Detectivefail
22180 Reviews liked by Detectivefail
I don't believe this review will change people's thoughts on this game or franchise nor do I believe it will inspire others to start it. However, I have to leave some record of my emotions somewhere regarding this franchise so I apologize in advance for this heartfelt and somewhat cringe outpouring of thoughts.
Rean Schwarzer and Class VII is what it means to be "human". To possess faults, to grapple with emotional trauma, to understand lineage, to constantly be at war with who you are, who you want to be and who you must be. All of these are facets of reality that humanity has to constantly grapple with, the "human condition". And Sen no Kiseki I does an excellent job of providing a cast that is so colorful, so full of life and so "human" that you cannot help but root for them. This cast is affected and affect the meticulously and beautifully crafted world of Zemuria to form a narrative which from the very moment of starting the game, takes you through a story written with so much love it continuously draws you back. To see Rean and Class VII learn, grow and overcome each obstacle is nothing short of awe-inspiring. To understand where this cast goes from this point forward in the next several games and knowing these are the roots for their understanding of the world is incredible. To say nothing of the beautiful OST which perfectly complements each region, each character, each moment. To say nothing of the amazing locations within the game that have incredibly complex world-building and lore associated with them. To say nothing of the colorful band of NPC's who live and breathe in this world with tangible emotions and story arcs. To say nothing of the phenomenal art which can be associated with this game and it's promotional period. This game is a bundle of love that just never stops capturing your heart and I am grateful to have played this and every game within this franchise.
Genuinely, I love this game. To many people this will always just be "another JRPG" and maybe even a faulty one at that. But to me, this game and this franchise make up a core part of who I am. About almost ten years ago now, I heard Falcom Sound Team's wondrous OST for Sen no Kiseki I while perusing YouTube and it's almost amazing how that one experience fundamentally changed my life. Upon playing this game shortly after, I spiraled into a stupor of consuming as much Falcom content as I possibly could and have never stopped since then. This game triggered my pursuit of learning Japanese ages ago and allowed me to meet people who have helped me to become who I am today. Kiseki transcends being just a "series" and is ultimately a manifestation of my desire to grow, to learn, to be better and to become more. It is both a dear friend and comfortable home within which I can take respite. It is a series which I have replayed countless, countless times and have bought countless, countless times and yet it will never grow old. Each play-through of each game feels like my first and I fall in love with this world.. over and over and over again.
As Rean states at the end of the game, "And I think you'd have to agree Class President, Class VII is the greatest class there is." There is no series, no world, no characters, no soundtrack, no lore or world-building, etc. etc. etc. like Eiyuu Densetsu: Sora/Zero/Ao/Sen/Hajimari/Kuro no Kiseki. And certainly, there is no class quite like Class VII.
Rean Schwarzer and Class VII is what it means to be "human". To possess faults, to grapple with emotional trauma, to understand lineage, to constantly be at war with who you are, who you want to be and who you must be. All of these are facets of reality that humanity has to constantly grapple with, the "human condition". And Sen no Kiseki I does an excellent job of providing a cast that is so colorful, so full of life and so "human" that you cannot help but root for them. This cast is affected and affect the meticulously and beautifully crafted world of Zemuria to form a narrative which from the very moment of starting the game, takes you through a story written with so much love it continuously draws you back. To see Rean and Class VII learn, grow and overcome each obstacle is nothing short of awe-inspiring. To understand where this cast goes from this point forward in the next several games and knowing these are the roots for their understanding of the world is incredible. To say nothing of the beautiful OST which perfectly complements each region, each character, each moment. To say nothing of the amazing locations within the game that have incredibly complex world-building and lore associated with them. To say nothing of the colorful band of NPC's who live and breathe in this world with tangible emotions and story arcs. To say nothing of the phenomenal art which can be associated with this game and it's promotional period. This game is a bundle of love that just never stops capturing your heart and I am grateful to have played this and every game within this franchise.
Genuinely, I love this game. To many people this will always just be "another JRPG" and maybe even a faulty one at that. But to me, this game and this franchise make up a core part of who I am. About almost ten years ago now, I heard Falcom Sound Team's wondrous OST for Sen no Kiseki I while perusing YouTube and it's almost amazing how that one experience fundamentally changed my life. Upon playing this game shortly after, I spiraled into a stupor of consuming as much Falcom content as I possibly could and have never stopped since then. This game triggered my pursuit of learning Japanese ages ago and allowed me to meet people who have helped me to become who I am today. Kiseki transcends being just a "series" and is ultimately a manifestation of my desire to grow, to learn, to be better and to become more. It is both a dear friend and comfortable home within which I can take respite. It is a series which I have replayed countless, countless times and have bought countless, countless times and yet it will never grow old. Each play-through of each game feels like my first and I fall in love with this world.. over and over and over again.
As Rean states at the end of the game, "And I think you'd have to agree Class President, Class VII is the greatest class there is." There is no series, no world, no characters, no soundtrack, no lore or world-building, etc. etc. etc. like Eiyuu Densetsu: Sora/Zero/Ao/Sen/Hajimari/Kuro no Kiseki. And certainly, there is no class quite like Class VII.
Basically improves on the first game in every way. It has a more likeable and fleshed out cast, and its mysteries are consistently solid, except for maybe chapter 3, which is messy but I still think is ultimately... fine. It takes advantage of the "Ultimate student" concept more, with their talents often playing a major role in the mysteries as well. Basically, if Danganronpa THH was focused on providing a pulpy and stylish ride above all else, SDR2 expands upon, well, everything else. However, this "bigger and better" mindset does lead to losing the cramped, eerie atmosphere of DR1, which is a shame. Still a great game, though.
When I was a teenager, this was one of my favorite games ever, and I definitely see why. More than any other game in the series, imo, this one has the soul of a teen movie, if that makes sense? It's a compliment. Truly a story best appreciated by someone who is (or was) an angsty teen that doesn't feel as if they fit in-- when I was 14, I may have been reeled in by the colorful cast, vivid art direction, and unique murder mystery storyline, but I was enamored with the way it managed to capture teenaged misfit anger with its characters (especially my boy Hajime) while also extending a lot of compassion to this demographic, despite its hyperviolent presentation. It gave me a lot of comfort at a time when I needed it most, and I'll always love it for that.
I still find this game to be very earnest and kind in its messaging (which I kind of forgot about it, actually), and honestly? I love the twist and conclusion of SDR2. Idc! The revelation about the cast's identities, especially Hajime's, is still pretty heartbreaking to me (talk about cranking up the aforementioned broody teen drama to 100). It's a hyperbolic yet frank look at the ways in which the school system (and Society™) expect kids to be perfect all the time, yet has a tendency to use them, exhaust them, then spit them out. It then delivers its final message, a warm blanket to anyone who feels hopeless in the moment: you can always look towards the future. One of the most frequently played songs in the game is the nostalgic "Beautiful Ruin", and I think that describes the cast's collective character arc well-- What happened in the past does not define you, and while you will always carry those things with you, you can still move on and have a fulfilling life. Though your past traumas and pain may seem like a heavy burden to bear, there's beauty waiting for you in the world. It may sound cheesy, but that's kind of why I love this game so much. It wears its heart on its sleeve, and despite its often goofy, tongue-in-cheek mood, it wants the best for everyone.
When I was a teenager, this was one of my favorite games ever, and I definitely see why. More than any other game in the series, imo, this one has the soul of a teen movie, if that makes sense? It's a compliment. Truly a story best appreciated by someone who is (or was) an angsty teen that doesn't feel as if they fit in-- when I was 14, I may have been reeled in by the colorful cast, vivid art direction, and unique murder mystery storyline, but I was enamored with the way it managed to capture teenaged misfit anger with its characters (especially my boy Hajime) while also extending a lot of compassion to this demographic, despite its hyperviolent presentation. It gave me a lot of comfort at a time when I needed it most, and I'll always love it for that.
I still find this game to be very earnest and kind in its messaging (which I kind of forgot about it, actually), and honestly? I love the twist and conclusion of SDR2. Idc! The revelation about the cast's identities, especially Hajime's, is still pretty heartbreaking to me (talk about cranking up the aforementioned broody teen drama to 100). It's a hyperbolic yet frank look at the ways in which the school system (and Society™) expect kids to be perfect all the time, yet has a tendency to use them, exhaust them, then spit them out. It then delivers its final message, a warm blanket to anyone who feels hopeless in the moment: you can always look towards the future. One of the most frequently played songs in the game is the nostalgic "Beautiful Ruin", and I think that describes the cast's collective character arc well-- What happened in the past does not define you, and while you will always carry those things with you, you can still move on and have a fulfilling life. Though your past traumas and pain may seem like a heavy burden to bear, there's beauty waiting for you in the world. It may sound cheesy, but that's kind of why I love this game so much. It wears its heart on its sleeve, and despite its often goofy, tongue-in-cheek mood, it wants the best for everyone.
Dark Souls is my favourite game of all time. There is no other game (or other piece of art) I talk about as much and as profusely as Dark Souls. I've annoyed my friends with how good this game is for years. Despite that, I've kinda dreaded writing this review.
Is there another game in history as much talked and ruminated about in the modern era as Dark Souls? What can you even say about a game this massively influential and polarising? I feel like even that this very phrase itself has become cliché in the discourse surrounding it.
Instead of regurgitating that which more knowledgeable and eloquent critics than I have already talked about at length, I'll simply just talk about what I love (and don't love) about the game and I explain how learning to love it wasn't all that easy at first.
I love the world of Lordran. I love its intricacies, its characters, its lore and its structure.
The world of Lordran is beautiful and bleak. It is horrifying and reassuring. From the top of the highest mountain, where the very gods reside, to the fiery chasm of the underworld, all areas of this world are connected with each other, making the world seem almost like a colossal anthill. This gives Dark Souls its distinctive "3rd Person Metroidvania" feeling. And as per usual with that genre of games, this world is filled with secrets that only those with the keenest of eyes will spot.
Lordran is mired in histories long forgotten, lost to the inhabitants of today. In this land, humans are victims of a past they'll never fully understand, as as such, are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. Like a cancer, the Undead Curse seeps into the very being of unfortunate souls, each death stripping them from a bit of their humanity, hollowing them out from the inside until nothing but a witless husk remains. They are doomed to keep reviving at the various Bonfires speckled throughout the lands, which explains their function as checkpoints for the player character in a diegetic manner. This is only one of many examples of FromSoft constructing a deeply immersive and authentic experience through their skilful interweaving of world building and gameplay, not only in this game, but their entire Soulsborne catalogue.
Despite a world so gruel and punishing, so obscure and indifferent, the various NPCs you encounter are very much the opposite. Be they good or evil, charmers or intimidating, friend or foe alike; they are unabashedly human. They laugh, they cry, they want and they yearn. Some will attempt to kill you for your humanity, while others will assist you on your travels just out of the goodness of their heart.
I love the atmosphere, so thick that you could slice it with a knife.
The soft, cloudy lighting of Firelink Shrine, the piercing fiery reds of Izalith, the noxious green of Blighttown... the sheer grandeur of Anor Londo in the false evening sun, the reverential and deeply mystical Ash Lake, the sheer terror of the pitch black Tomb of the Giants... each part of Lordran has its own character.
I love how uncompromisingly melancholic and depressing this game is. Where other fantasy games will usually try and instil a sense of heroism in the player, Dark Souls consistently asks the player what it even is they're fighting for. Do they even know? Are they even the hero in this story?
Dark Souls masterfully subverts Campbell's archetype of the Hero's Journey in almost every aspect. You are NOT the chosen one. You are NOT someone special. There are many just like you, and they all failed. What makes you different?
I love the incredibly mystical and byzantine lore. This game's lore and world building are perhaps my favourite in all of fiction. Miyazaki and his team evidently drew from a lot of existing mythology and real life history, as well as many other inspirations, most notoriously among them, the late Kentaro Miura's Berserk. It is masterfully crafted, and the proof can be found in various forums, Reddit threads and YouTube videos, still speculating about the minutiae of the most obscure lore references almost a decade after the game first released.
I love the story of Gwyn, Izalith and Nito, of the Ancient Dragons and the Furtive Pygmy. I love the tale of Artorias and his tragic battle against the Abyss itself. I love the occult hushes and whispers spoken about the plots of Velka, the Goddess of Sin. None of these characters ever speak a word to the protagonist, and yet are more memorable to me than any character in any AAA game with 3 hours worth of dialogue.
I love the fittingly brutal and punishing gameplay. I love the slow and deliberate combat. Every decision is a micro puzzle, a question of "do you really want to do this?". Mistakes are brutally punished, but they make you learn. You get into the flow of the slow and steady dance of dodging enemy attacks and punishing them for not being able to kill you. When I first played these games, I had never felt anything nearly as exhilarating as killing a boss in them.
Apropos bosses; Dark Souls (as in DS1), may not have the best bosses in the Souls series but it sure as hell has some of the best and most memorable bosses in all of gaming regardless. Ornstein and Smough, Manus, Artorias, Kalameet, Quelaag, Gwyn, the Iron Golem, the Gaping Dragon.. those are just a few from the immensely creative and fantastically designed boss roster.
And that's kind of the whole beauty of it too; the combat system itself isn't anything amazing, it's very simple. It's the fantastic variety in enemy design and the absolutely incredible levels these encounters even take place in.
Dark Souls has some of the best levels in video game history.
From the impeccably designed pseudo-tutorial area the Undead Burg, to the murky Darkroot Garden, the delightfully devilish Sen's Fortress, the cold and scary but also beautiful Painted World of Ariamis, the awe inspiring Anor Londo, the terrifying gutters of Blighttown, etc. all of these levels feature fantastic and challenging encounters and are unbelievably well designed. As mentioned, the game lifts a lot of techniques from the Metroidvania genre, utilising one-way locked doors, elevators, kick-down ladders etc. to get you back to the checkpoint, and letting you skip huge sections of any map as a reward for making it this far and staying perceptive.
All of this is to say that I think that Dark Souls is an ALMOST perfect game. Why almost? Well, for the same reason that I ended up giving this game 4,5/5 instead of 5/5. The reason for that is Dark Souls notorious and often maligned second half.
While I personally always found the criticisms towards that second half to be quite overblown and disproportionate, I can't deny that it drags the whole game down a bit because of it.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that the entire second half of Dark Souls is outright bad, but the levels and bosses post-Anor Londo definitely drop in quality quite a bit in certain places.
It's not as bad in the Duke's Archives and in New Londo. The Duke's Archives are essentially an extension of the Anor Londo map, and as such is designed relatively similar in terms of progression and navigation. I would argue that the actual level design of the place is quite good even! It's the absolute load of very strong and annoying enemies that tend to frustrate a lot of people, myself included. The boss, Seath the Scaleless, is a huge letdown compared to how much he was hyped up in the lore, but somehow not even the worst offender in that regard. He just ends up being disappointingly easy.
New Londo is actually really cool and I never understood the unfortunate amount of hate it received. The (seemingly) invincible ghosts are pretty menacing and a rather frightening sight but can be dealt with quite easily if you know how. The level itself is intensely creepy and dark, and features a harrowing story of the city having been flooded with all the people still in it, by the healers who found themselves forced to do so to contain the terrible evil that had arisen within the depths of the town; the boss of this level, the Four Kings, corrupted by the Abyss. Easily my favourite fight out of the Lord Souls.
I can definitely understand the grievances with Dark Souls' second half a lot more with areas like the unfinished pits of the Demon Ruins and the city of Lost Izalith, the annoying and trollish Tomb of the Giants and the bullshit, broken level geometry of the Crystal Cave.
Tomb of the Giants is easily explained; the place is literally so dark you can't see shit. There are exactly 2 items that can help alleviate the darkness, and one of them is locked in another late game area. What makes this area unforgivable is that this is also the area with the most narrow walkways, the most confusing layout AND the enemies with the highest potential of knocking your ass right off the next cliff. You also can't really see them coming. Neat.
The Crystal Cave looks amazing but clearly hasn't been playtested very much, as numerous sections of the floor are simply broken and will lead to a lot of deaths where you were walking along a crystal beam and suddenly slip off the side without warning. And that's just the VISIBLE ones. There are also invisible walkways, which are just as broken. Also there isn't a single bonfire in the whole area.
Lost Izalith and the Demon Ruins aren't AS bad as the other two, and they even look pretty cool, but are clearly (and afaik even confirmed by the devs to be) unfinished. If the horde of copypasted early game bosses and lack of everything else wasn't indication enough, the fact that the second level consists to 90% of literally only running across a lava lake definitely should be. The sad thing is, this general area features the worst bosses in the whole game, with one of them - the Bed of Chaos - being widely considered to be one of the worst video game bosses of all time. Rightly so, I might add.
But as I mentioned, as a whole these flaws don't weigh heavily enough upon the game to say that the "entire second half is bad" or anything to that effect - especially since the Remastered version comes with the DLC pre-installed.
The DLC truly elevates the entire experience back to the realm of masterpiece.
It introduces 3 new levels and 4 new bosses, all of which range from ok at worst to amazing at its best! Moreover, it actually expands upon the story of Artorias the Abysswalker, of whom we've caught glimpses and whispers of other NPCs but have never seen in the main game, we just meet his wolf, Sif. We only know that he defeated the Darkwraiths of New Londo, and saved the ancient city of Oolacile from the Abyss.
The player is transported back in time after saving Princess Dusk from the inside of a golden golem and finding a mysterious pendant in the Duke's Archives. Upon arriving, and slaying the Sanctuary Guardian in our way, we meet up with a talking mushroom and gradually uncover that the tale of Artorias defeating the Abyss in Oolacile was nothing a fabrication.
Artorias, driven mad by grief and the powers of the Abyss, knows not friend from foe and will attack any living thing near him. After defeating him, in what is likely the best boss fight in this game, we begin to understand that WE are the ones to put an end to the Abyss. And such, we descend down the city of Oolacile, all the way down its pitch black dungeon to confront the host of the Abyss - Manus. He is easily the hardest boss in the entire game, and doubles as the true final fight.
That is, other than the secret boss of the DLC, Black Dragon Kalameet. Though appearing as literally undefeatable at first, with the help of an unlikely friend you manage to pin the beast to the ground and engage in a thrilling fight with him.
After finishing the DLC, there is only one more thing to do: To go toe to toe with the man who started this whole mess: Gwyn, the Lord of Sunlight - now the Lord of Cinder. The soundtrack is not bombastic, not loud and terrifying like the others in the game; it is sombre, calm and melancholic.
What is it you're really fighting for? Did you ever find an answer? Or will you end up like him; standing watch at the fire for millennia, until another one as strong as you arrives to link the flame in your stead?
...
I can't believe how close I once was to writing this game off as toxic bullshit. When I first played it in early 2019, I got stuck on Taurus Demon in the first level, and got so frustrated at the run back to it that I simply gave up. I told myself "this isn't fun" and dropped it for a good 6 months.
I still don't know what exactly compelled me to go back and give it a try. Maybe it was a random VaatiVidya lore video I got recommended that revived my interest. Maybe it was the many, many people praising it as one of the best ever that got me thinking I might have missed something. But something in this game called to me and drew me into its spell.
If you were like me, and you bounced off Dark Souls because you found it too frustrating, too demanding or too cryptic; I hope I could show you that most of us felt this way at first, and that it's likely part of the intended experience.
People don't grow without frustration, and people don't learn without making mistakes.
I hope that you can find it in yourself to give this game another chance; you deserve it.
-------------------------------------
Wow, so this ended up WAY longer than I anticipated. If you actually read this entire ass thing, thank you so much, I write this stuff because of people like you.
Is there another game in history as much talked and ruminated about in the modern era as Dark Souls? What can you even say about a game this massively influential and polarising? I feel like even that this very phrase itself has become cliché in the discourse surrounding it.
Instead of regurgitating that which more knowledgeable and eloquent critics than I have already talked about at length, I'll simply just talk about what I love (and don't love) about the game and I explain how learning to love it wasn't all that easy at first.
I love the world of Lordran. I love its intricacies, its characters, its lore and its structure.
