"One would be ill-advised to consume this in its current state, or its original"
I backed this game on Kickstarter; after playing the pre-alpha demo on the campaign's page, I asked myself "would I actually want to play a whole game like this?" The answer was, and is, yeah, sure. I bought another copy of the game to play on console. I really wanted to like it. I posted on both the discord server and the forum (which was basically dead because the discord exists).
For most of the game's development, periodically checking out the alpha and beta versions of the game was a kind of tug-of-war between how much of the game was technically finished and how much of it was mechanically finished. I would usually either find myself unable to progress early on because of glitches, or be able to explore well into late-game areas because the lock-and-key progression simply hadn't been set up or finalized yet. I bring this up not as a criticism, but just to make clear that while I haven't gotten very far in the final release of the game, I have seen most of the content on offer here, even if I don't have a real grasp on how it's been structured. Though I will point out there are some aspects of the pre-release versions that I preferred.
The game leaves a terrible first impression. Graphics settings are becoming more common in console games, but it's pretty unusual for a console game to not only have V-sync options, but to disable it by default. The narrative presentation being entirely in text and gibberish voice acting becomes a lot more acceptable once you actually find characters in the world to talk to, but when it's just a disembodied voice it feels really cheap. The tutorial's exit is gated by a boss that has way too much health, does way too much damage, and inflicts a status ailment if you're too close to it. The opening area does have a number of side-paths where you can gather more experience (Axions), and find more specialized weapons (a dagger for dexterity builds, a concrete slab for strength users), but there is no decent armor anywhere in the tutorial. The strangest part is that in one of the pre-release versions, there was an armor set in one of those side-paths, and I have no idea what made them change that.
The fact that levels are separated by loading screens rather than being a single continuous world (as in the Souls games that inspired it) is both a blessing and a curse. The biggest upside is that once the game opens up, the world is very interconnected, since they don't necessarily need to worry about how it would all logically fit together. The obvious side effect of this is that the game does not logically fit together, and it's basically impossible to form a mental map of the more labyrinthine areas of the game. Not to mention that it just feels kind of cheap, even if I can mostly excuse that since this is the first game from a new, small studio.
The general game-feel is mostly solid, I think it's the closest anyone has gotten yet to making a game feel like a From game (even if they sure as hell haven't captured the aesthetics). Combat is pretty engaging once you get far enough to start upgrading and customizing your weapons, but until that point it's a slog. Platforming isn't exactly one of the game's strengths, but it's definitely interesting to see a Souls-style game with a heavy emphasis on such mechanics. The platforming section in the observatory is very effective at showing off both its strengths and weaknesses; sliding up and down the vertical rails is fun, basic traversal is fine, anything that requires precision or mid-air control is a crapshoot. In of the pre-release builds, doing a light attack in midair functioned similar to an air-dash, but from what I remember it was stiff enough that it didn't help much with precision.
The art direction is one of the weakest areas of the game. Some enemies straight up look like a Zeon Zaku, one of the bosses looks like alien Dhalsim, there's an entire faction and area with a gold art-deco aesthetic; I don't actually know whether or not they made their character models in-house, but I could easily believe that every single piece of art in the game was purchased on an asset store. Most of the game is grey metal hallways, and half the time doors are completely indistinguishable from the walls that surround them. The death screen is genuinely embarrassing to look at, it's the kind of thing I would expect to see in a 2010 mobile game.
Despite everything there are small bits of the game I appreciate. The first time I saw areas like the Sohn District and Arisen Dominion I felt like the level design was strong enough that this game had real potential, if they could pull everything together. The amount of branching paths and the weird world-tendency-esque systems make it feel like there's a lot to uncover, even if a lot of it is more of the same. It seems like most of the major players at Cradle are former Ubisoft people, and if this is what they want to do and it's working out for them then I definitely think it's for the better, and I want to see what they do next, but I don't think this is a particularly strong start.
If you're somehow just absolutely starving for more Souls, you might get something out of this. I'd say most people won't.
