Rise Of The Ronin Review – Long-Term Investment
If someone tells me a game takes several hours to “get good,” my immediate feeling is that I will never play that game. Who has hours to waste waiting for the good part of anything when there are so many other games to play? But my opinion of Rise of the Ronin changed drastically over the course of my 50 hours of playtime–in the first five or 10 hours, I didn’t really like it. By the end, I was planning to dive back in to clear out side quests and replay key moments to see how the story might change. It’s a game that takes its time getting good, but once it finds its footing in samurai-sword duels and character-focused missions, your investment pays off.
The thing that turned the tide for me is the way Rise of the Ronin focuses on telling small, character-driven stories that weave together into a large, history-shaping narrative. The entire game is built on its “Bond” system, where doing side quests big and small builds your relationships with everyone, from the different provinces of Ronin’s massive open-world Japan, to the many characters you meet throughout the course of the game.
Though the Bond system isn’t particularly different from building up faction reputation, liberating map segments, or growing relationship stats with characters like you might see in other games, the focus on investing in all those things and people is illustrative of Team Ninja’s approach to the entire game. Your personal connection to everything in Rise of the Ronin is what makes it work, and the reason it’s worth it to power through its learning curve and less remarkable opening hours.
Rise of the Ronin puts you into the role of a samurai trained alongside another warrior from childhood to be an unstoppable, sword-wielding fighting duo for a group called the Veiled Edge. It’s the 1860s and Japan is opening itself to foreign powers, including the United States and England, creating political strife. On a mission to assassinate a powerful American, your “blade twin” sacrifices themselves so you can escape. Soon after, the rest of the Veiled Edge is wiped out for rebelling against Japan’s government, the shogunate. You set out alone, a ronin warrior without a clan, but soon discover your blade twin is rumored to have survived. What ensues is a lot of politics, intrigue, and adventure.
With no clan to serve, you essentially become a sword for hire and lots of people want your help, which you exchange for leads in finding your blade twin. The main part of Rise of the Ronin’s gameplay is stealthily sneaking up on enemies to assassinate them, and fighting duels. Combat has a similar fast-paced feel to games like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Ghost of Tsushima, with an emphasis on parrying enemies at the right moment and using different fighting styles to counter your opponents. Fights are frenetic, but for that early portion, they’re also frustrating thanks to a combination of weird controls and enemies who will often deploy intense, overwhelming force against you.
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You and every fighter you come across have both a health bar and a Ki gauge, which is akin to a stamina meter. Ki powers every blow, dodge, and block, and if you run out of Ki and are struck while blocking, you’ll be dazed for a few seconds, opening you up to more punishment. Your goal in every fight–especially with tougher opponents–is to strike blows while parrying their attacks, breaking their rhythm and whittling down their Ki to stagger them. When staggered, most normal enemies can be executed, while tougher foes and bosses take a big hit, then get their Ki back to go another round. It sounds pretty standard, especially with the ubiquity of Souls-likes and similar styles of swordplay focused on parrying, stamina, and breaking an enemy’s posture. Rise of the Ronin has its own take on the approach, though, and it took me a while to build up the skill to actually enjoy it.
The main two elements of sword fights are Martial attacks, which are powerful special moves, and Countersparks, which are flowery parry moves. Like Sekiro and its posture system, your main goal in Rise of the Ronin is to parry enemy blows until you can stagger them. But Countersparks are kind of weird, especially at first. They’re not just straight parries; they’re fast, short-range attacks with their own forward momentum. Missing the timing on a parry usually means you still hit the opponent and the opponent hits you, but there are plenty of times when a Counterspark can move you past the enemy altogether. It creates a strange flow to your fight movements that takes a lot of getting used to.
