the devs said in an FAQ was taken from Splatoon). While the ability is incredibly freeing and allows the player to be more active more often while playing, it also makes every other ability completely useless or need to be broken to match. Why blind someone when their sightline doesn't matter when you're merged? Why give us the ability to become invisible for a significant period of time but only while in shadow, then fill every level with mostly shadows? I assume the answer to both of these is to add more engaging mechanics, however it feels like the intended method of playing the game and the actual design of the game presented are in disagreement. Just to reinforce this theory, the morality's outcomes are so trivial it's laughable, as all that time you spent keeping the bots alive are rendered comedic once you realize what purpose it serves.
The visuals of the game are surprisingly unique for how much it tries to emulate the generic palettes of unity and unreal engine. The cartoony characters pop against the texture-matted environments, while they blend seemlessly into the anti-aliased over bloomed sharpened geometric details the game engine creates. While the shading and colour choices come off as generic it really creates this clean visual style between the light and dark in a less sharp contrast while lending itself to focus on visual clarity. Plus the texture and model designs add a lot of personality and detail on top of the shading and colouring that helps sell other aspects of the game as more natural. It becomes very eye-catching while remaining integrated into the experience, which especially helps the constant blending of light and dark in the environments.
This seems like a real achievement for a studio's first game, managing to reach a level of great quality with a scope and execution this big and maintain the ambition to iterate on a well-established genre, but it's actually their second game. You can find the Ereban prologue in a first free game called Atlas' Fate, which I'd recommend as a taster for what this game is like (just given from what I've seen, haven't played it myself). I already know that Baby Robot's next game will be baller after a little more experience, so the question becomes do they survive long enough to make it? I feel like the endings to the game will give a good indicator of people's thoughts on the possibility, as it somewhat feels like the perspectives the game could hold on itself
Really makes you feel like Yhelba: Veil Heritage
Going against the norm for these types of games, the worldbuilding was honestly my favourite part. The plot is very generic to the genre it's working in, but the cleanliness of the context really makes up for going through the same plot beats again, especially for resolving problems between mixing magic into a sci-fi world. The patterns for how the story progresses starts deviating once the game is ending, in ways that were both incredibly obvious and synergistic with the gameplay, but not necessarily in a good satisfying conclusory way. It's clear Baby Robot Games really wanna make another game centred around Khepri and the Ereban again, but for a first game this large you gotta put most of your eggs in this basket and commit to a complete experience for this game. I've got more specific complaints (especially with the ending), but this is a spoiler free review so I'm not doing it.
And just as important to the plot being presented is how it's told, which comes in varying levels of quality. Top of the list is the logs, they're consistently great to read and usually filled with either nice little consequences of the world and game design, or a neat little reference to inspirations or earlier elements that this game presents. Next up is conversations between characters, usually pretty good with some stellar voice actors (who get to actually add some characterisation while performing) with some misses in the writing, always fun to see two characters who don't trust each other talk about stuff that matters to both of them though. And lastly is people talking to themselves or to someone who can't talk back, this is consistenly bad for some reason, chock full with bad quips like they're a form of post-marvel lara croft or people saying things aloud so the player can be reminded of something they were told less than a minute ago.
The gameplay is honestly exactly as you expect it to be, or at least it was for me. Trying to emulate the shadow powers from Aragami in a 'tool-kit' of abilities from Dishonored with a mix of straight-forward and exploratory level design from any game in the genre. The fun part, and the mechanic that trivialises everything else, is shadow merging (which the devs said in an FAQ was taken from Splatoon). While the ability is incredibly freeing and allows the player to be more active more often while playing, it also makes every other ability completely useless or need to be broken to match. Why blind someone when their sightline doesn't matter when you're merged? Why give us the ability to become invisible for a significant period of time but only while in shadow, then fill every level with mostly shadows? I assume the answer to both of these is to add more engaging mechanics, however it feels like the intended method of playing the game and the actual design of the game presented are in disagreement. Just to reinforce this theory, the morality's outcomes are so trivial it's laughable, as all that time you spent keeping the bots alive are rendered comedic once you realize what purpose it serves.
The visuals of the game are surprisingly unique for how much it tries to emulate the generic palettes of unity and unreal engine. The cartoony characters pop against the texture-matted environments, while they blend seemlessly into the anti-aliased over bloomed sharpened geometric details the game engine creates. While the shading and colour choices come off as generic it really creates this clean visual style between the light and dark in a less sharp contrast while lending itself to focus on visual clarity. Plus the texture and model designs add a lot of personality and detail on top of the shading and colouring that helps sell other aspects of the game as more natural. It becomes very eye-catching while remaining integrated into the experience, which especially helps the constant blending of light and dark in the environments.
This seems like a real achievement for a studio's first game, managing to reach a level of great quality with a scope and execution this big and maintain the ambition to iterate on a well-established genre, but it's actually their second game. You can find the Ereban prologue in a first free game called Atlas' Fate, which I'd recommend as a taster for what this game is like (just given from what I've seen, haven't played it myself). I already know that Baby Robot's next game will be baller after a little more experience, so the question becomes do they survive long enough to make it? I feel like the endings to the game will give a good indicator of people's thoughts on the possibility, as it somewhat feels like the perspectives the game could hold on itself
Really makes you feel like Yhelba: Veil Heritage