The world of Lordran is beautiful and bleak. It is horrifying and reassuring. From the top of the highest mountain, where the very gods reside, to the fiery chasm of the underworld, all areas of this world are connected with each other, making the world seem almost like a colossal anthill. This gives Dark Souls its distinctive "3rd Person Metroidvania" feeling. And as per usual with that genre of games, this world is filled with secrets that only those with the keenest of eyes will spot.
Lordran is mired in histories long forgotten, lost to the inhabitants of today. In this land, humans are victims of a past they'll never fully understand, as as such, are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. Like a cancer, the Undead Curse seeps into the very being of unfortunate souls, each death stripping them from a bit of their humanity, hollowing them out from the inside until nothing but a witless husk remains. They are doomed to keep reviving at the various Bonfires speckled throughout the lands, which explains their function as checkpoints for the player character in a diegetic manner. This is only one of many examples of FromSoft constructing a deeply immersive and authentic experience through their skilful interweaving of world building and gameplay, not only in this game, but their entire Soulsborne catalogue.
Despite a world so gruel and punishing, so obscure and indifferent, the various NPCs you encounter are very much the opposite. Be they good or evil, charmers or intimidating, friend or foe alike; they are unabashedly human. They laugh, they cry, they want and they yearn. Some will attempt to kill you for your humanity, while others will assist you on your travels just out of the goodness of their heart.
I love the atmosphere, so thick that you could slice it with a knife.
The soft, cloudy lighting of Firelink Shrine, the piercing fiery reds of Izalith, the noxious green of Blighttown... the sheer grandeur of Anor Londo in the false evening sun, the reverential and deeply mystical Ash Lake, the sheer terror of the pitch black Tomb of the Giants... each part of Lordran has its own character.
I love how uncompromisingly melancholic and depressing this game is. Where other fantasy games will usually try and instil a sense of heroism in the player, Dark Souls consistently asks the player what it even is they're fighting for. Do they even know? Are they even the hero in this story?
Dark Souls masterfully subverts Campbell's archetype of the Hero's Journey in almost every aspect. You are NOT the chosen one. You are NOT someone special. There are many just like you, and they all failed. What makes you different?
I love the incredibly mystical and byzantine lore. This game's lore and world building are perhaps my favourite in all of fiction. Miyazaki and his team evidently drew from a lot of existing mythology and real life history, as well as many other inspirations, most notoriously among them, the late Kentaro Miura's Berserk. It is masterfully crafted, and the proof can be found in various forums, Reddit threads and YouTube videos, still speculating about the minutiae of the most obscure lore references almost a decade after the game first released.
I love the story of Gwyn, Izalith and Nito, of the Ancient Dragons and the Furtive Pygmy. I love the tale of Artorias and his tragic battle against the Abyss itself. I love the occult hushes and whispers spoken about the plots of Velka, the Goddess of Sin. None of these characters ever speak a word to the protagonist, and yet are more memorable to me than any character in any AAA game with 3 hours worth of dialogue.
I love the fittingly brutal and punishing gameplay. I love the slow and deliberate combat. Every decision is a micro puzzle, a question of "do you really want to do this?". Mistakes are brutally punished, but they make you learn. You get into the flow of the slow and steady dance of dodging enemy attacks and punishing them for not being able to kill you. When I first played these games, I had never felt anything nearly as exhilarating as killing a boss in them.
Apropos bosses; Dark Souls (as in DS1), may not have the best bosses in the Souls series but it sure as hell has some of the best and most memorable bosses in all of gaming regardless. Ornstein and Smough, Manus, Artorias, Kalameet, Quelaag, Gwyn, the Iron Golem, the Gaping Dragon.. those are just a few from the immensely creative and fantastically designed boss roster.
And that's kind of the whole beauty of it too; the combat system itself isn't anything amazing, it's very simple. It's the fantastic variety in enemy design and the absolutely incredible levels these encounters even take place in.
Dark Souls has some of the best levels in video game history.
From the impeccably designed pseudo-tutorial area the Undead Burg, to the murky Darkroot Garden, the delightfully devilish Sen's Fortress, the cold and scary but also beautiful Painted World of Ariamis, the awe inspiring Anor Londo, the terrifying gutters of Blighttown, etc. all of these levels feature fantastic and challenging encounters and are unbelievably well designed. As mentioned, the game lifts a lot of techniques from the Metroidvania genre, utilising one-way locked doors, elevators, kick-down ladders etc. to get you back to the checkpoint, and letting you skip huge sections of any map as a reward for making it this far and staying perceptive.
All of this is to say that I think that Dark Souls is an ALMOST perfect game. Why almost? Well, for the same reason that I ended up giving this game 4,5/5 instead of 5/5. The reason for that is Dark Souls notorious and often maligned second half.
While I personally always found the criticisms towards that second half to be quite overblown and disproportionate, I can't deny that it drags the whole game down a bit because of it.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that the entire second half of Dark Souls is outright bad, but the levels and bosses post-Anor Londo definitely drop in quality quite a bit in certain places.
It's not as bad in the Duke's Archives and in New Londo. The Duke's Archives are essentially an extension of the Anor Londo map, and as such is designed relatively similar in terms of progression and navigation. I would argue that the actual level design of the place is quite good even! It's the absolute load of very strong and annoying enemies that tend to frustrate a lot of people, myself included. The boss, Seath the Scaleless, is a huge letdown compared to how much he was hyped up in the lore, but somehow not even the worst offender in that regard. He just ends up being disappointingly easy.
New Londo is actually really cool and I never understood the unfortunate amount of hate it received. The (seemingly) invincible ghosts are pretty menacing and a rather frightening sight but can be dealt with quite easily if you know how. The level itself is intensely creepy and dark, and features a harrowing story of the city having been flooded with all the people still in it, by the healers who found themselves forced to do so to contain the terrible evil that had arisen within the depths of the town; the boss of this level, the Four Kings, corrupted by the Abyss. Easily my favourite fight out of the Lord Souls.
I can definitely understand the grievances with Dark Souls' second half a lot more with areas like the unfinished pits of the Demon Ruins and the city of Lost Izalith, the annoying and trollish Tomb of the Giants and the bullshit, broken level geometry of the Crystal Cave.
Tomb of the Giants is easily explained; the place is literally so dark you can't see shit. There are exactly 2 items that can help alleviate the darkness, and one of them is locked in another late game area. What makes this area unforgivable is that this is also the area with the most narrow walkways, the most confusing layout AND the enemies with the highest potential of knocking your ass right off the next cliff. You also can't really see them coming. Neat.
The Crystal Cave looks amazing but clearly hasn't been playtested very much, as numerous sections of the floor are simply broken and will lead to a lot of deaths where you were walking along a crystal beam and suddenly slip off the side without warning. And that's just the VISIBLE ones. There are also invisible walkways, which are just as broken. Also there isn't a single bonfire in the whole area.
Lost Izalith and the Demon Ruins aren't AS bad as the other two, and they even look pretty cool, but are clearly (and afaik even confirmed by the devs to be) unfinished. If the horde of copypasted early game bosses and lack of everything else wasn't indication enough, the fact that the second level consists to 90% of literally only running across a lava lake definitely should be. The sad thing is, this general area features the worst bosses in the whole game, with one of them - the Bed of Chaos - being widely considered to be one of the worst video game bosses of all time. Rightly so, I might add.
But as I mentioned, as a whole these flaws don't weigh heavily enough upon the game to say that the "entire second half is bad" or anything to that effect - especially since the Remastered version comes with the DLC pre-installed.
The DLC truly elevates the entire experience back to the realm of masterpiece.
It introduces 3 new levels and 4 new bosses, all of which range from ok at worst to amazing at its best! Moreover, it actually expands upon the story of Artorias the Abysswalker, of whom we've caught glimpses and whispers of other NPCs but have never seen in the main game, we just meet his wolf, Sif. We only know that he defeated the Darkwraiths of New Londo, and saved the ancient city of Oolacile from the Abyss.
The player is transported back in time after saving Princess Dusk from the inside of a golden golem and finding a mysterious pendant in the Duke's Archives. Upon arriving, and slaying the Sanctuary Guardian in our way, we meet up with a talking mushroom and gradually uncover that the tale of Artorias defeating the Abyss in Oolacile was nothing a fabrication.
Artorias, driven mad by grief and the powers of the Abyss, knows not friend from foe and will attack any living thing near him. After defeating him, in what is likely the best boss fight in this game, we begin to understand that WE are the ones to put an end to the Abyss. And such, we descend down the city of Oolacile, all the way down its pitch black dungeon to confront the host of the Abyss - Manus. He is easily the hardest boss in the entire game, and doubles as the true final fight.
That is, other than the secret boss of the DLC, Black Dragon Kalameet. Though appearing as literally undefeatable at first, with the help of an unlikely friend you manage to pin the beast to the ground and engage in a thrilling fight with him.
After finishing the DLC, there is only one more thing to do: To go toe to toe with the man who started this whole mess: Gwyn, the Lord of Sunlight - now the Lord of Cinder. The soundtrack is not bombastic, not loud and terrifying like the others in the game; it is sombre, calm and melancholic.
What is it you're really fighting for? Did you ever find an answer? Or will you end up like him; standing watch at the fire for millennia, until another one as strong as you arrives to link the flame in your stead?
...
I can't believe how close I once was to writing this game off as toxic bullshit. When I first played it in early 2019, I got stuck on Taurus Demon in the first level, and got so frustrated at the run back to it that I simply gave up. I told myself "this isn't fun" and dropped it for a good 6 months.
I still don't know what exactly compelled me to go back and give it a try. Maybe it was a random VaatiVidya lore video I got recommended that revived my interest. Maybe it was the many, many people praising it as one of the best ever that got me thinking I might have missed something. But something in this game called to me and drew me into its spell.
If you were like me, and you bounced off Dark Souls because you found it too frustrating, too demanding or too cryptic; I hope I could show you that most of us felt this way at first, and that it's likely part of the intended experience.
People don't grow without frustration, and people don't learn without making mistakes.
I hope that you can find it in yourself to give this game another chance; you deserve it.
-------------------------------------
Wow, so this ended up WAY longer than I anticipated. If you actually read this entire ass thing, thank you so much, I write this stuff because of people like you.
Deus Ex, often cited as the pinnacle of the immersive sim genre, remains a marvellous milestone of game design; impeccably crafted levels, story and gameplay loop together with eerily relevant societal commentary are the reason why this game is still considered a true masterpiece all these years later.
9,5 / 10
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People often throw around the word "timeless" in reference to just about anything that'll hold up at least decently a few years after it came out. Especially in gaming, if a game so much as runs smoothly and has a few good reviews from back in the day, I can almost guarantee that said game will be considered a "timeless masterpiece" by some major outlet like IGN or Gamespot in given time.
More often than not, when trying out a few of these so-called classics, I find myself frustrated by extremely dated controls, washed out graphics, boring art styles and just pretty shoddy game design in general. Quests that go nowhere, missions that only exists to stretch out the run time, lifeless characters, uninspired levels that make you remember you're actually just playing a video game, etc.
Deus Ex feels like the first time for me where almost all the claims of it being a timeless masterpiece not only feel accurate, they often feel like they're still not really getting across how amazingly relevant Ion Storm's magnum opus still is today, both in terms of game design and story.
This game is OLD.
Of course with a game this old, you're gonna need some third party mods to make it work on a modern machine. It wasn't much though. Fixing the frame rate to a stable 60 and upscaling the vanilla textures to look crisp on 1440p. In a matter of 30 minutes or so, this game from 1999 ran like a charm on a modern PC. I didn't add anything in the way of actual gameplay changes or content that would otherwise compromise the 'vanilla' experience. As far as I'm concerned, I played the exact same game from back then with slightly better graphics.
Considering this, it is nothing short of amazing how fluid and responsive the controls feel here. While of course still subject to bugs and glitches like any other game in existence, it feels almost unreasonably polished. The aiming - although the strange decision of having players stand still during it does take some getting used to - is accurate, responsive and feels great when you hit something with it. The enemies, while of course limited in their intelligence due to technical reasons, are still interesting and varied enough to never get dull. The weapons feel distinctive and balanced around actually trying to get lethal shots in instead of emptying your clip at an opponent until they finally decide to fall over and die - that is, if you're playing this on 'Realistic' difficulty, which I HIGHLY recommend, as the game was clearly balanced around it. It's NOT "extra hard mode" or something like that. It is very clearly the intended experience.
Now, had this been the core of the gameplay it would've been good but nothing special. A decent shooter incentivising a more methodical approach. But it's not just a shooter. It is so much more than that.
This game is like Doom, Thief, Elder Scrolls and Goldeneye mixed together in a massive cauldron and somehow the end result is better than all of them. It truly is a game that's a lot greater than the sum of its part. There are certainly better shooters than this, even for the time. DOOM was more responsive, had better enemy design and more action. Or take other aspects: Thief had better, more thought out stealth. The original Fallout games had MUCH better role playing than this. But no game, neither then nor today, does this many things this good this consistently. And no other games manages to somehow combine all of these genres into a single, incredibly polished grand package that rewards player creativity and freedom like barely another title since.
As Warren Specter said himself: "If people compare our combat to Half-Life or our stealth to Thief or our role playing to Neverwinter Nights, we’re dead. But if they figure out they can do anything they want and play it however they desire and find their own fun, we were gonna rule the world’.
And they did! It became the face of the "immersive sim" genre for a very simple reason: It's still the best example of it, even after over 20 years. Don't feel like shooting anyone? You don't have to. You could knock them down with a crow bar. Or explode them from the other end of the room. You could pick up something and throw it against their head. You could just sneak past them. You don't even need to kill a single enemy to finish the game. [with maybe(?) the exception of the bosses.]
Every section of every level is deliberately designed with player freedom in mind. There are very few - if any - situations in which Deus Ex will force the player character down any specific way to play the game, or force a solution. On the flip side, it means that almost always your own creativity is the only thing gating your progress. But it's never simply about learning the optimal way for each scenario, as every action comes with its own consequence.
The level design underlines and works in favour of this concept. Let's take a very simple example:
You're trying to get into an enemy base. You're met with a locked door.
You're all out of lock picks and have no key. You COULD spend some time simply looking for those, possibly wasting precious time. You notice the base has a glass window next to the door. You can simply smash it and squeeze your way through it. Alternatively, if you have some explosives or a crowbar on you, you could simply blast down the door. Both of these actions will, however, produce loud noise that enemy troopers might hear. You could try and hack the door open at a nearby terminal. Hacking is an easy way of bypassing lots of security systems, but leaves you utterly vulnerable to patrolling soldiers or policemen running into you. Maybe there's another way in? Maybe an air shaft or a gully? Those may or may not be locked as well, however. Who knows, perhaps you may find an unlikely ally hiding somewhere on the map if you're dialling down your urge to splatter everyone's brains on the floor for a few seconds?
All of these possibilities for one door. And that was just one very simple example. It not only applies to singular game elements, but to the whole thing on a macro scale too.
You can push this to the absolute extreme by killing certain bosses before you ever talked to them. Nothing is stopping you from, say, finding a nice alcove or a roof and sniping the brains out of whatever story relevant NPC or antagonist you're technically "supposed to talk to" to progress the game. This extends to friendly NPCs too. No character is safe from the all devouring chasm of immersive sim game design.
And let's not sell the actual level design short either; it's honestly brilliant. Each level feels totally handcrafted from top to bottom. While, yes, obviously a bit dated at times the visuals and scenery being kind of ugly and blocky really helps with the feeling that this is a dark, gritty future. In this way, it actually adds a lot to it being "timeless." While these visuals previously looked good because they were top notch for the time, they keep their appeal due to shifting perspectives, and how the world itself feels really cold and uncaring.
From closed and confined places like the Paris catacombs, the Majestic 12 hideout and Area 51, the individual paths of which twist and turn around and back into each other with shortcuts to unlock, to wide, open areas like the various city scapes of New York, Paris, and Hong Kong to something in between, like the immensely fun to explore Vandenberg base - all of these levels have unique quirks and design elements that make them all feel very distinct, both from an aesthetic as well as a gameplay perspective.
While some levels, especially the cities, end up feeling a bit small in terms of believability, they're expertly designed video game levels in that: Getting around is not tedious. Finding quest elements, items, NPCs or anything else doesn't feel like finding a needle in a haystack. Every door, window or street, every nook and crevice was put here deliberately for you to play around with it.
The fantastic open-ness of these spaces teach you not to bang your head against the wall, but instead try and find a clever way around it. Sure you COULD just kill that group of soldiers, but that would be boring. How about climbing up to the top of the base, disengage the alarm system, turn the turrets against their masters and route in some poison gas from the bottom into the barracks instead?
Where games like The Elder Scrolls will often praise themselves for "letting the player do whatever they want" and will then proceed to handhold you towards one of two desired solutions, Deus Ex puts barely any restrictions on you what so ever. If you can think it up, and if the physics engine of the game allows it, you can do it.
This system is, of course, not without its flaws.
Some sections can become a bit frustrating if you don't happen to have a specific item or weapon with you. Maybe you could bypass one section with a few lock picks, but you don't have enough, and the (seemingly) only other path is unreasonably tough. Some enemies will sometimes spot or hear you for seemingly no reason. Stealth, as a whole, isn't that great. It's very obtuse to even figure out what exactly enemies can and can't notice. Sometimes the AI of the enemies flat out breaks. The boss fights are a bit crap, sadly, in that they barely feel like boss fights, which I'd put down to the developers having to program them around every possible combination of items the player might have at this point, which obviously severely limits the number of options the boss can have.
However, the biggest flaws - or rather, biggest missed opportunities - come with the games story and role playing system. That's not saying much, however, as these flaws are very minor in the grand picture.
Let's talk about the good first:
JC Denton is a pretty cool character. While people initially criticised his design as "overly stoic, uninteresting, completely blank with a deadpan delivery on every line" I think this peculiar choice of letting JC come across as THIS robotic and strange makes him all the more interesting and unconventional. I find it pretty unique and charming, even hilarious at times.
Especially nowadays where every named game protagonist seems to be created with the purpose of stuffing as much "personality" and "quirk" in there as the devs possibly can manage, it's nice to see a character with a backstory and personality still be a functioning avatar for the player.
As for the story itself; it's simultaneously the games biggest strength AND weakness. The idea is this:
What if every conspiracy theory was actually true?
What if there really were multiple different cabals of evil super geniuses that fought each other over the right to the world? What if planting chips into people's brains, and other types of trans-humanist modification were real? As you might imagine, it gets pretty fucking wild at times.
JC, at the start of the game introduced as a highly capable and highly idealistic UNATCO police officer, is not like your average cop; he has been augmented. His body parts have been altered by various nano machines to enhance or add completely new abilities to his repertoire. When his brother, and fellow agent, Paul suddenly experiences a massive change of heart JC starts to become disillusioned with what he thought he knew about the world.
He becomes a globe trotting, gun blazing and shadow sneaking quadruple agent who will stop at nothing to uncover who is really running the show.
That is pretty much all there is to JC when it comes to only his side of the story; your input as the player is obviously what REALLY counts..
...is what I would say if it were true. Unfortunately, the hitherto absolute and unbridled player freedom doesn't fully extend to the game's actual story. While, yes, there are many moments where you can do things out of order, or the fact you can kill literally every NPC without restrictions whatsoever, and mostly freely choose what JC says to people, these choices are often not very important for the story as a whole. You never go anywhere you wouldn't have gone anyway, you don't get to skip anything else, you never truly change the story in any meaningful way.
There are definitely some instances where you DO have influence over major things happening or not. Some of your friends can and WILL die if you don't save them, and it noticeably makes the game harder if you don't. On the flipside, there's almost no character that can't be somehow saved, no matter how absurd and impossible it might seem.
Sadly, the only time where the player truly gets to influence the outcome of the story is pretty much right at the end, where you'll get the choice between three very distinct and different endings. While this is nice, and it's better than nothing, it's very obviously a byproduct of having to majorly cut down on features quite late into their development cycle. [The devs once openly talked about how they wanted the story to go off the rails way earlier than the final level, where you'd have gone to entirely different locations and the story would've taken a completely different direction.]
But all of that is just about the, for lack of a better word, "mechanical" aspects of the story, the plot related stuff.
What about the subtext? The vibes? This is where the term "timeless" really begins to shine.