Rise of the Ronin borrows a bit from Souls-like combat in that enemies will sometimes power through your strikes with their own attack animations, so you need to recognize when to attack and when to hold back. Yet Ronin wants fights to be fast and aggressive, so if you Counterspark certain attacks, you’ll knock the enemy off-balance and open up a brief counter-strike opportunity. This also creates an unusual rhythm–you can Counterspark most of a combo chain from an enemy to no benefit, because the only attack that truly matters for parrying is the last or strongest in the chain. That means your strategy should actually be to safely block your way through a series of attacks, and Counterspark only the final move.
That requirement makes Countersparks unintuitive because the urge to parry has to be strategically resisted. Sometimes you can skillfully parry a bunch of moves in a row and wind up being punished for it anyway; other times, you may be rewarded just for hammering the button against a tough opponent. Mostly, though, you’re spending the first few battles against any tough enemy trying to figure out when the correct time to parry is and getting demolished by quick, relentless strikes in the meantime. It’s not a bad parry system–I came to enjoy Rise of the Ronin’s approach quite a bit once I understood how it worked and could start to read its enemies and their attacks–but the extra motion and timing are at odds with similar games, so you’ll have to unlearn a few things to acclimate yourself.
Enemy Martial attacks are marked by a red glow that indicates you can’t just block them like you can with normal strikes. That means you have to avoid them with a well-timed dodge, or knock them down with a perfectly timed Counterspark for big Ki damage. You have Martial attacks of your own that are great as counterattacks when you successfully knock an enemy off-balance, but they’re not unblockable like enemy ones are and cost extra Ki to execute.
Martial attacks are cool additions to your repertoire, but in enemy hands, they add to the learning curve and pile on some frustration in the early game, as fighting in Rise of the Ronin is usually very fast. You’ll often get hit with a series of attacks you have to block your way through, taking a ton of damage to your Ki, only to get blasted by a devastating Martial attack that cuts your defenses and hurts you even more. Then you get staggered, leaving you open to further walloping, or knocked off your feet and subject to a standing-up animation that lasts just long enough for the enemy to lay into you again with no defenses. One screw-up can lead to a beatdown that’s tough to recover from.
Especially early on, this combat pacing is annoyingly brutal–one particular early boss fight had a massive difficulty spike that held me up for a couple hours. For a game that easily lasts more than 50 hours and has a similar fight at the end of every single mission, being stuck on the same boss for that long was grueling. Fortunately, Rise of the Ronin lets you change the difficulty whenever you want, so you can drop to its easier mode if a fight is giving you trouble, then increase the challenge once you’re over the hump.
It was only later that I started to appreciate the combat system’s combination of elements. That includes the timing of Countersparks, as well as things like the ability to change your fighting style on the fly once you’ve learned new ones. When you approach an enemy, an icon will appear next to their name that indicates both how tough a fight they’ll be and whether their fighting style is strong or weak to your own. You can have two main weapons equipped at any time–which include katanas, odachis, European-style sabers and greatswords, and spears–and three styles for each one, which can be quickly swapped to deal with just about any opponent. Picking the right style to deal with an enemy greatly enhances the effectiveness of your Counterspark, so once I got the hang of parrying and using the right styles and weapons for certain enemies, battles started to click, becoming intense, hard-fought duels that also made me feel like a legendary swordsman.
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Against the toughest of enemies, it also pays to make use of your allies. You’ll meander through the open world alone, but just about every major story mission or side quest is an instanced level where you have one or two computer-controlled allies backing you up, playing into the Twin Blade concept. You can play cooperatively with other humans in the place of AI buddies, but when you play alone, you’re able to swap between characters on the fly. The AI characters all have their own styles and moves that you can learn and take advantage of, but the best part is the way they enable you to overwhelm an enemy, quickly swapping around to get behind their guard and take advantage of their divided attention. It’s another aspect that takes a while to get good at using, but which sets apart Rise of the Ronin’s combat and makes it intense and chaotic in a good way–most of the time.