I backed this game on Kickstarter; after playing the pre-alpha demo on the campaign's page, I asked myself "would I actually want to play a whole game like this?" The answer was, and is, yeah, sure. I bought another copy of the game to play on console. I really wanted to like it. I posted on both the discord server and the forum (which was basically dead because the discord exists).
For most of the game's development, periodically checking out the alpha and beta versions of the game was a kind of tug-of-war between how much of the game was technically finished and how much of it was mechanically finished. I would usually either find myself unable to progress early on because of glitches, or be able to explore well into late-game areas because the lock-and-key progression simply hadn't been set up or finalized yet. I bring this up not as a criticism, but just to make clear that while I haven't gotten very far in the final release of the game, I have seen most of the content on offer here, even if I don't have a real grasp on how it's been structured. Though I will point out there are some aspects of the pre-release versions that I preferred.
The game leaves a terrible first impression. Graphics settings are becoming more common in console games, but it's pretty unusual for a console game to not only have V-sync options, but to disable it by default. The narrative presentation being entirely in text and gibberish voice acting becomes a lot more acceptable once you actually find characters in the world to talk to, but when it's just a disembodied voice it feels really cheap. The tutorial's exit is gated by a boss that has way too much health, does way too much damage, and inflicts a status ailment if you're too close to it. The opening area does have a number of side-paths where you can gather more experience (Axions), and find more specialized weapons (a dagger for dexterity builds, a concrete slab for strength users), but there is no decent armor anywhere in the tutorial. The strangest part is that in one of the pre-release versions, there was an armor set in one of those side-paths, and I have no idea what made them change that.
The fact that levels are separated by loading screens rather than being a single continuous world (as in the Souls games that inspired it) is both a blessing and a curse. The biggest upside is that once the game opens up, the world is very interconnected, since they don't necessarily need to worry about how it would all logically fit together. The obvious side effect of this is that the game does not logically fit together, and it's basically impossible to form a mental map of the more labyrinthine areas of the game. Not to mention that it just feels kind of cheap, even if I can mostly excuse that since this is the first game from a new, small studio.
The general game-feel is mostly solid, I think it's the closest anyone has gotten yet to making a game feel like a From game (even if they sure as hell haven't captured the aesthetics). Combat is pretty engaging once you get far enough to start upgrading and customizing your weapons, but until that point it's a slog. Platforming isn't exactly one of the game's strengths, but it's definitely interesting to see a Souls-style game with a heavy emphasis on such mechanics. The platforming section in the observatory is very effective at showing off both its strengths and weaknesses; sliding up and down the vertical rails is fun, basic traversal is fine, anything that requires precision or mid-air control is a crapshoot. In of the pre-release builds, doing a light attack in midair functioned similar to an air-dash, but from what I remember it was stiff enough that it didn't help much with precision.
The art direction is one of the weakest areas of the game. Some enemies straight up look like a Zeon Zaku, one of the bosses looks like alien Dhalsim, there's an entire faction and area with a gold art-deco aesthetic; I don't actually know whether or not they made their character models in-house, but I could easily believe that every single piece of art in the game was purchased on an asset store. Most of the game is grey metal hallways, and half the time doors are completely indistinguishable from the walls that surround them. The death screen is genuinely embarrassing to look at, it's the kind of thing I would expect to see in a 2010 mobile game.
Despite everything there are small bits of the game I appreciate. The first time I saw areas like the Sohn District and Arisen Dominion I felt like the level design was strong enough that this game had real potential, if they could pull everything together. The amount of branching paths and the weird world-tendency-esque systems make it feel like there's a lot to uncover, even if a lot of it is more of the same. It seems like most of the major players at Cradle are former Ubisoft people, and if this is what they want to do and it's working out for them then I definitely think it's for the better, and I want to see what they do next, but I don't think this is a particularly strong start.
If you're somehow just absolutely starving for more Souls, you might get something out of this. I'd say most people won't.