Much like in Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”, the terror and confusion of working in corporations or organisations so large you don’t even really know who exactly you are working for looms like a dark cloud over the characters. Companies like Page Industries have entire governments in their pockets and they’re not even trying to hide it - and that’s just the organisations that officially exist. Countless secret societies and organisations are all simultaneously planning their hostile takeover of world domination. Privately trained and owned mechs and super soldiers patrol the streets instead of a normal police force. This is a dystopia that could very well be our own. A nightmare of our own creation.
The game’s gritty and dark aesthetic lends itself perfectly to a vision of a not-too-far-off future; in which technological progress has been going at an exponential rate - only for the ruling class though. The wealthy can be kept alive indefinitely, hooked up to machines and tubes, with the ability to upload your consciousness in arm’s reach. The regular people of New York, Hong Kong and Paris struggle to find a roof over their heads, a fix for their drug issues and to not die of a global pandemic currently ravaging the planet.
You might have noticed it while reading, but the themes of Deus Ex have only gotten MORE relevant as time went on. It’s a deeply radical story about power, class struggle and humanity’s relationship with both technology and society. The dark and cold setting, together with the sometimes strangely humorous and high octane moments the game throws at you from time to time, give this work a very idiosyncratic atmosphere.
It’s equal parts “Total Recall / Blade / Terminator” flashy techno-action romp, as well as Philip K. Dick / Isaac Asimov / William Gibson-style cyberpunk/sci-fi dystopian novel. It’s also very easy to see the influence this game had on countless other pieces of cyberpunk / transhumanism-inspired media, and immersive-sim style video games in general.
No Deus Ex means no (Bethesda) Fallout, no Prey, no Dishonored, no Hitman - and of course no further Deus Ex titles, which I’ve deliberately NOT mentioned in this review. They are a whole thing in and out of themselves and as far as I’m concerned, this game works perfectly fine as a stand alone and definitely doesn’t need the other titles to feel like a complete story.
Before we end this overlong quasi-dissertation on a video game from 1999, some other things I want to talk about that didn’t really fit in the rest of the text:
The music is fantastic. I absolutely love the way that Alexander Brandon, Michiel van den Bos, and Dan Gardopee were able to mix various genres from classical to techno, electronica, synth wave and ambient together into a super recognisable and catchy sound. I find myself listening to songs like “The Synapse” on the regular. Also; they really didn’t need to create entirely unique songs for every stage, every conversation that took place on that AND every death screen. That amount of unhinged effort does deserve a special shoutout from me.
The voice acting isn’t as fantastic, sadly. There are some standout performances like Cliff Stephens as Bob Page for example. While not exactly Oscar-worthy or anything extreme, it still stands head and shoulders above the rest. As mentioned earlier, I do like JC’s deliberately emotionless and robotic delivery, especially for comedic effect, but it feels really weird in certain moments where you really feel like JC probably SHOULD react with a little more emotion in his voice. Finally, Walton Simmons’ extremely calm and vicious tone of voice is great, but the direction here is very lacking with some very obvious mistakes left in his voice lines. Over all, the voice acting isn’t the worst I’ve ever heard but it’s pretty damn far from good most of the time. The balancing on the augmentations could’ve used some more work too, maybe. As things stand now there are only 3 out of 18 augmentations I’d consider absolutely essential to beat the game, where the other 15 feel like wastes of inventory space.
But really, most criticism I have for this game truly is very minor compared to the sheer amount of incredibly forward thinking ideas and mechanics this game has that seriously were - and in some cases still are - way ahead of its time. Deus Ex is an amazing video game experience that has successfully stood the test of time and will continue to do so for many more years.
9,5 / 10
9,5 / 10
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People often throw around the word "timeless" in reference to just about anything that'll hold up at least decently a few years after it came out. Especially in gaming, if a game so much as runs smoothly and has a few good reviews from back in the day, I can almost guarantee that said game will be considered a "timeless masterpiece" by some major outlet like IGN or Gamespot in given time.
More often than not, when trying out a few of these so-called classics, I find myself frustrated by extremely dated controls, washed out graphics, boring art styles and just pretty shoddy game design in general. Quests that go nowhere, missions that only exists to stretch out the run time, lifeless characters, uninspired levels that make you remember you're actually just playing a video game, etc.
Deus Ex feels like the first time for me where almost all the claims of it being a timeless masterpiece not only feel accurate, they often feel like they're still not really getting across how amazingly relevant Ion Storm's magnum opus still is today, both in terms of game design and story.
This game is OLD.
Of course with a game this old, you're gonna need some third party mods to make it work on a modern machine. It wasn't much though. Fixing the frame rate to a stable 60 and upscaling the vanilla textures to look crisp on 1440p. In a matter of 30 minutes or so, this game from 1999 ran like a charm on a modern PC. I didn't add anything in the way of actual gameplay changes or content that would otherwise compromise the 'vanilla' experience. As far as I'm concerned, I played the exact same game from back then with slightly better graphics.
Considering this, it is nothing short of amazing how fluid and responsive the controls feel here. While of course still subject to bugs and glitches like any other game in existence, it feels almost unreasonably polished. The aiming - although the strange decision of having players stand still during it does take some getting used to - is accurate, responsive and feels great when you hit something with it. The enemies, while of course limited in their intelligence due to technical reasons, are still interesting and varied enough to never get dull. The weapons feel distinctive and balanced around actually trying to get lethal shots in instead of emptying your clip at an opponent until they finally decide to fall over and die - that is, if you're playing this on 'Realistic' difficulty, which I HIGHLY recommend, as the game was clearly balanced around it. It's NOT "extra hard mode" or something like that. It is very clearly the intended experience.
Now, had this been the core of the gameplay it would've been good but nothing special. A decent shooter incentivising a more methodical approach. But it's not just a shooter. It is so much more than that.
This game is like Doom, Thief, Elder Scrolls and Goldeneye mixed together in a massive cauldron and somehow the end result is better than all of them. It truly is a game that's a lot greater than the sum of its part. There are certainly better shooters than this, even for the time. DOOM was more responsive, had better enemy design and more action. Or take other aspects: Thief had better, more thought out stealth. The original Fallout games had MUCH better role playing than this. But no game, neither then nor today, does this many things this good this consistently. And no other games manages to somehow combine all of these genres into a single, incredibly polished grand package that rewards player creativity and freedom like barely another title since.
As Warren Specter said himself: "If people compare our combat to Half-Life or our stealth to Thief or our role playing to Neverwinter Nights, we’re dead. But if they figure out they can do anything they want and play it however they desire and find their own fun, we were gonna rule the world’.
And they did! It became the face of the "immersive sim" genre for a very simple reason: It's still the best example of it, even after over 20 years. Don't feel like shooting anyone? You don't have to. You could knock them down with a crow bar. Or explode them from the other end of the room. You could pick up something and throw it against their head. You could just sneak past them. You don't even need to kill a single enemy to finish the game. [with maybe(?) the exception of the bosses.]
Every section of every level is deliberately designed with player freedom in mind. There are very few - if any - situations in which Deus Ex will force the player character down any specific way to play the game, or force a solution. On the flip side, it means that almost always your own creativity is the only thing gating your progress. But it's never simply about learning the optimal way for each scenario, as every action comes with its own consequence.
The level design underlines and works in favour of this concept. Let's take a very simple example:
You're trying to get into an enemy base. You're met with a locked door.
You're all out of lock picks and have no key. You COULD spend some time simply looking for those, possibly wasting precious time. You notice the base has a glass window next to the door. You can simply smash it and squeeze your way through it. Alternatively, if you have some explosives or a crowbar on you, you could simply blast down the door. Both of these actions will, however, produce loud noise that enemy troopers might hear. You could try and hack the door open at a nearby terminal. Hacking is an easy way of bypassing lots of security systems, but leaves you utterly vulnerable to patrolling soldiers or policemen running into you. Maybe there's another way in? Maybe an air shaft or a gully? Those may or may not be locked as well, however. Who knows, perhaps you may find an unlikely ally hiding somewhere on the map if you're dialling down your urge to splatter everyone's brains on the floor for a few seconds?
All of these possibilities for one door. And that was just one very simple example. It not only applies to singular game elements, but to the whole thing on a macro scale too.
You can push this to the absolute extreme by killing certain bosses before you ever talked to them. Nothing is stopping you from, say, finding a nice alcove or a roof and sniping the brains out of whatever story relevant NPC or antagonist you're technically "supposed to talk to" to progress the game. This extends to friendly NPCs too. No character is safe from the all devouring chasm of immersive sim game design.
And let's not sell the actual level design short either; it's honestly brilliant. Each level feels totally handcrafted from top to bottom. While, yes, obviously a bit dated at times the visuals and scenery being kind of ugly and blocky really helps with the feeling that this is a dark, gritty future. In this way, it actually adds a lot to it being "timeless." While these visuals previously looked good because they were top notch for the time, they keep their appeal due to shifting perspectives, and how the world itself feels really cold and uncaring.
From closed and confined places like the Paris catacombs, the Majestic 12 hideout and Area 51, the individual paths of which twist and turn around and back into each other with shortcuts to unlock, to wide, open areas like the various city scapes of New York, Paris, and Hong Kong to something in between, like the immensely fun to explore Vandenberg base - all of these levels have unique quirks and design elements that make them all feel very distinct, both from an aesthetic as well as a gameplay perspective.
While some levels, especially the cities, end up feeling a bit small in terms of believability, they're expertly designed video game levels in that: Getting around is not tedious. Finding quest elements, items, NPCs or anything else doesn't feel like finding a needle in a haystack. Every door, window or street, every nook and crevice was put here deliberately for you to play around with it.
The fantastic open-ness of these spaces teach you not to bang your head against the wall, but instead try and find a clever way around it. Sure you COULD just kill that group of soldiers, but that would be boring. How about climbing up to the top of the base, disengage the alarm system, turn the turrets against their masters and route in some poison gas from the bottom into the barracks instead?
Where games like The Elder Scrolls will often praise themselves for "letting the player do whatever they want" and will then proceed to handhold you towards one of two desired solutions, Deus Ex puts barely any restrictions on you what so ever. If you can think it up, and if the physics engine of the game allows it, you can do it.
This system is, of course, not without its flaws.
Some sections can become a bit frustrating if you don't happen to have a specific item or weapon with you. Maybe you could bypass one section with a few lock picks, but you don't have enough, and the (seemingly) only other path is unreasonably tough. Some enemies will sometimes spot or hear you for seemingly no reason. Stealth, as a whole, isn't that great. It's very obtuse to even figure out what exactly enemies can and can't notice. Sometimes the AI of the enemies flat out breaks. The boss fights are a bit crap, sadly, in that they barely feel like boss fights, which I'd put down to the developers having to program them around every possible combination of items the player might have at this point, which obviously severely limits the number of options the boss can have.
However, the biggest flaws - or rather, biggest missed opportunities - come with the games story and role playing system. That's not saying much, however, as these flaws are very minor in the grand picture.
Let's talk about the good first:
JC Denton is a pretty cool character. While people initially criticised his design as "overly stoic, uninteresting, completely blank with a deadpan delivery on every line" I think this peculiar choice of letting JC come across as THIS robotic and strange makes him all the more interesting and unconventional. I find it pretty unique and charming, even hilarious at times.
Especially nowadays where every named game protagonist seems to be created with the purpose of stuffing as much "personality" and "quirk" in there as the devs possibly can manage, it's nice to see a character with a backstory and personality still be a functioning avatar for the player.
As for the story itself; it's simultaneously the games biggest strength AND weakness. The idea is this:
What if every conspiracy theory was actually true?
What if there really were multiple different cabals of evil super geniuses that fought each other over the right to the world? What if planting chips into people's brains, and other types of trans-humanist modification were real? As you might imagine, it gets pretty fucking wild at times.
JC, at the start of the game introduced as a highly capable and highly idealistic UNATCO police officer, is not like your average cop; he has been augmented. His body parts have been altered by various nano machines to enhance or add completely new abilities to his repertoire. When his brother, and fellow agent, Paul suddenly experiences a massive change of heart JC starts to become disillusioned with what he thought he knew about the world.
He becomes a globe trotting, gun blazing and shadow sneaking quadruple agent who will stop at nothing to uncover who is really running the show.
That is pretty much all there is to JC when it comes to only his side of the story; your input as the player is obviously what REALLY counts..
...is what I would say if it were true. Unfortunately, the hitherto absolute and unbridled player freedom doesn't fully extend to the game's actual story. While, yes, there are many moments where you can do things out of order, or the fact you can kill literally every NPC without restrictions whatsoever, and mostly freely choose what JC says to people, these choices are often not very important for the story as a whole. You never go anywhere you wouldn't have gone anyway, you don't get to skip anything else, you never truly change the story in any meaningful way.
There are definitely some instances where you DO have influence over major things happening or not. Some of your friends can and WILL die if you don't save them, and it noticeably makes the game harder if you don't. On the flipside, there's almost no character that can't be somehow saved, no matter how absurd and impossible it might seem.
Sadly, the only time where the player truly gets to influence the outcome of the story is pretty much right at the end, where you'll get the choice between three very distinct and different endings. While this is nice, and it's better than nothing, it's very obviously a byproduct of having to majorly cut down on features quite late into their development cycle. [The devs once openly talked about how they wanted the story to go off the rails way earlier than the final level, where you'd have gone to entirely different locations and the story would've taken a completely different direction.]
But all of that is just about the, for lack of a better word, "mechanical" aspects of the story, the plot related stuff.
What about the subtext? The vibes? This is where the term "timeless" really begins to shine.
Much like in Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”, the terror and confusion of working in corporations or organisations so large you don’t even really know who exactly you are working for looms like a dark cloud over the characters. Companies like Page Industries have entire governments in their pockets and they’re not even trying to hide it - and that’s just the organisations that officially exist. Countless secret societies and organisations are all simultaneously planning their hostile takeover of world domination. Privately trained and owned mechs and super soldiers patrol the streets instead of a normal police force. This is a dystopia that could very well be our own. A nightmare of our own creation.
The game’s gritty and dark aesthetic lends itself perfectly to a vision of a not-too-far-off future; in which technological progress has been going at an exponential rate - only for the ruling class though. The wealthy can be kept alive indefinitely, hooked up to machines and tubes, with the ability to upload your consciousness in arm’s reach. The regular people of New York, Hong Kong and Paris struggle to find a roof over their heads, a fix for their drug issues and to not die of a global pandemic currently ravaging the planet.
You might have noticed it while reading, but the themes of Deus Ex have only gotten MORE relevant as time went on. It’s a deeply radical story about power, class struggle and humanity’s relationship with both technology and society. The dark and cold setting, together with the sometimes strangely humorous and high octane moments the game throws at you from time to time, give this work a very idiosyncratic atmosphere.
It’s equal parts “Total Recall / Blade / Terminator” flashy techno-action romp, as well as Philip K. Dick / Isaac Asimov / William Gibson-style cyberpunk/sci-fi dystopian novel. It’s also very easy to see the influence this game had on countless other pieces of cyberpunk / transhumanism-inspired media, and immersive-sim style video games in general.
No Deus Ex means no (Bethesda) Fallout, no Prey, no Dishonored, no Hitman - and of course no further Deus Ex titles, which I’ve deliberately NOT mentioned in this review. They are a whole thing in and out of themselves and as far as I’m concerned, this game works perfectly fine as a stand alone and definitely doesn’t need the other titles to feel like a complete story.
Before we end this overlong quasi-dissertation on a video game from 1999, some other things I want to talk about that didn’t really fit in the rest of the text:
The music is fantastic. I absolutely love the way that Alexander Brandon, Michiel van den Bos, and Dan Gardopee were able to mix various genres from classical to techno, electronica, synth wave and ambient together into a super recognisable and catchy sound. I find myself listening to songs like “The Synapse” on the regular. Also; they really didn’t need to create entirely unique songs for every stage, every conversation that took place on that AND every death screen. That amount of unhinged effort does deserve a special shoutout from me.
The voice acting isn’t as fantastic, sadly. There are some standout performances like Cliff Stephens as Bob Page for example. While not exactly Oscar-worthy or anything extreme, it still stands head and shoulders above the rest. As mentioned earlier, I do like JC’s deliberately emotionless and robotic delivery, especially for comedic effect, but it feels really weird in certain moments where you really feel like JC probably SHOULD react with a little more emotion in his voice. Finally, Walton Simmons’ extremely calm and vicious tone of voice is great, but the direction here is very lacking with some very obvious mistakes left in his voice lines. Over all, the voice acting isn’t the worst I’ve ever heard but it’s pretty damn far from good most of the time. The balancing on the augmentations could’ve used some more work too, maybe. As things stand now there are only 3 out of 18 augmentations I’d consider absolutely essential to beat the game, where the other 15 feel like wastes of inventory space.
But really, most criticism I have for this game truly is very minor compared to the sheer amount of incredibly forward thinking ideas and mechanics this game has that seriously were - and in some cases still are - way ahead of its time. Deus Ex is an amazing video game experience that has successfully stood the test of time and will continue to do so for many more years.
9,5 / 10
"The Convergence" is an incredible mod for Dark Souls 3 that reimagines almost everything without changing what made this game so good. A love letter to a great game and one of the best mods ever made, for any game ever.
9/10
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[THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ALL OF THE CONVERGENCE! I'll give individual spoiler warnings for some sections but take this as a general warning.]
After almost a year of first hearing about the mod, I finally got around to playing The Convergence for DS3 a few weeks back. I kept hearing about how this mod was the best thing that ever happened to Dark Souls 3, and I also heard that one of the creators of Archthrones (another huge, upcoming mod for DS3) was the creative mind behind this one, so I knew I had to check it out at some point.
If all you want to know is whether this mod is worth your time:
YES, it is.
It is quite easily the best Soulsborne mod I've played so far. I've played Cinders, and some other, minor mods, but The Convergene stands head and shoulders above them all.
[well, at least until Archthrones, or DS1's Nightfall eventually come out]
With all of that being said, let's get into what The Convergence actually does.
WHAT DOES IT ACTUALLY DO:
If you've played Cinders before, or something like Daughters of Ash (for DS1) or to some extent even SOTFS for DS2, you can picture something rather similar.
These types of overhauls aim to give you a fresh, new experience by adding, remixing and/or removing content and mechanics across the board. But where something like Cinders mainly aimed at greatly expanding things like build choices, weapon variety, spell efficiency, etc., with some ideas that heavily veered away from the core design philosophy of the Dark Souls series, Convergence feels like a true reimagining of Dark Souls 3. At its best points, Convergence feels like a type of "Scholar of the First Sin" official re-release, and even at its worst it does a pretty good job.
All of the new content, especially the new enemies and bosses feel like their lore, placement, design etc. have been very carefully considered, as to not clash with the vanilla DS3's lore and vibes.
Of course, you have all new added weapons, spells, casting tools, etc. You have greatly expanded build choices, and around 20 starting classes. You have lots and lots of neat little Quality of Life upgrades, like having FP restore automatically over time. This is a FANTASTIC addition, and really how it should've been in the main game. However, this has been balanced with spells and weapon arts now costing very large amounts of FP, meaning you can't just spam the most powerful spells in the game without some serious investments in attunement first.
Next, the ability to buy all regular upgrade items right from the start. All vendor NPCs are available the second you first enter Firelink Shrine. They all have greatly expanded inventories too.
Lock on ranges, and most actual spell ranges have been significantly increased as well, to work well with the focus on casting. All armour pieces have increased poise and defence ratings, even a piece of cloth will give you at least a little poise. What's more is that each and every single piece of fashion now has special effects, like increasing casting speed, or reducing incoming Dark damage., etc.
Also, like Cinders, Convergence places little teleport spots all across the world, which let you slightly alter game progression, by letting you access certain areas you're not supposed to be yet. Say, you need a certain spell tome that's locked in the Catacombs? You can access it as early as the Undead Settlement now. This is not as game breaking as it sounds, as you still need to actually defeat certain bosses in the correct way to unlock certain key items that let you progress further. It does significantly reduce the almost unbearable early game slog of DS3's main campaign though, where you have to fight all the way to Irythill before you get anywhere interesting.