What makes fighting a bit wonky is Rise of the Ronin’s control scheme, which is convoluted and unintuitive. Blocking attacks is done by holding the left bumper, but parrying is done with the triangle button. The separation of your defensive moves requires specific training for your brain: Hold this button for this kind of attack, tap this other button for another kind, but mix the two together as well. It’s enough to jumble you up until you’ve spent time getting used to this specific approach.
The same is true of the swapping controls, which require various bumper holds combined with control stick movements or d-pad presses. Changing between loadout items, like healing pills and status-removing salves, is done while holding the left bumper, and so is swapping between characters. Holding the right bumper, on the other hand, lets you change your main weapons, your sub-weapons (like pistols, bows, and rifles), and your fighting styles. Again, it’s just a lot of really specific, esoteric controls to hold in your mind at once, and tough to mentally page through while a guy with a sword is slicing away at your face. Eventually all these controls became natural for me–but it took a while to get there.
The blade twin story isn’t a particularly compelling one, and while it’s the framing device that’s supposed to drive your character, it doesn’t get a lot of screen time. But Rise of the Ronin picks up quite a bit as your investigation pushes you to start making friends with various people, who either support the stability of the shogunate or think the country needs a new government. As time goes on, those different people develop into separate factions that will require your help, and which you can choose to aid.
However, it all leads to an open-world setup that’s somewhat unremarkable. A lot of the open-world content in Rise of the Ronin feels set to the standard of 2010s-era games, with some repetitive activities that will pop up randomly in front of you, some collectibles to chase down, and some side quests to complete that tend to end up with you killing some random baddies.
The more minor activities you do and collectibles you find in each of the small provinces in an area, the higher your bond with that location, which unlocks various minor bonuses. Later, completing these same activities will increase or decrease a faction’s hold on that location, which can have a bearing on story missions as you take them on–although that exact effect is somewhat opaque, especially because you change allegiances multiple times through the course of the story. Generally, though, the open-world activities of Rise of the Ronin are somewhat uninspired. It’s not particularly engaging to clear out yet another group of five bandits, two of which are mini-boss-like “formidable opponents,” to lower a faction’s hold on a province, but Rise of the Ronin will give you a ton of these activities to knock down, alongside small side missions and random activities like muggings. It’s a lot of stuff that seems like filler content in a game that’s already brimming with things to do.
Story missions and side quests are more interesting and involved, although they also get repetitive. Most of these put you into a level where you infiltrate a location, sneak around assassinating rank-and-file soldiers, get seen and fight some guys, and then defeat a boss. These missions suffer in part because Rise of the Ronin’s stealth is a bit undercooked. It can be unreliable, with enemies sometimes spotting you from far off with little issue, and other times being totally oblivious as you fight pitched, protracted battles with their friends 10 feet behind them.
Missions always end with excellent, challenging boss fights, though, and once you get good at Rise of the Ronin’s dueling system, every fight becomes a combat puzzle mixing twitch-reactions and strategic responses that continually make them exciting. Stealth breaks up the fighting just enough to help mission pacing, while rewarding you for analyzing the environment and planning your approach, even if it’ll sometimes annoy you by failing at key moments. Stealth is more a nice-to-have addition than essential to the formula.
The best of Rise of the Ronin’s levels are its Bond missions. You’ll meet a ton of samurai and join many of them in missions as allies, creating ongoing relationships. You can then enhance your friendship with those folks by completing side missions that flesh out their stories and engaging in conversations or giving them gifts. Building stronger Bonds unlocks new fighting styles as well as passive bonuses when you bring them on missions, but the most interesting part is the way each character’s individual stories expand across missions and add to the overall narrative. The characters are all well-drawn, dealing with their own principles and motivations, and their stories are worth experiencing on their own.
Having personal ties to all these characters makes the overall story a lot deeper. Rise of the Ronin tells a fictionalized version of the historical end of the shogunate and the samurai lifestyle in the 1860s, with the characters and events you’re engaged with eventually pushing Japan toward civil war, and your own principles and relationships causing you to switch sides numerous times. That means a character you brought as an ally on one mission might be a boss you have to face down in another, and your connection to all Rise of the Ronin’s characters does a lot to raise the stakes and make the entire narrative feel personally important.
So while Rise of the Ronin has some elements that can frustrate or require some investment to make sense of, and weaker elements like some open-world design that comes off as dated or some repetition in level design, it does a great job of getting you invested in what’s going on and the people involved. Bond missions in particular are a standout, but a mix of personal stakes and large-scale politics make the historical story compelling all the way through. The longer you play Rise of the Ronin, the more characters you meet and spend time with, and the more you learn about its combat and its world, the better it becomes.
It’s not without some flaws, but I finished Rise of the Ronin with much more left to do, and even after 50 hours, I want to head back in to see what I’d missed and attempt to change history. The parts of the game that work more than balance out its weaker elements. And while it took a while to find the rhythm of Rise of the Ronin’s combat, its speed, complexity, and intensity make for some phenomenal fights that always feel great to win. Rise of the Ronin is a game that might take a bit to get good, but the commitment is worth it.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 Review – Pawn Stars
Dragon’s Dogma 2 doesn’t have a traditional fast-travel system. For most open-world games, this would be a death sentence–an affront to the player’s valuable time. Yet somehow, Capcom has turned the absence of this quality-of-life feature into a resounding strength. It’s the game’s tremendous sense of adventure and discovery that accomplishes this. Every time you leave the relative safety of a village or city, there’s no telling what will happen; you just know it has the potential to be spellbinding and will be well worth your time.
As a sequel, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is an extension of everything the first game achieved 12 years ago. It’s an enchanting open-world RPG with varied, exciting combat and a player-created companion system that’s still unlike anything else. It doesn’t do much beyond what the original did, but advancements in technology have enhanced its anomalous strengths, breathing new life into its massive open world and the ways in which you and everything around you can interact with it. New ideas and innovation might not be at the forefront, but the things it does are still relatively distinct.
Now Playing: Dragon’s Dogma 2 GameSpot Video Review
After a brief but intriguing prologue, your adventure begins in the country of Vermund, a land of lush green forests, alpine peaks, and the flowing currents of its many winding rivers. The royalty and noblemen of Vermund reside behind the fortified walls of its capital city, and it’s from this bustling location that you can board an oxcart to a small village in the north or a checkpoint city in the west. The latter sits on the border with Battahl, an arid land, home to the humanoid cat-like beastren, where gondolas provide an occasional route over the craggy canyons below. Beyond traveling via oxcart or climbing aboard one of these sky lifts, you’re left to explore this sprawling world on foot, traversing dense forests blanketed by canopies that blot out the sun, elven ruins carved into the sides of mountains, and shifting sands bathed in harsh sunlight and circled by deadly harpies.
There is a method of instant fast travel available, but it works in much the same way as it did in the first game. You can exhaust a costly resource known as Ferrystones to travel to any Portcrystal in the world, but these fast-travel points are few and far between–either as a permanent fixture or an item you can pick up and place anywhere you desire. You’ll use them sparingly and spend the vast majority of your time covering large swathes of land on your own two feet. Considering the 12-year gap between the original game and its sequel, this approach to fast travel and seamless exploration feels like an even bolder decision now than it did in 2012. The open-world genre has become more codified in the interim, yet Dragon’s Dogma 2 makes a concerted effort to ensure that the journey is just as important as the destination.
This is a game defined as much by the trek through an undulating gorge as it is the battle you encounter when you reach the bottom. The quests you embark on are diverse, tasking you with venturing off to rescue a boy who’s been taken by a pack of wolves or accompanying an elf on their rite of passage. These quests are sometimes generic but the way they play out is anything but. You’re never just engaging with one singular objective at a time; Dragon’s Dogma 2 is filled to the brim with emergent moments that consistently dazzle and surprise. I could regale you with myriad tales from my 40-hour adventure without even mentioning an actual scripted questline. Defined objectives might give you the impetus to head in a particular direction, but this then unravels a thread of distinct events that occur naturally, challenging you with enormous beasts to topple or piquing your curiosity with a cave tucked away to the side of the main pathway.