You have newly added enemies drawing inspiration from and lifting their movesets from other Soulsborne games, including new invaders, bosses and even mini bosses. These bosses and mini bosses all drop certain collectibles which you can trade in for new versions of coloured Titanite.
These new titanite pieces allow upgrading boss and special weapons to +10, just like regular weapons, or casting tools which all feature their own version of this like Ebony Titanite, Molten Titanite, Crystal, etc. Of course, enemies have generally much more health and damage as a response to having a powered up player character, but it (almost) never feels unfair or out of place.
Lastly, concerning one of the biggest gameplay changes on the side of the player; split damage has been almost completely removed. There are close to NO weapons that deal more than one single damage type. All weapons, spells and skills now deal exclusively either Physical, Lightning, Magic, Fire or Dark damage. There are very, very few exceptions, and in those cases it's almost always because it's a dual-weapon. (e.g. Dancer's Curved Swords) I personally really like this as it forces you to diversify your play-style and include more different damage types in your rollouts. It can of course mean that certain weapons are utterly useless against certain bosses, but the mod gives you plenty of opportunities to respec or simply level up more weapons and stats.
THE NEW MAGIC SYSTEM:
There is no way I can properly sum up just how fundamentally magic has changed here, so I'll just go over the most important points. The biggest point by far - unlike Cinders, which aims to primarly greatly expand the build variety by adding absurd amounts of new weapons, armor and spells - Convergence primarily focuses on completely reworking the magic system from the ground up.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a pure "magic mod", but it's clearly the main focus. Of course you also have a whole bunch of new weapons, lots of which have nothing to do with magic, and are just cool new bonks for you to play around with, but if you go into this expecting a mod with 10 million different weapons and armour pieces you're gonna be disappointed.
The weapon and armour variety here is nowhere near that of Cinders. But that's not to say it isn't good, and that there aren't a whole lot of new toys to play around with. There are some of the most fun and out-there weapons out of any mod in here, and I wish that some of these were in the base game, so rest assured.
So HOW does it change magic?
Most notably - next to the already existing (Soul) Sorceries, Miracles, Pyromancies and Hexes having received a veritable shitton of new spells - the creators added 7 new magic types and a lot of spell tools. You generally still have the three main classes - Sorceries, Miracles and Pyromancies - with Pyromancies now being called "Conjurations", to include the newly added magic types a bit better.
For sorceries, next to the standard Soul/Crystal and Dark Sorceries, Convergence introduces Light sorceries (Lightning damage), which also incorporate some Oolacile spells, and Aeromancies (Physical damage) which do somte serious knock-back. As you'd expect, these scale with INT, except for Hexes, which scale also with FTH.
Miracles of course still have the classic Lightning spells, which are self explanatory, and "Holy" miracles, which deal physical damage (Wrath of the Gods, Divine Pillars of Light etc.) but have received some evil counterparts in the form of Rosaria's Bleed miracles (Dark damage), which previously only featured the "Gnaw" spells, and Necromancies (Magic damage - don't ask me why) which focus on summoning minions, applying debuffs and DoTs. All of these obviously scale exclusively with FTH.
Conjurations are effectively all "Nature spells", as it were. They obviously include good, old Pyromancies, but introduce the most out of any spell type. You have 3 new categories here: Geomancy (Physical) which lets you throw rocks, mud, and boulders at enemies, as well as poison them, Cryomancies (Dark), which the name suggests are like Pyromancies, but with ice instead of fire, and last but definitely not least, Druidism. Drudism deals Magic damage, has a fancy green hue and is kinda similar to Necromancy in that it deals a lot with summoning minions, DoT and heals, but it also includes actual Water Magic! Which means, yes, you can absolutely pull off an Avatar: The Last Airbender build. All conjurations scale with both FTH and INT.
My favourite aspect of this is how naturally these new Spell schools fit in with the established lore of the game. The only one I feel is maybe a bit off is Druidism, which feels like something more fit for an Elder Scrolls game, or Elden Ring, than it does Dark Souls. But that is a very minor complaint, and it's nowhere near some of the most flagrant violations of Dark Souls' design philosophy I've seen in some other mods.
I briefly want to shout out that this mod featured basically a Spirit Ash system two years before Elden Ring released. This mod actually has quite a few things that would later turn up in that game.
BTW: All spell schools now have a corresponding covenant and NPC's to buy spells from and either use them to upgrade low-level spell tools, or turn them into certain covenant items for weapons, fashion, magic and other goodies. What's more is that some of these NPCs even feature all new voice acting!
That is crazy to me, and shows how much effort went into all tis. The performances are pretty good and they felt like pretty natural additions. With maybe the exception of Halflight (yes, he's a Firelink Shrine NPC now), all of them felt very lore-friendly and made sense as vendors. I only wish that they maybe had some side quests associated with them, but I realise that might have been too much to ask.
IMPROVED GRAPHICS AND NEW LEVEL GEOMETRY:
Of course this mod does much more than just overhaul the magic system and adding some weapons. Almost every level here has had something done to it. Be it simply some slight re-shades and some remixed enemy and bonfire placements, or something extreme like some completely new, walkable level geometry that literally expands the level design of the original. That last one goes from a few simple ladders and bridges that created new shortcuts where there previously weren't any, to some things that are so out there that I genuinely wonder how they even pulled this off.
I personally really like most of the changes to the lighting and atmosphere in these levels, with only a tiny handful of examples where I actually preferred the original's art direction. Every area had its lighting improved at the very least, and some like the Cathedral of the Deep have loads of newly added objects and furniture in there that give it a less empty, austere vibe.
The two stand out experiences here would be the Profaned Capital and Smouldering Lake, with so much stuff added/changed that it truly feels like a different version altogether. Without going too much into spoiler territory, the Smouldering Lake does away with the annoying ballista and instead opts for a much more interestingly designed and fitting stage hazard. Smoldering Lake is usually my least favourite location in vanilla DS3 by far, which is why I find it so impressive they managed to actually make it one of the more interesting levels this time around. Irythill is another one that blew me away with how complex the new additions really were.
As for some negatives; I should mention that I experienced some very serious performance drops with this mod installed. Usually my DS3 runs perfectly fine on a (mostly) stable 60fps. With this mod on, I was lucky to push 30 in a normal area. Some areas (especially boss arenas) felt damn near unplayable. Maybe it's just my PC but I noticed that it strongly depends on the location, and how much the mod added. Ashes of Ariandel, for example, basically didn't slow my game down at all, presumably because the mod creators didn't do too much there. If you're struggling to run DS3 normally, this mod will almost certainly be too much for your PC.
BOSSES AND MINI-BOSSES:
From this point on out I'll give another SERIOUS SPOILER WARNING!
Some of the biggest changes to the game can be found in this section, and some of the biggest surprises too.
As you would expect, this mod adds a whole bunch of either revamped, remixed or entirely new boss fights. It also adds a load of new mini-bosses, or "Greater Foes" as they're called in-game. These foes tend to be powered up versions of regular enemies with new attacks and greatly increased health. They are honestly pretty cool for the most part and it's sad that there's no way to respawn them other than entering NG+.
Next to the aforementioned upgrade materials they drop (Hollow's Remains, Soldier's Remains, etc.) they also all drop a "Soul of a Greater Foe", which you can turn into either a Titanite Slab or one of a couple of special rings, which all have various effects and buffs.
Next to these Greater Foes, there are also a bunch of newly added NPC invaders. They are pretty varied and feature some really unique build ideas. They're also pretty well balanced in that they don't have as much health as regular invaders, but are allowed to heal more often as a trade off. These also sadly can't be respawned.
On to the main bosses. There are now 31 instead of 25 bosses, but that doesn't mean that only 6 are new. Some new ones completely replace certain bosses, mostly the ones that people generally tend to dislike. And that's just the completely new ones. Almost all vanilla bosses had at least something done to them, some only receiving some minor tweaks on attack speeds, timings and maybe some new, or powered up attacks, while some others completely changed their second phase or even added an entirely new third one. While the number of new bosses here once again pales in comparison to something like Cinders, I vastly prefer the approach that Convergence took with its redesign for them.
Cinders honestly didn't do that great a job in that department. Not only did it feel like half of the "new" bosses were just Dragonslayer Armour but with different outfits, but the placement of these was usually haphazard at best, and often outright horrible. Not every semi-open space is a fitting boss arena, especially when the boss clips through the walls and floor.
What's more is that they all felt horribly balanced, with ridiculously inflated HP and really lazy design. The optional end game bosses felt like a boring chore more than a challenge. It felt like Cinders was so busy cramming as many bosses in there as it could that it kinda forgot to make them actually good.
In contrast, Convergence does the complete opposite and knocks it out of the park. I hope that all mod creators take note in the future. Not only do all the bosses feel (mostly) pretty well balanced, their placement makes sense and you never have to fight a boss in an area it was clearly not designed to be in.
Their lore and design also feels very natural and as though they could've been found in some scrapped design document. Also unlike Cinders, the bosses here aren't just 1:1 reskins from existing enemies in DS3, like, for example, a Cathedral Knight dressing up as a boss. These are completely new bosses, made from the ground up, taking moves from bosses/enemies from all over the series, but primarily Bloodborne and Sekiro. Their moves feel very organic, and they all clearly had their timings and cadence adjusted to work well with DS3's combat.
Yet again, another SPOILER WARNING, as I will be going into the new bosses in detail now. I'm not going to talk about all the minor changes to all other boss fights, as that would go completely beyond the scope of this review, which is already way too long.
-NEW BOSSES-
Archdruid Caimar:
The first completely new boss, and he replaces the Curse-rotted Greatwood in the Undead Settlement. Caimar is honestly fucking crazy and it's quite possibly the best boss they added. He uses Druid spells and summons wolves at his side. It feels unbelievably polished, I genuinely prefer it to a lot of DS3's normal bosses. He uses Owl's (Sekiro) moveset mixed with a bit of Gundyr and, i think, some Milwood Knight moves. Oh, and that phase 2 transition is fucking NUTS!
Royal Darkwraith:
Honestly, probably the worst of the newly added bosses. He can be found somewhere deep within Farron Keep. I really like his Darkwraith/Cathedral Knight inspired move-set but it's very clearly quite unpolished, as multiple of his attacks have their hit-boxes active long before his weapon is anywhere close to you. Coupled with the fact that you have to fight him in a poison pool with no opportunity to not be poisoned, this makes for the fight that could be improved upon the most.
High Lord Wolnir:
Unlike the other base game bosses, Wolnir didn't just receive a few minor changes, his whole fight got completely scrapped. Instead, we have a more humanoid opponent of the same name, with a moveset which appears to be lifted from Milwood Knights and perhaps the Strawhat Shinobi guys from Sekiro. Very fun fight, if a bit standard. He uses both Blackflame attacks as well as Holy miracles. Much more fun to fight than the original.
Frigid Wyvern:
OK, I guess this one is more of a stage hazard, but the Wiki considers it a boss, so I will too. It's basically just a normal Wyvern but with ice instead of fire. Thankfully, you can kill it without a plunging attack to the head. Not actually respawnable, so technically closer to a mini-boss. We encounter him a few times, making this encounter very Demon's Souls-y.
Headless Knight:
Replacing Dragonslayer Armour on Lothric Castle's long bridge, we encounter the Headless Knight, which is basically Champion Gundyr with some different attack timings, added AOE attacks and lightning damage. Seems more aggressive than standard Gundyr too. Very tense fight, super speedy and very in-your-face, especially in such a small arena.
Vessel of Kaathe:
If I remember correctly, this was the first new bosses they ever added to this mod, and I guess you can kinda tell. Not that it's bad, it's just a fairly normal reskin of a regular DS3 Demon. It's basically immune to Dark damage and highly resistant to Fire and has some pretty intense AEO blasts. The thing that definitely saves it is the surprise second phase, which I will not spoil here.
Euclus, King of Fallen Oolacile:
The last of Convergence's completely new bosses, Euclus also has a very strong argument for being the best out of them. He replaces Halflight in Filianore's Church. While some attacks definitely need some more work (that AOE-grab comes out WAY too fucking fast for how much damage it does and how hard it is to avoid) he has the most intense and varied moveset out of all the bosses here. His moveset is equal parts Corruped Monk (Sekiro) and Martyr Logarius (Bloodborne), and he makes use of Light sorceries. Great boss and seriously tough, with very few hiccups.
Also, I vastly prefer Euclus over who previously stood guard here, Storm King Allant. Yes, the final boss from Demon's Souls. Not that it was a bad fight, but I really dislike shoving gratuitous fan-service like that into a mod that takes itself this seriously.
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END- & POST-GAME SPOILER WARNING
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REVAMPED & REKINDLED BOSSES
So those were the new bosses, the ones which didn't exist in this game at all (except for Wolnir), and those are already pretty damn good. What about the rest? As I've said before, almost every boss in the game had, at the very least, their health and damage adjusted, most of them even had some extra attacks added or attack timings changed. Obviously I'm not gonna point out every change here, instead I'll focus on the most important ones.
REVAMPED Pontiff Sulyvahn
If you know anything about Convergence, you've probably already heard about this one, and for good reason. This version of Pontiff is now my favourite fight in the whole game, yes, more so than Gael even.
But first, the build up. His cathedral in Irythil stands empty when you first get there, surely confusing many a player on where he's gone. I was wondering whether they took him out entirely, and was almost sure that was the case after I'd beaten the Twin Princes and hadn't found him. But luckily, after you get all 4 Lords of Cinder, a portal to the Realm of Moonlight opens inside Firelink Shrine, letting you access a beautiful, moonlit version of his boss arena, with the original "Old King of the Eclipse" OST reinstated as his boss theme.
The first two phases are more of the same, although Sully obviously had his HP and damage adjusted to end-game levels.
The third phase is where shit gets real. This guy just channels his inner Sword Saint Isshin, transforms his Greatsword of Judgement into a Swordspear and goes fucking HAM with endless combos, AOE's, high speed and insane aggression. Honestly it's kinda hard to explain what makes it so good, it's just the package of everything together that made me actually clap in my chair when it was finally over.
REVAMPED Soul of Cinder:
Of course they massively overhauled this guy too, why wouldn't they? Honestly this one is almost as good as the previous one, and I vastly prefer this SoC over the original. While the first phase was always a bit too chaotic and the second a bit too easy for my liking, the difficulty in this version is ON POINT.
First phase obviously incorporates a lot of new mechanics and builds, for example, he now has an Aeromancer mode, a Geomancer mode, even a Hexer mode too. His resistances have been buffed across the board, as well as his HP, but somehow the fight feels a little less chaotic than the original. Until this point, it's fairly normal, albeit with new attacks.
The second phase goes insane though. SoC now suddenly channels both Gwyn AND Shura Isshin, with a side of Genichiro Ashina and even a little bit of Ludwig the Holy Blade in there. Truly a "best of" of the entire series. And it's quite intense too. OG SoC's second phase always felt a bit too easy, this one truly feels how the amalgamation of all of history's most powerful entities SHOULD fight. Once again, a bit hard to explain why it's so good, you just have to experience it yourself.
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Finally, we've arrived at the last 2 "new" bosses. Only, they're explicitly not new, but remixed, MUCH harder versions of the Lord of Cinder fights. These are only available after beating SoC, marking them post-game content. Only attempt these if you have a high tolerance for frustration. I'm not a big fan of these tbh. Currently only the two below are available, perhaps some time in the future we'll see the other two get one as well.
REKINDLED Abyss Watcher:
So this is, by far, no question, 100% the hardest boss in this game by a mile and then some. This fight might be harder than Malenia. It's certainly many, MANY times harder than anything else in this game. It's kinda sad that it's not very good then. I'm honestly kinda shocked this was made by the same people who gave us gems like Caimar and Euclus. This one feels like what a 13 year old who just got into Souls games thinks a hard boss should be.
Every fucking hit fully staggers you. Yes, literally every single tiny fucking hit. Every combo will stunlock and kill you. He can chain combos literally while you're still on the floor, unable to move. His hitboxes deviate WILDLY from his actual attack animations.
The tracking here makes DS2 look like a turn based game. This could've been a great fight if it received much more polished, but the way it's now it feels grossly out of place.
REKINDLED Yhorm the Giant:
I honestly don't have much to say on Rekindled Yhorm. He is nowhere near as hard as the guy above, not even in the same ballpark. There are base game bosses that are harder than this, even if it's arguably still harder than the original.
Increased attack speed, some new moves and added Fire AOEs/trails to most of his attacks, but that's it. If you can kill Yhorm, you can kill him in this state as well.
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FINAL THOUGHTS:
On the whole, this is a fantastic mod. There is certainly a lot of room for improvement here, but seeing how the mod hasn't been updated in over a year, I don't think we'll be seeing any continued support for this project. At least, not in the near future.
AFAIK the mod creator is currently busy with DS3 Archthrones, as well as The Convergence for Elden Ring, so I wouldn't hold my breath. Overall, I just want to say that I find it amazing how talented the people who worked on this are, how much it reinvigorated my love for DS3 and how interesting the experience it gave me was. With Cinders, I was more then ready to deinstall it after I finished my first playthrough. Here though, I'm already planning my next few.
There is still SO MUCH STUFF I haven't even touched on. I probably barely even covered 50% of what this mod does. And that's even though this post is already so fucking long lol
I can't recommend this mod enough.
9/10
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[THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ALL OF THE CONVERGENCE! I'll give individual spoiler warnings for some sections but take this as a general warning.]
After almost a year of first hearing about the mod, I finally got around to playing The Convergence for DS3 a few weeks back. I kept hearing about how this mod was the best thing that ever happened to Dark Souls 3, and I also heard that one of the creators of Archthrones (another huge, upcoming mod for DS3) was the creative mind behind this one, so I knew I had to check it out at some point.
If all you want to know is whether this mod is worth your time:
YES, it is.
It is quite easily the best Soulsborne mod I've played so far. I've played Cinders, and some other, minor mods, but The Convergene stands head and shoulders above them all.
[well, at least until Archthrones, or DS1's Nightfall eventually come out]
With all of that being said, let's get into what The Convergence actually does.
WHAT DOES IT ACTUALLY DO:
If you've played Cinders before, or something like Daughters of Ash (for DS1) or to some extent even SOTFS for DS2, you can picture something rather similar.
These types of overhauls aim to give you a fresh, new experience by adding, remixing and/or removing content and mechanics across the board. But where something like Cinders mainly aimed at greatly expanding things like build choices, weapon variety, spell efficiency, etc., with some ideas that heavily veered away from the core design philosophy of the Dark Souls series, Convergence feels like a true reimagining of Dark Souls 3. At its best points, Convergence feels like a type of "Scholar of the First Sin" official re-release, and even at its worst it does a pretty good job.
All of the new content, especially the new enemies and bosses feel like their lore, placement, design etc. have been very carefully considered, as to not clash with the vanilla DS3's lore and vibes.
Of course, you have all new added weapons, spells, casting tools, etc. You have greatly expanded build choices, and around 20 starting classes. You have lots and lots of neat little Quality of Life upgrades, like having FP restore automatically over time. This is a FANTASTIC addition, and really how it should've been in the main game. However, this has been balanced with spells and weapon arts now costing very large amounts of FP, meaning you can't just spam the most powerful spells in the game without some serious investments in attunement first.
Next, the ability to buy all regular upgrade items right from the start. All vendor NPCs are available the second you first enter Firelink Shrine. They all have greatly expanded inventories too.
Lock on ranges, and most actual spell ranges have been significantly increased as well, to work well with the focus on casting. All armour pieces have increased poise and defence ratings, even a piece of cloth will give you at least a little poise. What's more is that each and every single piece of fashion now has special effects, like increasing casting speed, or reducing incoming Dark damage., etc.
Also, like Cinders, Convergence places little teleport spots all across the world, which let you slightly alter game progression, by letting you access certain areas you're not supposed to be yet. Say, you need a certain spell tome that's locked in the Catacombs? You can access it as early as the Undead Settlement now. This is not as game breaking as it sounds, as you still need to actually defeat certain bosses in the correct way to unlock certain key items that let you progress further. It does significantly reduce the almost unbearable early game slog of DS3's main campaign though, where you have to fight all the way to Irythill before you get anywhere interesting.
You have newly added enemies drawing inspiration from and lifting their movesets from other Soulsborne games, including new invaders, bosses and even mini bosses. These bosses and mini bosses all drop certain collectibles which you can trade in for new versions of coloured Titanite.
These new titanite pieces allow upgrading boss and special weapons to +10, just like regular weapons, or casting tools which all feature their own version of this like Ebony Titanite, Molten Titanite, Crystal, etc. Of course, enemies have generally much more health and damage as a response to having a powered up player character, but it (almost) never feels unfair or out of place.
Lastly, concerning one of the biggest gameplay changes on the side of the player; split damage has been almost completely removed. There are close to NO weapons that deal more than one single damage type. All weapons, spells and skills now deal exclusively either Physical, Lightning, Magic, Fire or Dark damage. There are very, very few exceptions, and in those cases it's almost always because it's a dual-weapon. (e.g. Dancer's Curved Swords) I personally really like this as it forces you to diversify your play-style and include more different damage types in your rollouts. It can of course mean that certain weapons are utterly useless against certain bosses, but the mod gives you plenty of opportunities to respec or simply level up more weapons and stats.
THE NEW MAGIC SYSTEM:
There is no way I can properly sum up just how fundamentally magic has changed here, so I'll just go over the most important points. The biggest point by far - unlike Cinders, which aims to primarly greatly expand the build variety by adding absurd amounts of new weapons, armor and spells - Convergence primarily focuses on completely reworking the magic system from the ground up.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a pure "magic mod", but it's clearly the main focus. Of course you also have a whole bunch of new weapons, lots of which have nothing to do with magic, and are just cool new bonks for you to play around with, but if you go into this expecting a mod with 10 million different weapons and armour pieces you're gonna be disappointed.
The weapon and armour variety here is nowhere near that of Cinders. But that's not to say it isn't good, and that there aren't a whole lot of new toys to play around with. There are some of the most fun and out-there weapons out of any mod in here, and I wish that some of these were in the base game, so rest assured.
So HOW does it change magic?
Most notably - next to the already existing (Soul) Sorceries, Miracles, Pyromancies and Hexes having received a veritable shitton of new spells - the creators added 7 new magic types and a lot of spell tools. You generally still have the three main classes - Sorceries, Miracles and Pyromancies - with Pyromancies now being called "Conjurations", to include the newly added magic types a bit better.
For sorceries, next to the standard Soul/Crystal and Dark Sorceries, Convergence introduces Light sorceries (Lightning damage), which also incorporate some Oolacile spells, and Aeromancies (Physical damage) which do somte serious knock-back. As you'd expect, these scale with INT, except for Hexes, which scale also with FTH.
Miracles of course still have the classic Lightning spells, which are self explanatory, and "Holy" miracles, which deal physical damage (Wrath of the Gods, Divine Pillars of Light etc.) but have received some evil counterparts in the form of Rosaria's Bleed miracles (Dark damage), which previously only featured the "Gnaw" spells, and Necromancies (Magic damage - don't ask me why) which focus on summoning minions, applying debuffs and DoTs. All of these obviously scale exclusively with FTH.
Conjurations are effectively all "Nature spells", as it were. They obviously include good, old Pyromancies, but introduce the most out of any spell type. You have 3 new categories here: Geomancy (Physical) which lets you throw rocks, mud, and boulders at enemies, as well as poison them, Cryomancies (Dark), which the name suggests are like Pyromancies, but with ice instead of fire, and last but definitely not least, Druidism. Drudism deals Magic damage, has a fancy green hue and is kinda similar to Necromancy in that it deals a lot with summoning minions, DoT and heals, but it also includes actual Water Magic! Which means, yes, you can absolutely pull off an Avatar: The Last Airbender build. All conjurations scale with both FTH and INT.
My favourite aspect of this is how naturally these new Spell schools fit in with the established lore of the game. The only one I feel is maybe a bit off is Druidism, which feels like something more fit for an Elder Scrolls game, or Elden Ring, than it does Dark Souls. But that is a very minor complaint, and it's nowhere near some of the most flagrant violations of Dark Souls' design philosophy I've seen in some other mods.
I briefly want to shout out that this mod featured basically a Spirit Ash system two years before Elden Ring released. This mod actually has quite a few things that would later turn up in that game.
BTW: All spell schools now have a corresponding covenant and NPC's to buy spells from and either use them to upgrade low-level spell tools, or turn them into certain covenant items for weapons, fashion, magic and other goodies. What's more is that some of these NPCs even feature all new voice acting!
That is crazy to me, and shows how much effort went into all tis. The performances are pretty good and they felt like pretty natural additions. With maybe the exception of Halflight (yes, he's a Firelink Shrine NPC now), all of them felt very lore-friendly and made sense as vendors. I only wish that they maybe had some side quests associated with them, but I realise that might have been too much to ask.
IMPROVED GRAPHICS AND NEW LEVEL GEOMETRY:
Of course this mod does much more than just overhaul the magic system and adding some weapons. Almost every level here has had something done to it. Be it simply some slight re-shades and some remixed enemy and bonfire placements, or something extreme like some completely new, walkable level geometry that literally expands the level design of the original. That last one goes from a few simple ladders and bridges that created new shortcuts where there previously weren't any, to some things that are so out there that I genuinely wonder how they even pulled this off.
I personally really like most of the changes to the lighting and atmosphere in these levels, with only a tiny handful of examples where I actually preferred the original's art direction. Every area had its lighting improved at the very least, and some like the Cathedral of the Deep have loads of newly added objects and furniture in there that give it a less empty, austere vibe.
The two stand out experiences here would be the Profaned Capital and Smouldering Lake, with so much stuff added/changed that it truly feels like a different version altogether. Without going too much into spoiler territory, the Smouldering Lake does away with the annoying ballista and instead opts for a much more interestingly designed and fitting stage hazard. Smoldering Lake is usually my least favourite location in vanilla DS3 by far, which is why I find it so impressive they managed to actually make it one of the more interesting levels this time around. Irythill is another one that blew me away with how complex the new additions really were.
As for some negatives; I should mention that I experienced some very serious performance drops with this mod installed. Usually my DS3 runs perfectly fine on a (mostly) stable 60fps. With this mod on, I was lucky to push 30 in a normal area. Some areas (especially boss arenas) felt damn near unplayable. Maybe it's just my PC but I noticed that it strongly depends on the location, and how much the mod added. Ashes of Ariandel, for example, basically didn't slow my game down at all, presumably because the mod creators didn't do too much there. If you're struggling to run DS3 normally, this mod will almost certainly be too much for your PC.
BOSSES AND MINI-BOSSES:
From this point on out I'll give another SERIOUS SPOILER WARNING!
Some of the biggest changes to the game can be found in this section, and some of the biggest surprises too.
As you would expect, this mod adds a whole bunch of either revamped, remixed or entirely new boss fights. It also adds a load of new mini-bosses, or "Greater Foes" as they're called in-game. These foes tend to be powered up versions of regular enemies with new attacks and greatly increased health. They are honestly pretty cool for the most part and it's sad that there's no way to respawn them other than entering NG+.
Next to the aforementioned upgrade materials they drop (Hollow's Remains, Soldier's Remains, etc.) they also all drop a "Soul of a Greater Foe", which you can turn into either a Titanite Slab or one of a couple of special rings, which all have various effects and buffs.
Next to these Greater Foes, there are also a bunch of newly added NPC invaders. They are pretty varied and feature some really unique build ideas. They're also pretty well balanced in that they don't have as much health as regular invaders, but are allowed to heal more often as a trade off. These also sadly can't be respawned.
On to the main bosses. There are now 31 instead of 25 bosses, but that doesn't mean that only 6 are new. Some new ones completely replace certain bosses, mostly the ones that people generally tend to dislike. And that's just the completely new ones. Almost all vanilla bosses had at least something done to them, some only receiving some minor tweaks on attack speeds, timings and maybe some new, or powered up attacks, while some others completely changed their second phase or even added an entirely new third one. While the number of new bosses here once again pales in comparison to something like Cinders, I vastly prefer the approach that Convergence took with its redesign for them.
Cinders honestly didn't do that great a job in that department. Not only did it feel like half of the "new" bosses were just Dragonslayer Armour but with different outfits, but the placement of these was usually haphazard at best, and often outright horrible. Not every semi-open space is a fitting boss arena, especially when the boss clips through the walls and floor.
What's more is that they all felt horribly balanced, with ridiculously inflated HP and really lazy design. The optional end game bosses felt like a boring chore more than a challenge. It felt like Cinders was so busy cramming as many bosses in there as it could that it kinda forgot to make them actually good.
In contrast, Convergence does the complete opposite and knocks it out of the park. I hope that all mod creators take note in the future. Not only do all the bosses feel (mostly) pretty well balanced, their placement makes sense and you never have to fight a boss in an area it was clearly not designed to be in.
Their lore and design also feels very natural and as though they could've been found in some scrapped design document. Also unlike Cinders, the bosses here aren't just 1:1 reskins from existing enemies in DS3, like, for example, a Cathedral Knight dressing up as a boss. These are completely new bosses, made from the ground up, taking moves from bosses/enemies from all over the series, but primarily Bloodborne and Sekiro. Their moves feel very organic, and they all clearly had their timings and cadence adjusted to work well with DS3's combat.
Yet again, another SPOILER WARNING, as I will be going into the new bosses in detail now. I'm not going to talk about all the minor changes to all other boss fights, as that would go completely beyond the scope of this review, which is already way too long.
-NEW BOSSES-
Archdruid Caimar:
The first completely new boss, and he replaces the Curse-rotted Greatwood in the Undead Settlement. Caimar is honestly fucking crazy and it's quite possibly the best boss they added. He uses Druid spells and summons wolves at his side. It feels unbelievably polished, I genuinely prefer it to a lot of DS3's normal bosses. He uses Owl's (Sekiro) moveset mixed with a bit of Gundyr and, i think, some Milwood Knight moves. Oh, and that phase 2 transition is fucking NUTS!
Royal Darkwraith:
Honestly, probably the worst of the newly added bosses. He can be found somewhere deep within Farron Keep. I really like his Darkwraith/Cathedral Knight inspired move-set but it's very clearly quite unpolished, as multiple of his attacks have their hit-boxes active long before his weapon is anywhere close to you. Coupled with the fact that you have to fight him in a poison pool with no opportunity to not be poisoned, this makes for the fight that could be improved upon the most.
High Lord Wolnir:
Unlike the other base game bosses, Wolnir didn't just receive a few minor changes, his whole fight got completely scrapped. Instead, we have a more humanoid opponent of the same name, with a moveset which appears to be lifted from Milwood Knights and perhaps the Strawhat Shinobi guys from Sekiro. Very fun fight, if a bit standard. He uses both Blackflame attacks as well as Holy miracles. Much more fun to fight than the original.
Frigid Wyvern:
OK, I guess this one is more of a stage hazard, but the Wiki considers it a boss, so I will too. It's basically just a normal Wyvern but with ice instead of fire. Thankfully, you can kill it without a plunging attack to the head. Not actually respawnable, so technically closer to a mini-boss. We encounter him a few times, making this encounter very Demon's Souls-y.
Headless Knight:
Replacing Dragonslayer Armour on Lothric Castle's long bridge, we encounter the Headless Knight, which is basically Champion Gundyr with some different attack timings, added AOE attacks and lightning damage. Seems more aggressive than standard Gundyr too. Very tense fight, super speedy and very in-your-face, especially in such a small arena.
Vessel of Kaathe:
If I remember correctly, this was the first new bosses they ever added to this mod, and I guess you can kinda tell. Not that it's bad, it's just a fairly normal reskin of a regular DS3 Demon. It's basically immune to Dark damage and highly resistant to Fire and has some pretty intense AEO blasts. The thing that definitely saves it is the surprise second phase, which I will not spoil here.
Euclus, King of Fallen Oolacile:
The last of Convergence's completely new bosses, Euclus also has a very strong argument for being the best out of them. He replaces Halflight in Filianore's Church. While some attacks definitely need some more work (that AOE-grab comes out WAY too fucking fast for how much damage it does and how hard it is to avoid) he has the most intense and varied moveset out of all the bosses here. His moveset is equal parts Corruped Monk (Sekiro) and Martyr Logarius (Bloodborne), and he makes use of Light sorceries. Great boss and seriously tough, with very few hiccups.
Also, I vastly prefer Euclus over who previously stood guard here, Storm King Allant. Yes, the final boss from Demon's Souls. Not that it was a bad fight, but I really dislike shoving gratuitous fan-service like that into a mod that takes itself this seriously.
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END- & POST-GAME SPOILER WARNING
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REVAMPED & REKINDLED BOSSES
So those were the new bosses, the ones which didn't exist in this game at all (except for Wolnir), and those are already pretty damn good. What about the rest? As I've said before, almost every boss in the game had, at the very least, their health and damage adjusted, most of them even had some extra attacks added or attack timings changed. Obviously I'm not gonna point out every change here, instead I'll focus on the most important ones.
REVAMPED Pontiff Sulyvahn
If you know anything about Convergence, you've probably already heard about this one, and for good reason. This version of Pontiff is now my favourite fight in the whole game, yes, more so than Gael even.
But first, the build up. His cathedral in Irythil stands empty when you first get there, surely confusing many a player on where he's gone. I was wondering whether they took him out entirely, and was almost sure that was the case after I'd beaten the Twin Princes and hadn't found him. But luckily, after you get all 4 Lords of Cinder, a portal to the Realm of Moonlight opens inside Firelink Shrine, letting you access a beautiful, moonlit version of his boss arena, with the original "Old King of the Eclipse" OST reinstated as his boss theme.
The first two phases are more of the same, although Sully obviously had his HP and damage adjusted to end-game levels.
The third phase is where shit gets real. This guy just channels his inner Sword Saint Isshin, transforms his Greatsword of Judgement into a Swordspear and goes fucking HAM with endless combos, AOE's, high speed and insane aggression. Honestly it's kinda hard to explain what makes it so good, it's just the package of everything together that made me actually clap in my chair when it was finally over.
REVAMPED Soul of Cinder:
Of course they massively overhauled this guy too, why wouldn't they? Honestly this one is almost as good as the previous one, and I vastly prefer this SoC over the original. While the first phase was always a bit too chaotic and the second a bit too easy for my liking, the difficulty in this version is ON POINT.
First phase obviously incorporates a lot of new mechanics and builds, for example, he now has an Aeromancer mode, a Geomancer mode, even a Hexer mode too. His resistances have been buffed across the board, as well as his HP, but somehow the fight feels a little less chaotic than the original. Until this point, it's fairly normal, albeit with new attacks.
The second phase goes insane though. SoC now suddenly channels both Gwyn AND Shura Isshin, with a side of Genichiro Ashina and even a little bit of Ludwig the Holy Blade in there. Truly a "best of" of the entire series. And it's quite intense too. OG SoC's second phase always felt a bit too easy, this one truly feels how the amalgamation of all of history's most powerful entities SHOULD fight. Once again, a bit hard to explain why it's so good, you just have to experience it yourself.
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Finally, we've arrived at the last 2 "new" bosses. Only, they're explicitly not new, but remixed, MUCH harder versions of the Lord of Cinder fights. These are only available after beating SoC, marking them post-game content. Only attempt these if you have a high tolerance for frustration. I'm not a big fan of these tbh. Currently only the two below are available, perhaps some time in the future we'll see the other two get one as well.
REKINDLED Abyss Watcher:
So this is, by far, no question, 100% the hardest boss in this game by a mile and then some. This fight might be harder than Malenia. It's certainly many, MANY times harder than anything else in this game. It's kinda sad that it's not very good then. I'm honestly kinda shocked this was made by the same people who gave us gems like Caimar and Euclus. This one feels like what a 13 year old who just got into Souls games thinks a hard boss should be.
Every fucking hit fully staggers you. Yes, literally every single tiny fucking hit. Every combo will stunlock and kill you. He can chain combos literally while you're still on the floor, unable to move. His hitboxes deviate WILDLY from his actual attack animations.
The tracking here makes DS2 look like a turn based game. This could've been a great fight if it received much more polished, but the way it's now it feels grossly out of place.
REKINDLED Yhorm the Giant:
I honestly don't have much to say on Rekindled Yhorm. He is nowhere near as hard as the guy above, not even in the same ballpark. There are base game bosses that are harder than this, even if it's arguably still harder than the original.
Increased attack speed, some new moves and added Fire AOEs/trails to most of his attacks, but that's it. If you can kill Yhorm, you can kill him in this state as well.
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FINAL THOUGHTS:
On the whole, this is a fantastic mod. There is certainly a lot of room for improvement here, but seeing how the mod hasn't been updated in over a year, I don't think we'll be seeing any continued support for this project. At least, not in the near future.
AFAIK the mod creator is currently busy with DS3 Archthrones, as well as The Convergence for Elden Ring, so I wouldn't hold my breath. Overall, I just want to say that I find it amazing how talented the people who worked on this are, how much it reinvigorated my love for DS3 and how interesting the experience it gave me was. With Cinders, I was more then ready to deinstall it after I finished my first playthrough. Here though, I'm already planning my next few.
There is still SO MUCH STUFF I haven't even touched on. I probably barely even covered 50% of what this mod does. And that's even though this post is already so fucking long lol
I can't recommend this mod enough.
9/10
Ender Lilies is a solid game which is sometimes elevated to a very good game by its presentation and especially its superb OST, but stops short of being fantastic due to a lack of polish and an identity that truly sets it apart. Still, a strong and under-appreciated entry into the Metroidvania genre.
7,5 / 10
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The market for Metroidvanias is certainly a bit oversaturated at this point in time, considering there seems to be a new one coming out every other week. It’s understandable that a lot of devs want to jump on this train; it’s a great way to combine a lot of different game design elements into a fun and cohesive experience that feels like a real journey through a vast world and usually offers ample challenge for players to overcome. While a lot of them try and take their inspiration from older games in the genre, the vast majority of modern MVs tend to closely follow in the footsteps of one game in particular; Hollow Knight.
Perhaps this is why Ender Lilies seems to have largely flown under the radar for most people. Even some die-hard fans of the genre seem to have missed it. Make no mistake, this game isn’t exactly subtle about its influence from HK. Visually alone, you’d be hard pressed not to feel reminded of it a little bit. It has the same tragic and forlorn atmosphere, beautifully detailed background art, melancholic background music, tough, “Souls-like” combat (meaning “animation-based, high commitment attacks and fairly dangerous enemies”) and most other trappings of that specific niche. But this isn’t just a HK-clone, even if it occasionally veers a bit too close into the direction that some games like Gleamlight, Lotus Knight or Crowsworn went into. Whereas the others here seem to purposefully, almost deceptively try to lure you into playing them by specifically targeting Hollow Knight fans, Ender Lilies does seem like it’s genuinely trying its best to be its own thing, even if it doesn’t always succeed in that endeavour.
It’s definitely not for a lack of trying, and I can say one thing for certain: This game does not feel like a cynical cash grab. Ender Lilies clearly had a lot of passion and love behind its creation, and if nothing else, it’s a very promising title from an upcoming indie studio. It does a lot of things very well. But at the same time, it often feels weirdly unfinished and frustratingly inconsistent when it comes the fine details and polish. It’s a very solid title with no real critical flaw, but a lot of little annoyances that might add up to a “death by a thousand cuts” situation for some people. Personally, I wasn’t THAT bothered by most of it until I reached the later areas, where these issues became a bit more noticeable.
A good example for the general trend with Ender Lilies is the world design. For the most part, it’s quite good and at some points even manages to be great! While the early areas after the tutorial aren’t very complex or hard, they’re absolutely fine for what they are. They even telegraph some secrets and inaccessible areas for you to return to later. Unfortunately, I think this aspect is a little haphazardly implemented though. Fast travelling is available from the start - an unusual choice for a MV/Soulslike - and includes every checkpoint, of which there are quite a few. This kind of leads the game to rely on this system a little too much, meaning you’ll find yourself often teleporting between random areas to explore rooms you’ve already been to because the world isn’t really designed to be quickly traversed on foot. It becomes even stranger when you end up opening up shortcuts to areas you’ve already been to and completely cleared out - although you could easily argue that these are meant to facilitate a more non-linear approach to exploring the world. And it works quite well in that regard. I know I totally went off the beaten path multiple times and only realised it much later. I just wish that these connections and short cuts could’ve been handled a bit more elegantly. It sometimes feels like they were placed there as an afterthought, more than being an intentional piece of game design.