I once embarked on a lengthy journey that began with the usual ambushes from resourceful goblins and roadside bandits. I thought a first encounter with the three-headed, magic-wielding chimera would be the most noteworthy part of this venture, only for a monstrous griffin to swoop down and introduce an entirely new set of problems. After hacking at the chimera’s wailing goat head until it eventually collapsed in defeat, I focused all of my attention on the fearsome griffin. The immense force of this mighty creature made the nearby foliage rustle and shake every time it reared back and flapped its wings, but I managed to clamber on top of the beast and dig my sword into the back of its skull before it launched into the air and sent me spiraling to the floor.
After a time, the griffin made its escape, retreating back to the skies above, so I spent the night camping to recuperate my depleted health bar. I set out again in the morning, only to be interrupted by the same griffin, presumably with a newly formed vendetta against me. This time, after much hardship, I defeated the mythical creature before it could flee again, yet my journey was far from over. A pair of colossi sprang an unpredictable attack in the tight confines between two rocky outcrops, while the next night brought about a horde of undead skeletons whose glowing blue eyes pierced the suffocating darkness.
[Dragon’s Dogma 2 is] an enchanting open-world RPG with varied, exciting combat and a player-created companion system that’s still unlike anything else
None of these encounters related to one another or pertained to the quest I initially set out on, but that’s the magic of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s open world. You’re constantly pulled in numerous directions at once and it’s up to you to decide which avenues to pursue. It might be a quest given to you by a villager in need, an enticing structure looming on the horizon, or a locked gate and the potential to find an alternative way inside. Backtracking is fairly common, but no one journey is exactly the same as another, so it never feels like a chore when you’re retreading familiar ground.
Of course, none of this would work nearly as well if the game’s other elements weren’t up to snuff. Fortunately, combat is excellent across the board, providing you with a variety of unique vocations to choose from. These classes range from the sword and shield-wielding Fighter and long-range Archer, to new additions like the Mystic Spearhand–a melee/magic combo build–and the jack-of-all-trades Warfarer. It’s entirely viable to pick a vocation and play the entire game as that class, but you’re also rewarded for experimenting. Each vocation has special Augmentations to unlock which grant passive buffs that you can apply regardless of what class you’re currently using. This means you can make a Mage sturdier, or give a Warrior greater stamina usually reserved for the Thief.
Whichever vocation you choose, there’s a fantastic sense of impact behind your attacks. Axes and greatswords meet flesh with a glorious crunch–the game slowing down to let you bask in your most impactful strikes–while enemies burst into flames and tumble off cliffsides behind the power of a Sorcerer’s stave. There’s a hint of Devil May Cry to its most stylish and over-the-top moves, and hacking away at colossal beasts with slow but purposeful blows can’t help but bring to mind the protracted battles of Monster Hunter.
Even when you’re swirling through the air and conjuring piercing ice shards, the combat still feels grounded thanks to the world reacting realistically to everything that occurs within it. When I toppled a colossus and it stumbled towards a small chasm, it didn’t just fall down the gap, but grabbed onto the other side, creating a desperate, makeshift bridge. Only after hacking at its fingers did it lose its grip and tumble to its demise. The camera sometimes has trouble keeping up with all of this explosive action, usually because a mage has filled the screen with fire or ice. In that sense, it’s a somewhat acceptable trade-off. What’s not quite as forgivable is when the camera becomes unwieldy in tight interiors or when you’re clinging to the back of a terrifying beast, but at least these instances aren’t too frequent and are only a minor inconvenience when you consider the ensuing thrills of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s fantastic combat.