The world feels fairly large for a small-ish indie Metroidvania. It’s not the gargantuan size of Hollow Knight’s Hallownest, or even Blasphemous’ Custodia but it certainly feels larger than something like the Ori games, and it does so - mostly - without it getting stale, and that by itself is already a huge compliment. It’s just sad that most of the levels here feel somewhat clichéd in terms of visual identity, setting and memorability. A village and forest section in the beginning, 2 separate castles (right next to each other no less) dark and dank catacombs, and even a sewer/prison area. As far as creativity goes, this just feels like the absolute bare minimum, like someone just checked the essentials off a list of “obligatory MV world design elements”. At least the final area, the Verboten Domain feels a bit more unique, with its fungus-infected, poisonous, purple vibes and thick atmosphere. What’s more is that the actual art direction and music for these areas are always really good, but I’ll get more into that later.
The actual level design is more varied. Like I mentioned before, the early areas are fine, but nothing special. Both are quite linear in their progression, with some side paths to explore at the most, or a short fork in the path which tends to converge again in the next room. They do offer quite a bit for players choosing to return at a later point, when they have more power ups and higher stats, and that’s something I appreciate, this game isn’t afraid to put some of its most important secrets into some seemingly inconspicuous places and asking you to remember it - although the map attempts to help you in that regard (more on that later). The areas after this thankfully do become a lot more open and allow for noticeably less linear travel through them. I particularly like the two castle areas, even if they do feel somewhat similar, but lore-wise I got the feeling that this was kinda the point. While other areas sometimes boil down to a lot of long, huge hallways filled with enemies with not much in the way of actual level design, the castles, especially the Twin Spires, get pretty creative with some of their set ups. Elegant short cuts and expert-level recontextualisation of previous obstacles, as well as some pretty interesting enemy set ups. The less likely I am inclined to run past the majority of enemies, the better. I also enjoy the aesthetic of a truly ancient castle perched between the mountains, covered under a thick layer of snow. The music is fantastic too, but that’s a given for the whole game.
I wasn’t as big a fan of the 2 last areas, the Stockade and Verboten Domain. While both do feature some clever level design ideas, an unfortunate amount of rooms are just brutally long hallways filled to the brim with extremely spongy enemies, some of which can teleport directly on top of you. It’s nothing absolutely egregious or anything, but having to repeat these areas with nothing more engaging to do than fighting or running past what feels like an endless amount of enemies gets pretty boring pretty quickly. It’s not helped by the fact that the game rarely - if ever - asks anything in the way of platforming from you either. The strange thing is, the mechanics would be here, it’s just that the level design doesn’t really make use of Lily’s surprisingly flexible air mobility. That is, unless you’re looking to complete the game’s true ending, where there will be the occasional platforming section that are so much harder to pull off than literally anything else in this game, it feels downright out of place. I suspect that these were added at the last minute, as the entire endgame feels a bit rushed, at least in terms of level design and interesting gameplay ideas. Fighting over-tuned enemies can only remain engaging for so long.
At this point I have to talk about the only thing I genuinely hate about this game; its map. It’s ugly, unintuitive and manages a very interesting, albeit unintentional tight rope walk where it’s completely unintelligible at first and you have no fucking clue what you’re looking at, but as soon as you understand what it does, it spoils literally EVERYTHING in that area; whether there are still any collectibles, how many paths lead to and away from it and even where they are. The larger the map becomes, the less you feel like you’re getting a grasp on it, because everything looks the same from start to finish. Trying to figure out how to navigate this map was a fight I didn’t know I was getting into.
Speaking of fighting, let’s move on to the most recognisable element of this game; its spirit/Stand-based combat system. It was featured heavily in the marketing and seems to have been the initial draw for a lot of people. Lily is a small child, and thus is obviously rather incapable of fighting all those zombie soldiers and eldritch abominations herself. That’s what our spirit friends are for. She starts off with just single spirit companion, the Umbral Knight, who works as your typical sword moveset and by defeating the many bosses and mini-bosses of this game we gain a new spirit to fight alongside our player character each time. Lily is instead capable of using the typical “genre abilities”, like a double jump, dash, wall climb, hookshot, etc, which are unlocked by defeating the main bosses. There is a considerable number of these spirit-attacks ranging from melee to ranged magic attacks to AOEs to DoTs, and you can equip up to 6 of them at a time, which makes for a surprisingly deep moveset and “build variety” on the player’s part. You can swap these out at every check point, and you can upgrade them individually. Playing around with this system is very fun and I didn’t anticipate enjoying it as much as I did. I do have to admit that this system isn’t really as revolutionary as some people make it out to be though; these are all effectively still just weapons and/or spells. They basically work exactly like in the older Souls games, with a limited amount of charges per spell with some of them being able to string combos. It’s really just an aesthetic choice, gameplay wise these work exactly like they would in any other Metroidvania/Souls-like. On the other hand, I had much more fun with this than I had with the Ori games’ or The Messenger’s combat, for example. Learning what all the different spells do and how they interact with each other is very engaging.
I always say that a game’s combat system is only ever as good as the enemies and bosses you use it against. So how does Ender Lilies fare in that regard?
I can happily say: fairly well, actually. The enemy variety is surprisingly high and repetition is kept to a sensible margin. Their move-sets are varied, differ in speeds, ferocity and damage and they are - with some exceptions - always fun to fight. They always telegraph their attacks in a fair and understandable manner. The character designs could be a bit more interesting and unique, but it’s fine. It works for what it’s going for, even if I feel like a more recognisable design scheme for the average enemy would’ve done wonders for memorability. The mini bosses are basically powered up regular enemies with some additions to their move-set and a massively increased health pool. As mentioned before, they’ll always give you a new combat ability, often their own signature attack. These fights are ok for the most part, but nothing special, I would hesitate to call them “bosses”. The actual bosses range from really good to quite annoying. I personally really liked both Dark Witch Elaine and Knight Commander Julius the best, while I really dislike the two bosses that make use of additional enemies during the fight: Hoenir, Master of the Abyss and the final boss, the Blighted Lord. This combat system really doesn’t feel like its designed to constantly fight multiple enemies at once, which is made worse by the fact that in both cases the ads immediately respawn, which in practice kinda forces you to ignore them because killing them is literally pointless. This, on the other hand, makes it harder to pay attention to what the boss is doing, and cost me a bunch of lives in both cases. I especially disliked Hoenir because on top of endlessly spawning ads, he also keeps running away. (Elden Beast flash back intensifies) Luckily the other bosses are mostly very fun to fight and don’t rely on cheap stuff like this.
The one thing I’ll say about ALL enemies, bosses included, is that they feel needlessly spongey at all times. No matter which level you are, and even if you complete a harder area and then come back to an easier one later, enemies will STILL take multiple hits to take down. The only time when you’ll feel TRULY powerful is when you’ll return to the very first few areas to complete whatever you missed initially. Initially I liked that enemies could withstand multiple hits, but later areas go so overkill with the amount of enemies in a single room that their general tankiness just led to me avoiding them entirely a lot of the time. This isn’t exactly helped by the fact that, in both the Stockade and Verboten Domain areas, the difficulty (or rather, enemy damage) increases dramatically. It almost feels like Lily just got reset to level 1.
Speaking of the levelling; I still don’t really understand what it does. Is it health? Damage? Both? You can increase both health and damage in other ways though. A bit confusing imo, but nothing too egregious.
With most of the gameplay stuff out of the way, let’s talk about story and lore. Initially I was quite dismissive of the story and lore, as I found the presentation of it very cliché and overdone. Something, something kingdom was good, then calamity happened and now everyone’s a zombie. A very typical and average Dark Souls-esque story about how fucked up the world is. And in a way, it IS that, but it’s also a very personal and emotional story about finding your purpose and finding out who you even are, and when I realised this towards the end I found myself appreciating it all a lot more. There is some genuine heart and profundity to it all. All the sadder that they chose to go with the “read a billion in-game texts and listen to people shout a bunch of cryptic nonsense at you”. You know, the typical “ahh.. Margriel… Forgive me.. I only meant to protect you… arggh..” type beat. I genuinely believe the story would’ve had MUCH more impact on the player if they went about it in a more direct way involving an actual narrative that doesn’t take place in item descriptions. I obviously love this stuff in Soulsborne games, or Blasphemous or other games that are more about the “how’s” and “why’s” of an event, rather than the “who’s”, but here it felt weirdly unfitting. That being said, as soon as the story DID start to click for me, I really liked it. It’s quite a heartfelt and emotional story about a little girl trying to find her place and purpose in a hostile world, and an old knight who still struggles with the guilt of not having been able to uphold his vow. I even got a bit emotional at the end, and that’s a sign that I did appreciate it after all. It’s just sad that the emotional heart of this story was buried so deep beneath what felt like fluff.
Finally, let’s talk about the game’s strongest aspect by far: presentation.
The art style, especially when it comes to the world and levels, is generally very good to fantastic. The background art is beautiful and extremely detailed, and tells a lot of the game’s story. The lighting and colours are generally very lush and give a good dynamic to it all. While it does start off a bit monochromatic, it’s nowhere near as bad as other examples in the genre, this game is generally quite colourful despite the black and white colour-scheme of the promotional material. Especially areas like the Witch Coven or Verboten Domain feel like they can barely contain the explosively colourful background trying to creep in. It really feels like a big budget game with a lot of creative energy behind it. The character animations are generally also very good, with only a select few instances of it feeling awkward. Like mentioned before, character designs are generally good, but could’ve certainly been more unique and original. I’m wondering whether the anime style of presentation might have added to it feeling a bit generic at times. Sadly, the same can be also said for the design concepts behind the areas. While they are technically and artistically great, conceptually they are a bit tame, like they went out of their way to not include anything that was too wild or out of the ordinary.
The sound design is weird. Sometimes it’s very good and spacey, and feels very elegant and well mixed, and then other actions simply don’t have any sounds associated with them. The sword strikes sound great, the foot steps sound like plastic. Some sounds are extremely intricate, while others are ripped straight from sound libraries without anything done to them. It’s noticeable enough to pull me out of the experience occasionally, and that’s probably the most critical mistake a game like this can make. Sound design IS important, and it’s sad to see that it clearly wasn’t a priority here.
It’s the music that TRULY elevates this game though. All the area tunes are extremely catchy and memorable and communicate the sadness and tragedy of this world better than any other aspect of this game. The boss themes, while not as memorable, are also very creative and comment on their respective bosses’ personalities very well. I keep listening to the game’s OST during work, and I genuinely love some of the tracks so much I’m considering sampling them for my own music. Especially the main theme, the White Parish theme and some of the post-boss songs are hauntingly beautiful, and during the credits I almost shed a little tear because it all added up so well in that moment. Music truly is one of the most important aspects of a game, and I think Ender Lilies is a prime example of that.
And that’s the thing with this game; it’s sometimes genuinely great and clearly knows what it’s doing, and then other times, it’ll fumble some really basic stuff in a way that even amateur game designers should know better. Sometimes the devs have a stroke of genius, and then other times, they’ll go with the absolute bare minimum. And I think this is most noticeable when it comes to the game’s overall place in the genre:
What really sets Ender Lilies apart? What is the draw that’s supposed to pull people in? What is this game’s identity? It feels like it’s so busy trying to appeal to all sorts of MV audiences that it forgot to really work out its own personality, it’s own pull. The art direction and music ARE great, but games like Hollow Knight, Blasphemous, Super Metroid, CV: Symphony of the Night, Ori, Axiom Verge.. all of these games have fantastic art direction and music, but they also have their own identity, both in terms of art AND gameplay. It’s even worse since the game orients itself very clearly around Hollow Knight in particular, and goes for a very similar style of presentation but doesn’t really quite reach the heights that HK did, neither in art, music NOR in gameplay. If I had to choose between HK and EL to recommend to a friend who’s trying to get into Metroidvanias, there’d be no contest - especially since Ender Lilies is twice as expensive as Hollow Knight. The only reason I would ever recommend EL over HK would be for it’s significantly lighter difficulty and shorter run-time.
I realise that this review probably sounded a bit negative overall, but don’t let that fool you. This IS a really good game. It’s an extremely solid Metroidvania / Souls-like. Like I said in the beginning, it doesn’t have any real critical flaws. It has very enjoyable gameplay, a non-linear map that feels appropriately large, amazing art and music, it has no bullshit areas, and doesn’t drag on forever. It just has a lot of minor disappointments and annoyances that may or may not add up to a legitimate grievance, depending on who’s playing. And I won’t lie, these things do annoy me and kinda break my heart, because this game would really have deserved a lot more polish.
The reason I genuinely really like this game, and consider it not only worth your time but one of the better experiences I’ve had in a while is simple; it has heart. It has a soul. It’s a passion project by a couple of people that clearly love the Metroidvania genre, and cared a lot about the story they were trying to tell. It’s not a cynical, self-referential, meta-humour ridden “””clever””” game, nor is it a soulless, predatory cash grab, it’s a game that’s not afraid to pull on your heartstrings and present you with some actual emotion here and there. Again, I REALLY like this game, and I think every fan of Metroidvania games ought to give this one a shot. Even though I have problems with it, I enjoyed it more than other MVs I’ve played recently, including Salt & Sanctuary, The Messenger, Metroid: Dread and both Ori’s, and I think that’s saying something. All things considered, I do think this game is underrated. It genuinely is a very fun game, with an extremely solid foundation, and I could see a sequel ironing out a lot of the kinks, creating a truly fantastic gaming experience in the process.
I think there are a lot of people who would probably get a lot out of this. I’ll definitely give it a second playthrough some time in the future.
7,5 / 10
7,5 / 10
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The market for Metroidvanias is certainly a bit oversaturated at this point in time, considering there seems to be a new one coming out every other week. It’s understandable that a lot of devs want to jump on this train; it’s a great way to combine a lot of different game design elements into a fun and cohesive experience that feels like a real journey through a vast world and usually offers ample challenge for players to overcome. While a lot of them try and take their inspiration from older games in the genre, the vast majority of modern MVs tend to closely follow in the footsteps of one game in particular; Hollow Knight.
Perhaps this is why Ender Lilies seems to have largely flown under the radar for most people. Even some die-hard fans of the genre seem to have missed it. Make no mistake, this game isn’t exactly subtle about its influence from HK. Visually alone, you’d be hard pressed not to feel reminded of it a little bit. It has the same tragic and forlorn atmosphere, beautifully detailed background art, melancholic background music, tough, “Souls-like” combat (meaning “animation-based, high commitment attacks and fairly dangerous enemies”) and most other trappings of that specific niche. But this isn’t just a HK-clone, even if it occasionally veers a bit too close into the direction that some games like Gleamlight, Lotus Knight or Crowsworn went into. Whereas the others here seem to purposefully, almost deceptively try to lure you into playing them by specifically targeting Hollow Knight fans, Ender Lilies does seem like it’s genuinely trying its best to be its own thing, even if it doesn’t always succeed in that endeavour.
It’s definitely not for a lack of trying, and I can say one thing for certain: This game does not feel like a cynical cash grab. Ender Lilies clearly had a lot of passion and love behind its creation, and if nothing else, it’s a very promising title from an upcoming indie studio. It does a lot of things very well. But at the same time, it often feels weirdly unfinished and frustratingly inconsistent when it comes the fine details and polish. It’s a very solid title with no real critical flaw, but a lot of little annoyances that might add up to a “death by a thousand cuts” situation for some people. Personally, I wasn’t THAT bothered by most of it until I reached the later areas, where these issues became a bit more noticeable.
A good example for the general trend with Ender Lilies is the world design. For the most part, it’s quite good and at some points even manages to be great! While the early areas after the tutorial aren’t very complex or hard, they’re absolutely fine for what they are. They even telegraph some secrets and inaccessible areas for you to return to later. Unfortunately, I think this aspect is a little haphazardly implemented though. Fast travelling is available from the start - an unusual choice for a MV/Soulslike - and includes every checkpoint, of which there are quite a few. This kind of leads the game to rely on this system a little too much, meaning you’ll find yourself often teleporting between random areas to explore rooms you’ve already been to because the world isn’t really designed to be quickly traversed on foot. It becomes even stranger when you end up opening up shortcuts to areas you’ve already been to and completely cleared out - although you could easily argue that these are meant to facilitate a more non-linear approach to exploring the world. And it works quite well in that regard. I know I totally went off the beaten path multiple times and only realised it much later. I just wish that these connections and short cuts could’ve been handled a bit more elegantly. It sometimes feels like they were placed there as an afterthought, more than being an intentional piece of game design.
The world feels fairly large for a small-ish indie Metroidvania. It’s not the gargantuan size of Hollow Knight’s Hallownest, or even Blasphemous’ Custodia but it certainly feels larger than something like the Ori games, and it does so - mostly - without it getting stale, and that by itself is already a huge compliment. It’s just sad that most of the levels here feel somewhat clichéd in terms of visual identity, setting and memorability. A village and forest section in the beginning, 2 separate castles (right next to each other no less) dark and dank catacombs, and even a sewer/prison area. As far as creativity goes, this just feels like the absolute bare minimum, like someone just checked the essentials off a list of “obligatory MV world design elements”. At least the final area, the Verboten Domain feels a bit more unique, with its fungus-infected, poisonous, purple vibes and thick atmosphere. What’s more is that the actual art direction and music for these areas are always really good, but I’ll get more into that later.
The actual level design is more varied. Like I mentioned before, the early areas are fine, but nothing special. Both are quite linear in their progression, with some side paths to explore at the most, or a short fork in the path which tends to converge again in the next room. They do offer quite a bit for players choosing to return at a later point, when they have more power ups and higher stats, and that’s something I appreciate, this game isn’t afraid to put some of its most important secrets into some seemingly inconspicuous places and asking you to remember it - although the map attempts to help you in that regard (more on that later). The areas after this thankfully do become a lot more open and allow for noticeably less linear travel through them. I particularly like the two castle areas, even if they do feel somewhat similar, but lore-wise I got the feeling that this was kinda the point. While other areas sometimes boil down to a lot of long, huge hallways filled with enemies with not much in the way of actual level design, the castles, especially the Twin Spires, get pretty creative with some of their set ups. Elegant short cuts and expert-level recontextualisation of previous obstacles, as well as some pretty interesting enemy set ups. The less likely I am inclined to run past the majority of enemies, the better. I also enjoy the aesthetic of a truly ancient castle perched between the mountains, covered under a thick layer of snow. The music is fantastic too, but that’s a given for the whole game.
I wasn’t as big a fan of the 2 last areas, the Stockade and Verboten Domain. While both do feature some clever level design ideas, an unfortunate amount of rooms are just brutally long hallways filled to the brim with extremely spongy enemies, some of which can teleport directly on top of you. It’s nothing absolutely egregious or anything, but having to repeat these areas with nothing more engaging to do than fighting or running past what feels like an endless amount of enemies gets pretty boring pretty quickly. It’s not helped by the fact that the game rarely - if ever - asks anything in the way of platforming from you either. The strange thing is, the mechanics would be here, it’s just that the level design doesn’t really make use of Lily’s surprisingly flexible air mobility. That is, unless you’re looking to complete the game’s true ending, where there will be the occasional platforming section that are so much harder to pull off than literally anything else in this game, it feels downright out of place. I suspect that these were added at the last minute, as the entire endgame feels a bit rushed, at least in terms of level design and interesting gameplay ideas. Fighting over-tuned enemies can only remain engaging for so long.
At this point I have to talk about the only thing I genuinely hate about this game; its map. It’s ugly, unintuitive and manages a very interesting, albeit unintentional tight rope walk where it’s completely unintelligible at first and you have no fucking clue what you’re looking at, but as soon as you understand what it does, it spoils literally EVERYTHING in that area; whether there are still any collectibles, how many paths lead to and away from it and even where they are. The larger the map becomes, the less you feel like you’re getting a grasp on it, because everything looks the same from start to finish. Trying to figure out how to navigate this map was a fight I didn’t know I was getting into.
Speaking of fighting, let’s move on to the most recognisable element of this game; its spirit/Stand-based combat system. It was featured heavily in the marketing and seems to have been the initial draw for a lot of people. Lily is a small child, and thus is obviously rather incapable of fighting all those zombie soldiers and eldritch abominations herself. That’s what our spirit friends are for. She starts off with just single spirit companion, the Umbral Knight, who works as your typical sword moveset and by defeating the many bosses and mini-bosses of this game we gain a new spirit to fight alongside our player character each time. Lily is instead capable of using the typical “genre abilities”, like a double jump, dash, wall climb, hookshot, etc, which are unlocked by defeating the main bosses. There is a considerable number of these spirit-attacks ranging from melee to ranged magic attacks to AOEs to DoTs, and you can equip up to 6 of them at a time, which makes for a surprisingly deep moveset and “build variety” on the player’s part. You can swap these out at every check point, and you can upgrade them individually. Playing around with this system is very fun and I didn’t anticipate enjoying it as much as I did. I do have to admit that this system isn’t really as revolutionary as some people make it out to be though; these are all effectively still just weapons and/or spells. They basically work exactly like in the older Souls games, with a limited amount of charges per spell with some of them being able to string combos. It’s really just an aesthetic choice, gameplay wise these work exactly like they would in any other Metroidvania/Souls-like. On the other hand, I had much more fun with this than I had with the Ori games’ or The Messenger’s combat, for example. Learning what all the different spells do and how they interact with each other is very engaging.
I always say that a game’s combat system is only ever as good as the enemies and bosses you use it against. So how does Ender Lilies fare in that regard?
I can happily say: fairly well, actually. The enemy variety is surprisingly high and repetition is kept to a sensible margin. Their move-sets are varied, differ in speeds, ferocity and damage and they are - with some exceptions - always fun to fight. They always telegraph their attacks in a fair and understandable manner. The character designs could be a bit more interesting and unique, but it’s fine. It works for what it’s going for, even if I feel like a more recognisable design scheme for the average enemy would’ve done wonders for memorability. The mini bosses are basically powered up regular enemies with some additions to their move-set and a massively increased health pool. As mentioned before, they’ll always give you a new combat ability, often their own signature attack. These fights are ok for the most part, but nothing special, I would hesitate to call them “bosses”. The actual bosses range from really good to quite annoying. I personally really liked both Dark Witch Elaine and Knight Commander Julius the best, while I really dislike the two bosses that make use of additional enemies during the fight: Hoenir, Master of the Abyss and the final boss, the Blighted Lord. This combat system really doesn’t feel like its designed to constantly fight multiple enemies at once, which is made worse by the fact that in both cases the ads immediately respawn, which in practice kinda forces you to ignore them because killing them is literally pointless. This, on the other hand, makes it harder to pay attention to what the boss is doing, and cost me a bunch of lives in both cases. I especially disliked Hoenir because on top of endlessly spawning ads, he also keeps running away. (Elden Beast flash back intensifies) Luckily the other bosses are mostly very fun to fight and don’t rely on cheap stuff like this.
The one thing I’ll say about ALL enemies, bosses included, is that they feel needlessly spongey at all times. No matter which level you are, and even if you complete a harder area and then come back to an easier one later, enemies will STILL take multiple hits to take down. The only time when you’ll feel TRULY powerful is when you’ll return to the very first few areas to complete whatever you missed initially. Initially I liked that enemies could withstand multiple hits, but later areas go so overkill with the amount of enemies in a single room that their general tankiness just led to me avoiding them entirely a lot of the time. This isn’t exactly helped by the fact that, in both the Stockade and Verboten Domain areas, the difficulty (or rather, enemy damage) increases dramatically. It almost feels like Lily just got reset to level 1.
Speaking of the levelling; I still don’t really understand what it does. Is it health? Damage? Both? You can increase both health and damage in other ways though. A bit confusing imo, but nothing too egregious.
With most of the gameplay stuff out of the way, let’s talk about story and lore. Initially I was quite dismissive of the story and lore, as I found the presentation of it very cliché and overdone. Something, something kingdom was good, then calamity happened and now everyone’s a zombie. A very typical and average Dark Souls-esque story about how fucked up the world is. And in a way, it IS that, but it’s also a very personal and emotional story about finding your purpose and finding out who you even are, and when I realised this towards the end I found myself appreciating it all a lot more. There is some genuine heart and profundity to it all. All the sadder that they chose to go with the “read a billion in-game texts and listen to people shout a bunch of cryptic nonsense at you”. You know, the typical “ahh.. Margriel… Forgive me.. I only meant to protect you… arggh..” type beat. I genuinely believe the story would’ve had MUCH more impact on the player if they went about it in a more direct way involving an actual narrative that doesn’t take place in item descriptions. I obviously love this stuff in Soulsborne games, or Blasphemous or other games that are more about the “how’s” and “why’s” of an event, rather than the “who’s”, but here it felt weirdly unfitting. That being said, as soon as the story DID start to click for me, I really liked it. It’s quite a heartfelt and emotional story about a little girl trying to find her place and purpose in a hostile world, and an old knight who still struggles with the guilt of not having been able to uphold his vow. I even got a bit emotional at the end, and that’s a sign that I did appreciate it after all. It’s just sad that the emotional heart of this story was buried so deep beneath what felt like fluff.
Finally, let’s talk about the game’s strongest aspect by far: presentation.
The art style, especially when it comes to the world and levels, is generally very good to fantastic. The background art is beautiful and extremely detailed, and tells a lot of the game’s story. The lighting and colours are generally very lush and give a good dynamic to it all. While it does start off a bit monochromatic, it’s nowhere near as bad as other examples in the genre, this game is generally quite colourful despite the black and white colour-scheme of the promotional material. Especially areas like the Witch Coven or Verboten Domain feel like they can barely contain the explosively colourful background trying to creep in. It really feels like a big budget game with a lot of creative energy behind it. The character animations are generally also very good, with only a select few instances of it feeling awkward. Like mentioned before, character designs are generally good, but could’ve certainly been more unique and original. I’m wondering whether the anime style of presentation might have added to it feeling a bit generic at times. Sadly, the same can be also said for the design concepts behind the areas. While they are technically and artistically great, conceptually they are a bit tame, like they went out of their way to not include anything that was too wild or out of the ordinary.
The sound design is weird. Sometimes it’s very good and spacey, and feels very elegant and well mixed, and then other actions simply don’t have any sounds associated with them. The sword strikes sound great, the foot steps sound like plastic. Some sounds are extremely intricate, while others are ripped straight from sound libraries without anything done to them. It’s noticeable enough to pull me out of the experience occasionally, and that’s probably the most critical mistake a game like this can make. Sound design IS important, and it’s sad to see that it clearly wasn’t a priority here.
It’s the music that TRULY elevates this game though. All the area tunes are extremely catchy and memorable and communicate the sadness and tragedy of this world better than any other aspect of this game. The boss themes, while not as memorable, are also very creative and comment on their respective bosses’ personalities very well. I keep listening to the game’s OST during work, and I genuinely love some of the tracks so much I’m considering sampling them for my own music. Especially the main theme, the White Parish theme and some of the post-boss songs are hauntingly beautiful, and during the credits I almost shed a little tear because it all added up so well in that moment. Music truly is one of the most important aspects of a game, and I think Ender Lilies is a prime example of that.
And that’s the thing with this game; it’s sometimes genuinely great and clearly knows what it’s doing, and then other times, it’ll fumble some really basic stuff in a way that even amateur game designers should know better. Sometimes the devs have a stroke of genius, and then other times, they’ll go with the absolute bare minimum. And I think this is most noticeable when it comes to the game’s overall place in the genre:
What really sets Ender Lilies apart? What is the draw that’s supposed to pull people in? What is this game’s identity? It feels like it’s so busy trying to appeal to all sorts of MV audiences that it forgot to really work out its own personality, it’s own pull. The art direction and music ARE great, but games like Hollow Knight, Blasphemous, Super Metroid, CV: Symphony of the Night, Ori, Axiom Verge.. all of these games have fantastic art direction and music, but they also have their own identity, both in terms of art AND gameplay. It’s even worse since the game orients itself very clearly around Hollow Knight in particular, and goes for a very similar style of presentation but doesn’t really quite reach the heights that HK did, neither in art, music NOR in gameplay. If I had to choose between HK and EL to recommend to a friend who’s trying to get into Metroidvanias, there’d be no contest - especially since Ender Lilies is twice as expensive as Hollow Knight. The only reason I would ever recommend EL over HK would be for it’s significantly lighter difficulty and shorter run-time.
I realise that this review probably sounded a bit negative overall, but don’t let that fool you. This IS a really good game. It’s an extremely solid Metroidvania / Souls-like. Like I said in the beginning, it doesn’t have any real critical flaws. It has very enjoyable gameplay, a non-linear map that feels appropriately large, amazing art and music, it has no bullshit areas, and doesn’t drag on forever. It just has a lot of minor disappointments and annoyances that may or may not add up to a legitimate grievance, depending on who’s playing. And I won’t lie, these things do annoy me and kinda break my heart, because this game would really have deserved a lot more polish.
The reason I genuinely really like this game, and consider it not only worth your time but one of the better experiences I’ve had in a while is simple; it has heart. It has a soul. It’s a passion project by a couple of people that clearly love the Metroidvania genre, and cared a lot about the story they were trying to tell. It’s not a cynical, self-referential, meta-humour ridden “””clever””” game, nor is it a soulless, predatory cash grab, it’s a game that’s not afraid to pull on your heartstrings and present you with some actual emotion here and there. Again, I REALLY like this game, and I think every fan of Metroidvania games ought to give this one a shot. Even though I have problems with it, I enjoyed it more than other MVs I’ve played recently, including Salt & Sanctuary, The Messenger, Metroid: Dread and both Ori’s, and I think that’s saying something. All things considered, I do think this game is underrated. It genuinely is a very fun game, with an extremely solid foundation, and I could see a sequel ironing out a lot of the kinks, creating a truly fantastic gaming experience in the process.
I think there are a lot of people who would probably get a lot out of this. I’ll definitely give it a second playthrough some time in the future.
7,5 / 10
I feel myself kind of torn when talking about this game. It's a good game, by all means, but in a way that it could've just been a considerably more solid experience, and it's just drawn back by many aspects that weren't really polished.
While the story and lore aren't anything innovative in particular, they're quite good and I loved them, they did a really great job in this regard...but then, there's the gameplay experience. I feel like Ender Lilies tries to be Hollow Knight so badly but really fails in that regard. The game doesn't have anything that makes it stand out against other Metroidvanias, and this, to be honest, wouldn't have been an issue if the game was well designed...but it's not. Especially in the later areas, it felt kind of frustrating seeing all the visual and narrative work they put into the areas, because then the gameplay experience was really frustrating, unfair and actually stupid at many times.
In the end, I really enjoyed my time with the game, but I cannot help but feel a bittersweetness about it, maybe I'd have liked it more if it was a VN, but who knows.
While the story and lore aren't anything innovative in particular, they're quite good and I loved them, they did a really great job in this regard...but then, there's the gameplay experience. I feel like Ender Lilies tries to be Hollow Knight so badly but really fails in that regard. The game doesn't have anything that makes it stand out against other Metroidvanias, and this, to be honest, wouldn't have been an issue if the game was well designed...but it's not. Especially in the later areas, it felt kind of frustrating seeing all the visual and narrative work they put into the areas, because then the gameplay experience was really frustrating, unfair and actually stupid at many times.
In the end, I really enjoyed my time with the game, but I cannot help but feel a bittersweetness about it, maybe I'd have liked it more if it was a VN, but who knows.
Xenosaga: Pied Piper
2004
Xenosaga: Pied Piper is mostly considered Lost Media, however you can read the Fan-Translation of the script from the game online and watch some gameplay on YouTube, with that you kinda can experience the game.
Gameplay and graphical wise this game isn't that special, because it released back then on mobile phones, but something else makes this game so damn good, the story and characters! Soraya Saga wrote the script for the game and as you know from Xenosaga Episode I and Xenogears, she is an absolute fantastic writer, and you can see that all the way through in this game. Jan Sauer might be one of my favorite characters of all time, and seeing his backstory here is awesome. For Xenosaga Fans it is a must-have to read about the story from the game and I would love to see a Remake of the game with 3D visuals and animated cutscenes.
Gameplay and graphical wise this game isn't that special, because it released back then on mobile phones, but something else makes this game so damn good, the story and characters! Soraya Saga wrote the script for the game and as you know from Xenosaga Episode I and Xenogears, she is an absolute fantastic writer, and you can see that all the way through in this game. Jan Sauer might be one of my favorite characters of all time, and seeing his backstory here is awesome. For Xenosaga Fans it is a must-have to read about the story from the game and I would love to see a Remake of the game with 3D visuals and animated cutscenes.
There is so much to say about this game, I honestly don't know how to properly start.
So firstly, let's talk about the battle system, it is pretty much the same as in Xenoblade 3, there are some slight changes but at the end it is just as good as in Xenoblade 3, you are a bit more restricted in what you can do, but that is completely fine for the shorter length of the game.
Next I'd like to talk about the exploration, just like in the other Xenoblade games the world design is excellent, and you can't stop looking at these wonderful areas. I really enjoyed exploring every little place and collecting all the items for the collectopedia. Tho, it can be a bit annoying finding certain items, like those with that you can unlock a new gem slot.
The music is again perfect, for example I totally couldn't stop listening to Aurora Shelf, its so good, like how is it possible to always make such good music for these games? Not to forget the ending theme, which really brought tears to my eyes.
Oh, by the way, they fixed Tornas major problem, the Community System! Now, it won't lock you out to progress the story if you don't do all the side quests. I had way more fun to complete this Community System, than in Torna. The side content is in general smaller than in Torna, both games have pretty much the same amount of content, but Future Redeemed has more content and focus with the Main Story.
Furthermore, I have to talk about the characters, just like in Xenoblade 2, Xenoblade 2: Torna - The Golden Country and Xenoblade 3, this game has awesome and likeable characters. My favorites were probably Matthew, Glimmer and of course Rex and Shulk, but honestly all characters are great. Because of the shorter length of the game, they don't have the time to flesh the characters out like in the Main Game, but they did a very good job here, just like in Torna. If you played the other Xenoblade games, there are great moments with the characters.
You also should play at least all the other numbered Xenoblade games before this, you definitely will get the most out of this, if you play this as the last one.
Talking about the story, it was very good and everything I wished for, but also there were things I would've never expected to be in this game. I'm not going to spoil anything, you really should experience it yourself. I at least wasn't at all disappointed with this story.
Lastly, let's talk about the future of the Xeno games, and there is honsetly a lot to talk about. But I still don't want to spoil anything so, let's just say that this game opened a lot of questions concerning the series, while answering pretty much most of the questions there were left for the trilogy. The Future will be very interesting, and fans of the old Xeno games should have a pretty good guess about the next Saga.
I love this game and together with Xenoblade 3 it is one of my favorite games, I can't recommend this series enough, if you love amazing characters, mind blowing stories and games made with passion and love, then Xenogears, Xenosaga and Xenoblade is for you!
Thank you Tetsuya Takahashi and every person from the team of Monolithsoft for making these wonderful games.
(And thanks to Soraya Saga for creating Xenogears and Xenosaga together with Takahashi, sadly she isn't there anymore with Xenoblade and the last Xeno game she worked on was Xenosaga Pied Piper, but she is for sure one of my favorite story and characters writer. Hope she will return for the series in the future!)
So firstly, let's talk about the battle system, it is pretty much the same as in Xenoblade 3, there are some slight changes but at the end it is just as good as in Xenoblade 3, you are a bit more restricted in what you can do, but that is completely fine for the shorter length of the game.
Next I'd like to talk about the exploration, just like in the other Xenoblade games the world design is excellent, and you can't stop looking at these wonderful areas. I really enjoyed exploring every little place and collecting all the items for the collectopedia. Tho, it can be a bit annoying finding certain items, like those with that you can unlock a new gem slot.
The music is again perfect, for example I totally couldn't stop listening to Aurora Shelf, its so good, like how is it possible to always make such good music for these games? Not to forget the ending theme, which really brought tears to my eyes.
Oh, by the way, they fixed Tornas major problem, the Community System! Now, it won't lock you out to progress the story if you don't do all the side quests. I had way more fun to complete this Community System, than in Torna. The side content is in general smaller than in Torna, both games have pretty much the same amount of content, but Future Redeemed has more content and focus with the Main Story.
Furthermore, I have to talk about the characters, just like in Xenoblade 2, Xenoblade 2: Torna - The Golden Country and Xenoblade 3, this game has awesome and likeable characters. My favorites were probably Matthew, Glimmer and of course Rex and Shulk, but honestly all characters are great. Because of the shorter length of the game, they don't have the time to flesh the characters out like in the Main Game, but they did a very good job here, just like in Torna. If you played the other Xenoblade games, there are great moments with the characters.
You also should play at least all the other numbered Xenoblade games before this, you definitely will get the most out of this, if you play this as the last one.
Talking about the story, it was very good and everything I wished for, but also there were things I would've never expected to be in this game. I'm not going to spoil anything, you really should experience it yourself. I at least wasn't at all disappointed with this story.
Lastly, let's talk about the future of the Xeno games, and there is honsetly a lot to talk about. But I still don't want to spoil anything so, let's just say that this game opened a lot of questions concerning the series, while answering pretty much most of the questions there were left for the trilogy. The Future will be very interesting, and fans of the old Xeno games should have a pretty good guess about the next Saga.
I love this game and together with Xenoblade 3 it is one of my favorite games, I can't recommend this series enough, if you love amazing characters, mind blowing stories and games made with passion and love, then Xenogears, Xenosaga and Xenoblade is for you!
Thank you Tetsuya Takahashi and every person from the team of Monolithsoft for making these wonderful games.
(And thanks to Soraya Saga for creating Xenogears and Xenosaga together with Takahashi, sadly she isn't there anymore with Xenoblade and the last Xeno game she worked on was Xenosaga Pied Piper, but she is for sure one of my favorite story and characters writer. Hope she will return for the series in the future!)
Outer Wilds
2019
my first major exploration game, and the closest I've ever played to a horror game (which it definitely is at many points!)
absolutely gobsmacked at how ambitious and cleverly designed it is. having the ability to just point in a direction, explore the solar system, and pretty naturally have a compelling story stitched together for you no matter what choices you make was liberating and terrifying and wonderful—
for the 80% of the game where that was true, lol. I'd say curiosity and some mental elbow grease goes quite far in the game, but some of the puzzles? c'mon now. some of those logic leaps are wider than even zero gravity can take you
I think the ending makes a lot of sense for the type of game this is, but I still don't think that means I love it. will have to revisit
anyways: still a wholly unique experience that I treasure a lot
absolutely gobsmacked at how ambitious and cleverly designed it is. having the ability to just point in a direction, explore the solar system, and pretty naturally have a compelling story stitched together for you no matter what choices you make was liberating and terrifying and wonderful—
for the 80% of the game where that was true, lol. I'd say curiosity and some mental elbow grease goes quite far in the game, but some of the puzzles? c'mon now. some of those logic leaps are wider than even zero gravity can take you
I think the ending makes a lot of sense for the type of game this is, but I still don't think that means I love it. will have to revisit
anyways: still a wholly unique experience that I treasure a lot
Dead Island 2
2023
Words cant describe the feelings this game has made me feel, probably more than any other.
Not because the gameplay, or the story, or even the graphics.
Its because I was a 10 year old boy when this was announced, and Im playing it now as an 18 year old young man.
It all started with an e3, and then they showed it, that trailer.
i was pumped. I loved riptide (Despite its flaws) and adored the first one. I still remember seeing the ad for the trailer on my computer while browsing youtube.
I quickly asked my mom if i could pre order it, and then explained to her about the placeholder date, but that it was most likely gonna release.
She wasn't having any of that and had a hunch it would never release and told me no.
Fast forward and it got canceled.
announced again! (twice)
Finally, in 2023 ive gotten my hands on it.
I love it, its not an open world game, but it is a level by level sandbox kind of layout and it works perfect.
The weapons feel like they have good weight to them, the zombies react accordingly and the character models and dialogue are actually pretty good.