In terms of story, you’re once again cast as the Arisen, repeating a cycle that has occurred for generations. A fearsome dragon rules over the land and chooses you as a worthy challenger to its reign by plucking out your still-beating heart and consuming it. Your ultimate goal is to take up arms and slay the dragon, but before that can happen you need to build up your strength and contend with the disparate politics of both Vermund and Battahl. In Vermund, the Arisen is revered as a sovereign and champion of the people, tasked with protecting the land from the ominous shadow of the dragon. An imposter sits on your throne, however: a False Arisen, put in place by a queen who doesn’t want to lose her power. In attempting to claim what’s rightfully yours, you’ll gradually unravel a mystery that threatens to impact the fate of the whole world.
It’s a decent tale that propels your adventure forward, although it’s light on characterization, which contributes to a persistent feeling of detachment. This makes it difficult to care about the overarching narrative, aside from an interest in unraveling the core mystery. The awe-inspiring scale of its later moments somewhat makes up for its shortcomings, while exploring the differences between the cultures of Vermund and Battahl is also compelling. The beastren nation casts the Arisen as an outsider, fearful as they are of your entourage of pawns and the misfortune they portend.
Much like the first game, these user-created companions are the game’s most exceptional feature. Up to three pawns can join you on your journey, though one is a permanent fixture and your own creation. You can set their vocation and change it as you see fit, equipping skills and upgrades for them just as you would your own character. The other two members of your party are hirelings you can recruit and replace on a whim and are typically created by other players. Choosing which pawns to hire primarily comes down to a matter of party composition. Whether they’re leading from the front, imbuing your weapon with magic, or blanketing the battlefield in meteors, it’s hard not to love the impact they have on combat. But there’s also more to them than simply being hired guns.
The time a pawn spends with other players is retained in their memory. They might recall a treasure chest they opened in another Arisen’s world and then lead you to it, and they do the same when it comes to navigating quests as well. If you prioritize an objective and one of your pawns has completed it before, they’ll offer to lead you to wherever it is you need to go. Rather than being weighed down by having to constantly revisit the map, you can let a pawn naturally guide you, creating an ebb and flow to your adventure that removes the need for menu screens and waypoints. They can sometimes lose their way when you’re interrupted by combat, but I found that hitting the “Go” command would reset them back on the right path.
Pawns perform a similar function after defeating a certain number of a particular enemy type, too. If a pawn has sufficient experience beating, say, an ogre, they’ll relay pertinent information on weak points and the nature of their attacks. You can also find and then equip different specializations for your pawn, maybe granting them the ability to translate Elvish, or forage for materials so you don’t have to bother. They can still be overly loquacious at times, expressing child-like wonder at the world with a barrage of Ye Olde English dialogue. Their remarks are nowhere near as repetitive as before, though, and they’re much more personable this time around, chatting among themselves about other players they’ve traveled with and creating a palpable sense of teamwork and camaraderie.
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The most noticeable misstep derives from Dragon’s Dogma 2’s performance on PC. My current rig exceeds the recommended specifications (aside from the CPU), and the game generally runs at around 60fps using the game’s “High” preset. Sometimes it dips into the 40s and drops even lower inside villages and cities, but it’s certainly playable, if a little unstable. The problem is that this performance is consistent across all visual settings, which leads me to believe it’s a matter of poor optimization. I could’ve used the performance bump from lowering shadow quality and the like, but doing so has no effect. Ideally, this will be rectified with a day-one patch and driver updates, but it’s not ideal at the time of writing.
Even so, these performance issues did little to deter my love for this game. It’s not often that a cult classic gets the green light for a sequel, especially 12 years after the original game was released. Capcom hasn’t tried to make Dragon’s Dogma 2 more palatable to potentially attract a wider audience, either. It stuck to the first game’s core values and expanded upon them to create a bigger and better game that consistently delights in its approach to seamless exploration and the thrill of adventure. This means it feels very familiar in a lot of ways, but it’s a game for those who fell in love with the original, despite its flaws, and will hopefully find an entirely new audience who perhaps never gave the first game a chance. Even after 40 hours, my heart continues to grow fonder for this special game. It’s an exceptional achievement that’s quite unlike anything else, and I wouldn’t hesitate to place it amongst the pantheon of Capcom’s very best.
Alone In The Dark Review – Dimly Lit
When I think of the survival-horror genre’s best games, I often wonder if they were made better by their frequently unwieldy combat mechanics. The inability to reliably defend yourself heightened the terror in anti-power fantasies like Silent Hill, and the awkwardness of taking on the undead in Resident Evil became core to its tension. With that in mind, could a modern horror game benefit from having similarly janky self-defense systems? Alone in the Dark, the 2024 reboot project from THQ Nordic and Pieces Interactive, emphatically resolves this question for me; as it turns out, the answer is no–it’s certainly worse off.
Alone in the Dark centers on characters and a haunted house all named the same as they were in the original 1992 game, but it mostly ditches that game’s original story and old-school adventure game leanings in favor of a third-person, over-the-shoulder horror experience in line with modern counterparts. The game’s writing pedigree flaunts Soma and Amnesia: The Dark Descent’s Mikael Hedberg, and the story even plays out like an Amnesia game at times, to its credit. Much of what it does well is also derivative, but a larger issue is that it can’t do these aspects of the game well consistently. And all the while its worst parts are ceaselessly unenjoyable.
Chief among the blemishes is the aforementioned shoddy combat. There are three guns in total, and though wielding them feels cumbersome in the way a horror game wants to, so much else about dispatching monsters in the Derceto mansion’s hallways and bedrooms is a chore. Many enemies feel uniform in their behaviors and are often comically unaware or incapable of reaching you due to getting stuck on geometry or even each other when they show up in groups.
Even the few that do behave differently, like a monster that lurks on all fours and pounces or flying bug-like creatures that swarm down onto you, are so easily killed off that I quickly felt like the game might’ve been more enjoyable if there weren’t any combat at all.
Melee combat feels worse than gunplay, with a swinging mechanic that behaves more like a directionless flail. I found that for best results I had to button-mash the melee weapon and just hope that I took down the enemy I was targeting before they got to me first, and I wasn’t always successful.
But neither guns nor melee can outdo the confounding use of throwable weapons. Scattered around environments are bottles and Molotovs that can be thrown at the many monsters in your path. But you can’t add them to your inventory: You have to throw them from where you find them, and the game’s way of telling you this is to prompt you to pick one up (RT/R2) and watch as your character immediately tosses it without a care. That teaches you that the next time you want to use one, you should instead hold the button down, thereby allowing yourself to aim the throw. But you still aren’t meant to actually move with the object in your hand, and if you try, the character will slowly walk in the direction you point, all while the throwing arc still sits on your screen. It’s easily one of the most undercooked combat mechanics I can recall in a horror game.
It’s also odd and distracting how the first shot of any round of gunfire suffers an unmissable audio delay of a second or two. Whenever I’d fire a gun, the enemy would react to the damage, and a moment later, I’d hear the gunshot. It was always the first shot and never any subsequent shots in a series of them. It didn’t break the game but it was jarring for all 15 hours I played. I should mention that this occurred on Xbox for me, but not for a colleague playing on PC, though they did report other issues such as game crashes.
Alone in the Dark also features the other gameplay tentpole of the genre, as the elaborate home it takes place in is littered with puzzles. This is actually an area where the game sometimes shines, but not consistently. Some early puzzles in the mansion-turned-rest-home are fun to piece together and offer a sense of reward not just for advancing the story, but for letting you piece it together and feel like an investigator, like one of the two playable characters is.