The plot isn't anything major but that's not what I expected. What is there is fundamentally a good time, but nothing that will make you jump out of your seat.
The F.L.E.S.H system, fuckin awesome. You can slice a zombie in the stomach, head, leg, arm, It all leaves a unique mark on the skin and muscle.
You can literally punch a zombie until it is mostly skeleton.
The weapons are a good variation and the guns are pretty fun too, they don't have MWll levels of animation but what's there is decent and very acceptable.
Melee animations look a lot more smooth and polished, my favorite was the kamikaze, fire axe, crescent blades, blood rage knife, and the claws.
A decent amount of characters with different perk cards and playstyles to try out which is pretty cool. Each person has their own reason why they happen to be there and what they want to do when they get out.
They did a good job of making sure it didn't feel like each character was the same.
(I played as Ryan, the guy wearing a firefighter outfit to be a male escort, then ended up in the zombie apocalypse. He wants to get back to his brother)
The plot is very B-movie but thats what the devs were going for and they nailed it
Part of me cant help but wish some of those features in the Jager Build were present here, Particularly the weapons, and the duel wielding of them.
Weapon mods also seemed a bit more hidden and sleek, sad to see the Ice Blueprint didn't make it, but it would be great to see all that in a DLC.
Vehicles too.
Not because the gameplay, or the story, or even the graphics.
Its because I was a 10 year old boy when this was announced, and Im playing it now as an 18 year old young man.
It all started with an e3, and then they showed it, that trailer.
i was pumped. I loved riptide (Despite its flaws) and adored the first one. I still remember seeing the ad for the trailer on my computer while browsing youtube.
I quickly asked my mom if i could pre order it, and then explained to her about the placeholder date, but that it was most likely gonna release.
She wasn't having any of that and had a hunch it would never release and told me no.
Fast forward and it got canceled.
announced again! (twice)
Finally, in 2023 ive gotten my hands on it.
I love it, its not an open world game, but it is a level by level sandbox kind of layout and it works perfect.
The weapons feel like they have good weight to them, the zombies react accordingly and the character models and dialogue are actually pretty good.
The plot isn't anything major but that's not what I expected. What is there is fundamentally a good time, but nothing that will make you jump out of your seat.
The F.L.E.S.H system, fuckin awesome. You can slice a zombie in the stomach, head, leg, arm, It all leaves a unique mark on the skin and muscle.
You can literally punch a zombie until it is mostly skeleton.
The weapons are a good variation and the guns are pretty fun too, they don't have MWll levels of animation but what's there is decent and very acceptable.
Melee animations look a lot more smooth and polished, my favorite was the kamikaze, fire axe, crescent blades, blood rage knife, and the claws.
A decent amount of characters with different perk cards and playstyles to try out which is pretty cool. Each person has their own reason why they happen to be there and what they want to do when they get out.
They did a good job of making sure it didn't feel like each character was the same.
(I played as Ryan, the guy wearing a firefighter outfit to be a male escort, then ended up in the zombie apocalypse. He wants to get back to his brother)
The plot is very B-movie but thats what the devs were going for and they nailed it
Part of me cant help but wish some of those features in the Jager Build were present here, Particularly the weapons, and the duel wielding of them.
Weapon mods also seemed a bit more hidden and sleek, sad to see the Ice Blueprint didn't make it, but it would be great to see all that in a DLC.
Vehicles too.
Peak fiction, what else should I say? It's worth alone to play Episode I (which itself is a masterpiece), Episode II and not to forget reading about Pied Piper and A Missing Year to experience this masterpiece. Best characters I've seen in a story, the best graphics on Playstation 2, wonderful gameplay and a story which is nearly as good as the one from Xenogears! Play this trilogy, I can't recommend it enough, especially if you like Xenoblade.
Gorogoa
2017
A neat little puzzle game with a really interesting gimmick in the form of it's various slides -- I was really enjoying my time with this and ready to give it a 4/5 but the later parts of the game have such an overwhelming amount of useless things you can zoom in on and interact with that it really lost me unfortunately.
I went from slowly figuring things out to wasting time trying everything or trying to make a wrong-solution work, only to find that the correct way was not only to ignore the redundant scenes that made up over half of my options, but to use something in an unusual way that hadn't been done yet. The latter would've been perfectly fine on its own, a eureka moment in the making, but personally I had a really hard time picking up on the little tricks like that when around 70% of the things I had at my disposal would later prove to be there only to make the solution harder to find.
Definitely worth checking out if you like these kinds of indie puzzle games, if you can get through the whole thing without checking a guide at all please feel free to bully me for being the big stoop 😌
I went from slowly figuring things out to wasting time trying everything or trying to make a wrong-solution work, only to find that the correct way was not only to ignore the redundant scenes that made up over half of my options, but to use something in an unusual way that hadn't been done yet. The latter would've been perfectly fine on its own, a eureka moment in the making, but personally I had a really hard time picking up on the little tricks like that when around 70% of the things I had at my disposal would later prove to be there only to make the solution harder to find.
Definitely worth checking out if you like these kinds of indie puzzle games, if you can get through the whole thing without checking a guide at all please feel free to bully me for being the big stoop 😌
I remember Shadow of the Tomb Raider being announced at E3 to... not much excitement. The spokesperson apathetically claimed that, in this thrilling conclusion to the trilogy, we'd get to see Lara finally become the survivor that she is. It was a baffling way to present the game, not only because it doesn't represent the final product at all, but because anyone who played either of the prequels knew that that subject was settled: Lara first kills someone within the first hour of TR 2013, and it quickly escalates so that by the midway point of that game, she's screaming bloody murder, leveling enemy bases solo and demanding her girlfriend back. Come Rise of the Tomb Raider, she was out and about, pulling the veil on Trinity and exercising the biggest death wish in the history of fiction.
And Shadow picks up where Rise left off: Lara is hot on the trail of Trinity's agents, and the game opens with her suffering a horrifying near-death experience, then cuts to a few days before when she was suffering another, even more horrifying near-death experience just to reach the interior of a cave she could apparently have just walked into. Her adventure, this time, makes her cross paths with that of the leader of Trinity, who in turn is chasing after two Mayan relics: the knife of Chak Chel and the Silver Box of Ix Chel, which together, legend has it, will summon the God of Creation and allow their bearer to remake the world.
Said to have had a budget of upwards of 75 million US dollars for development alone, it seems Square and Eidos really wanted to send Lara out with a bang, and aside from a beautifully realized game world and gorgeous cutscenes, the game boasts a handful of changes compared to its predecessor that, while probably not enough to bring in people who weren't into the series before, and while not necessarily for better or for worse, feel refreshing to a returning fan like myself.
One of the most prominent changes to the formula is that the game no longer follows a metroidvania-like design: items like explosive arrows are now used in combat only, and others like the rope ascender and lockpick are simply bought. Backtracking is now entirely optional, with the only reward being money and collectibles. Whether that's a good or bad thing is personal: I miss some of the exploration opportunities, but at the same time, I found that SotTR's environments are far easier to parse than its prequel's due to focusing more on a linear track than on openness.
In fact, on the topic of environment design, should you choose to play on hard difficulty, the game will entirely disable the white paint that usually guides you through climbing sections, and what a fascinating experience that was. At first, it's confusing, but over time, you start picking up on the more subtle cues and paying more attention to the environment, and thus, appreciating the level design a bit more. Curiously, an even higher difficulty disables Lara's detective vision, but that one, I don't recommend. Not because of that handicap, but because it removes checkpoints, making some sections a massive PITA.
Another way in which I enjoy Shadow's environments a bit more than the prequel is that they focus a bit more on nature -- the game mostly taking place in the Amazon jungle -- and on actual ancient ruins. Rise had this thing with the Soviets having found Kitezh first, and a lot of time was spent in buildings they made instead of the lost civilization -- that, and it also had a lot of firefights. Shadow, on the other hand, dials back on the shooting and has Lara spend almost her entire time either in lush environments or in Mayan/Incan buildings. Plus, the challenge tombs it brings are phenomenal: they include some visually stunning locations, as well as a bunch of real head-scratchers. Shoutouts to the Temple of the Sun and its great use of Tomb Raider mechanics to create a fiendish light puzzle.
There are, however, ways in which Shadow feels somewhat less polished. This is noticeable during normal gameplay with the odd glitch here and there, but the most painful shortcoming by far is in the narrative itself, which feels like different versions of the script got mushed together, or the major plot points were defined first and then had the gaps between them filled retroactively. Those are the only explanations I can muster for the weird pacing and awkwardly timed events. There are also bits of the story that feel too contrived even for the levels of suspension of disbelief the Tomb Raider series usually calls for. Reading the many lore items found throughout the game helps undo some of the apparent contradictions, but not all.
This could have all been forgiven if the main characters' development had been more consistent, but that also doesn't happen. The story seems to want to focus on the theme of guilt: on one side, we have Lara, crushed not only by all the deaths she witnessed in the past, but also by causing disasters through her search for relics in the present. On the other side, there's the antagonist, Dominguez, whose failure to stop his brother's death pains him greatly, as does his involvement in Richard Croft's murder. This latter event creates an interesting dynamic between the two characters: Dominguez's regret for taking away Lara's father makes him look at her with eyes of pity, and even compassion. On many occasions, he could easily have had her killed, but refrains from it -- his official explanation is that Lara is useful to him, but it feels like his true reason is that he can't bring himself to hurt her further. Lara displays a similar compassion towards him in some of the sidequests, an empathy towards another who also had his family torn apart.
At least, this is my personal reading of the narrative. This is where some might accuse me of reading too much into the game, as these are undertones the story never specifically addresses nor resolves, and thus, you kind of have to squint to see them. Maybe these scenes I'm finding characterization in weren't supposed to mean that much in the long run, like so many others. For instance, at one point, Jonah snaps at Lara, and what he says is... quickly forgotten for the next several hours. At another, Lara has a psychotic episode of sorts that's followed by a mental breakdown... and everyone forgets about it one dialogue later. Maybe that was just how it was meant to be.
This is especially painful because the actors and actresses absolutely carry those scenes: Camilla Luddington makes for a phenomenal Lara, as always, and the rest of the main cast delivers some stellar performances, with Earl Baylon as Jonah and Carlos Leal as Dominguez playing off Lara spectacularly. Plus, the scene direction, the use of lighting, the visual effects, are all stunning. The scenes are individually teeming with emotion, and watching some of them individually gives me chills... but sadly, their whole doesn't reach its full potential.
Nevertheless, Lara's adventure in the lush jungles of Peru is still a fun one, and I can't help but feel melancholic that it's over. I like the survivor trilogy's Lara: she has that lovable, gentle nature to her that contrasts with the darkness lurking under her character, the complete disbelief in karmic death and the will to just stab someone who threatens her or her friends in the neck. I don't think she's coming back, though. For one, the trilogy struggled to put that character to good use past the first game -- both Rise and Shadow felt like Lara had lower stakes and a weaker development overall.
Also, as much as the cost of these games increased over time, sales decreased as the trilogy went on, with Shadow not even reaching 10 million copies sold. That, in combination with the drastic changes between games, from mechanics to console exclusivities to DLC models, to me, tell a story of games that struggled to find a place in the market. With the franchise now in new hands, Crystal Dynamics and Eidos having been sold to the Embracer Group, I'm not sure the new owners will want to keep this concept going. But oh well. One can hope.
On the subject of the DLC packs... I'm not going to write separate reviews for each one, as few of them even exceed one hour length, and even then only barely. To summarize, all of them feel like sidequests to the main game that hit the cutting room floor since the cost of development was skyrocketing. They're all fine extensions to the main game. The Nightmare is a standout for its more experimental sequences and fantastic (in both senses of the word) challenge tomb, while The Forge dives into the backstory of Kuwaq Yaku, which is conspicuously missing from the main game. If you're playing this nowadays, chances are you have the Definitive Edition, so it's worth taking the time to do these additional quests.
And Shadow picks up where Rise left off: Lara is hot on the trail of Trinity's agents, and the game opens with her suffering a horrifying near-death experience, then cuts to a few days before when she was suffering another, even more horrifying near-death experience just to reach the interior of a cave she could apparently have just walked into. Her adventure, this time, makes her cross paths with that of the leader of Trinity, who in turn is chasing after two Mayan relics: the knife of Chak Chel and the Silver Box of Ix Chel, which together, legend has it, will summon the God of Creation and allow their bearer to remake the world.
Said to have had a budget of upwards of 75 million US dollars for development alone, it seems Square and Eidos really wanted to send Lara out with a bang, and aside from a beautifully realized game world and gorgeous cutscenes, the game boasts a handful of changes compared to its predecessor that, while probably not enough to bring in people who weren't into the series before, and while not necessarily for better or for worse, feel refreshing to a returning fan like myself.
One of the most prominent changes to the formula is that the game no longer follows a metroidvania-like design: items like explosive arrows are now used in combat only, and others like the rope ascender and lockpick are simply bought. Backtracking is now entirely optional, with the only reward being money and collectibles. Whether that's a good or bad thing is personal: I miss some of the exploration opportunities, but at the same time, I found that SotTR's environments are far easier to parse than its prequel's due to focusing more on a linear track than on openness.
In fact, on the topic of environment design, should you choose to play on hard difficulty, the game will entirely disable the white paint that usually guides you through climbing sections, and what a fascinating experience that was. At first, it's confusing, but over time, you start picking up on the more subtle cues and paying more attention to the environment, and thus, appreciating the level design a bit more. Curiously, an even higher difficulty disables Lara's detective vision, but that one, I don't recommend. Not because of that handicap, but because it removes checkpoints, making some sections a massive PITA.
Another way in which I enjoy Shadow's environments a bit more than the prequel is that they focus a bit more on nature -- the game mostly taking place in the Amazon jungle -- and on actual ancient ruins. Rise had this thing with the Soviets having found Kitezh first, and a lot of time was spent in buildings they made instead of the lost civilization -- that, and it also had a lot of firefights. Shadow, on the other hand, dials back on the shooting and has Lara spend almost her entire time either in lush environments or in Mayan/Incan buildings. Plus, the challenge tombs it brings are phenomenal: they include some visually stunning locations, as well as a bunch of real head-scratchers. Shoutouts to the Temple of the Sun and its great use of Tomb Raider mechanics to create a fiendish light puzzle.
There are, however, ways in which Shadow feels somewhat less polished. This is noticeable during normal gameplay with the odd glitch here and there, but the most painful shortcoming by far is in the narrative itself, which feels like different versions of the script got mushed together, or the major plot points were defined first and then had the gaps between them filled retroactively. Those are the only explanations I can muster for the weird pacing and awkwardly timed events. There are also bits of the story that feel too contrived even for the levels of suspension of disbelief the Tomb Raider series usually calls for. Reading the many lore items found throughout the game helps undo some of the apparent contradictions, but not all.
This could have all been forgiven if the main characters' development had been more consistent, but that also doesn't happen. The story seems to want to focus on the theme of guilt: on one side, we have Lara, crushed not only by all the deaths she witnessed in the past, but also by causing disasters through her search for relics in the present. On the other side, there's the antagonist, Dominguez, whose failure to stop his brother's death pains him greatly, as does his involvement in Richard Croft's murder. This latter event creates an interesting dynamic between the two characters: Dominguez's regret for taking away Lara's father makes him look at her with eyes of pity, and even compassion. On many occasions, he could easily have had her killed, but refrains from it -- his official explanation is that Lara is useful to him, but it feels like his true reason is that he can't bring himself to hurt her further. Lara displays a similar compassion towards him in some of the sidequests, an empathy towards another who also had his family torn apart.
At least, this is my personal reading of the narrative. This is where some might accuse me of reading too much into the game, as these are undertones the story never specifically addresses nor resolves, and thus, you kind of have to squint to see them. Maybe these scenes I'm finding characterization in weren't supposed to mean that much in the long run, like so many others. For instance, at one point, Jonah snaps at Lara, and what he says is... quickly forgotten for the next several hours. At another, Lara has a psychotic episode of sorts that's followed by a mental breakdown... and everyone forgets about it one dialogue later. Maybe that was just how it was meant to be.
This is especially painful because the actors and actresses absolutely carry those scenes: Camilla Luddington makes for a phenomenal Lara, as always, and the rest of the main cast delivers some stellar performances, with Earl Baylon as Jonah and Carlos Leal as Dominguez playing off Lara spectacularly. Plus, the scene direction, the use of lighting, the visual effects, are all stunning. The scenes are individually teeming with emotion, and watching some of them individually gives me chills... but sadly, their whole doesn't reach its full potential.
Nevertheless, Lara's adventure in the lush jungles of Peru is still a fun one, and I can't help but feel melancholic that it's over. I like the survivor trilogy's Lara: she has that lovable, gentle nature to her that contrasts with the darkness lurking under her character, the complete disbelief in karmic death and the will to just stab someone who threatens her or her friends in the neck. I don't think she's coming back, though. For one, the trilogy struggled to put that character to good use past the first game -- both Rise and Shadow felt like Lara had lower stakes and a weaker development overall.
Also, as much as the cost of these games increased over time, sales decreased as the trilogy went on, with Shadow not even reaching 10 million copies sold. That, in combination with the drastic changes between games, from mechanics to console exclusivities to DLC models, to me, tell a story of games that struggled to find a place in the market. With the franchise now in new hands, Crystal Dynamics and Eidos having been sold to the Embracer Group, I'm not sure the new owners will want to keep this concept going. But oh well. One can hope.
On the subject of the DLC packs... I'm not going to write separate reviews for each one, as few of them even exceed one hour length, and even then only barely. To summarize, all of them feel like sidequests to the main game that hit the cutting room floor since the cost of development was skyrocketing. They're all fine extensions to the main game. The Nightmare is a standout for its more experimental sequences and fantastic (in both senses of the word) challenge tomb, while The Forge dives into the backstory of Kuwaq Yaku, which is conspicuously missing from the main game. If you're playing this nowadays, chances are you have the Definitive Edition, so it's worth taking the time to do these additional quests.
Mirror's Edge
2008
A lot of fun when it’s working, but it feels like the weak link here is me.
If I were a younger man (read: a less busy man), this game has all the hallmarks of something I would sink my teeth into. I can easily picture myself wringing the life out of this game with time trials and achievement hunting until I’ve mastered every level.
As it stands right now, it took me nearly two months just to beat the story, and my backlog cries out for other games to play, so for the time being, I’ll be retiring this one. But I had a great time when I wasn’t banging my head against the wall trying to figure out what to do. And when I say the Xbox One X Enhanced treatment—4K, HDR, and optimization, in this case—sings, I mean SINGS. Mirror’s Edge is something like 15 years old I believe, and just retooling the existing game and assets has a stunning effect all these years on. It also helps that the environment/level design and art style are superb and distinctive.
I guess it’s between a 7 and an 8 for me, and if I spent more time on perfecting it, I’d probably lean 8. The story is confusing and mostly just an excuse to do parkour, but the animated cutscenes are super cool and seem like relics of a bygone era when games could be 8 hours long and not overstuffed with content.
Video review here: Cracking Mirror's Edge - Review/Analysis
https://youtu.be/P3EnkUV20uo
If I were a younger man (read: a less busy man), this game has all the hallmarks of something I would sink my teeth into. I can easily picture myself wringing the life out of this game with time trials and achievement hunting until I’ve mastered every level.
As it stands right now, it took me nearly two months just to beat the story, and my backlog cries out for other games to play, so for the time being, I’ll be retiring this one. But I had a great time when I wasn’t banging my head against the wall trying to figure out what to do. And when I say the Xbox One X Enhanced treatment—4K, HDR, and optimization, in this case—sings, I mean SINGS. Mirror’s Edge is something like 15 years old I believe, and just retooling the existing game and assets has a stunning effect all these years on. It also helps that the environment/level design and art style are superb and distinctive.
I guess it’s between a 7 and an 8 for me, and if I spent more time on perfecting it, I’d probably lean 8. The story is confusing and mostly just an excuse to do parkour, but the animated cutscenes are super cool and seem like relics of a bygone era when games could be 8 hours long and not overstuffed with content.
Video review here: Cracking Mirror's Edge - Review/Analysis
https://youtu.be/P3EnkUV20uo