I enjoyed exploring the mansion and opening up new avenues through which to solve its roundabout puzzles, and it was great to mix in a few otherworldly sections that pulled me out of Derceto and into various nightmarishly twisted memories. The transitions between the mansion and these other places were mostly done smoothly and caught me by surprise, albeit not without an occasional stutter, but I never found this as distracting as the gunfire audio delay.
But other puzzles were obnoxiously obtuse, with solutions that didn’t feel like they were available in the game’s context clues. Many of these revolve around determining safe codes or piecing broken objects back together. In one example, I had to infer a three-digit code from a letter I’d found, and the eventual solution didn’t feel logically telegraphed. Alone in the Dark is sometimes more of a headache than it needs to be.
Thankfully, the doom jazz soundtrack is a nice cure for what ails you. I loved the game’s atmosphere, strongly aided by the great music and good performances by Jodie Comer (Killing Eve) and David Harbour (Stranger Things). Ultimately, however, I never felt like the familiar faces from Hollywood raised the game’s quality level to a degree that justifies their inclusion beyond the marketability of star power. They aren’t bad in their roles by any means, but I didn’t feel like they brought an element to the game that couldn’t have been granted by other talented folks, making their involvement feel like simple stunt casting.
You can choose either character–Comer’s Emily Hartwood or Harbour’s Detective Carnby–and play the full campaign as either. For large swaths of the story, these campaigns are the same, but they each involve gameplay and story moments unique to them, like puzzle sections and some hauntings unique to each of their backstories, along with a true ending for players who finish both versions. These alternate pathways feel like a fun added wrinkle to the full story, but the allure of playing the game a second time is dampened by its issues. I liked the game’s story for the most part, but I did witness a jarring sequence near the end where it so plainly and brazenly pulls a plot detail from another major horror game that I found it hard to imagine how it got through editing. You can’t just repeat another game’s twist, can you? Alone in the Dark suggests you can.
I found that to be such a perplexing choice, given how much else Hedberg has done well in the horror world and even does well here. Whenever the combat bored me or the puzzles left me totally stumped, I persevered, in part, because I wanted to see how the story shook out.
Led by the game’s mysterious Dark Man, an entity resembling a Pharaoh, Alone in the Dark mixes in the same kind of ancient history element that the Amnesia series has done so well. It initially feels so out-of-place that it actually serves the game better in the end. You think you’re getting a period-piece haunted house story, and suddenly the game is making nods to much greater supernatural oddities and blending reality and fiction in ways that make it hard to trust anything you’re seeing. It makes the world of Alone in the Dark feel more uncertain, and thus, less safe. Save for the story beat that feels too close to another game’s big moment, I found the story to be Alone in the Dark’s best, most consistent quality.
With its reality-bending story, parade of puzzles, and unwieldy combat, Alone in the Dark is, in some ways, more faithful to some turn-of-the-century horror games than their own revitalized modern remakes. I enjoyed the game’s story, setting, and abundant lore, and I felt smart when I’d overcome some of its puzzles. But others proved so obtuse as to be frustrating, and nothing about the combat even climbs to a level I’d call serviceable–it’s consistently poor. This isn’t Alone in the Dark’s first revival attempt, and it’s probably not its last, but it isn’t the one that will put the series’ name in the same breath as the all-time greats it originally helped inspire.
Unicorn Overlord Review – A Rare Beast
There are few gaming experiences more engrossing, engaging, and satisfying than a quality strategy-RPG. They offer the joy of building up a little ragtag army, bit by bit, into a gang of storied warriors with precision-specialized skills; the tension of seeing what sort of wrenches the next combat stage will throw into the mix; the utter thrill of eking out a victory with a wild strategy–or having an army that works so well together that they lay waste to all before them. Unicorn Overlord, the latest collaboration between developer Vanillaware and publisher Atlus, seeks its place among strategy-RPG royals–and, despite a few small missteps, lays claim to an honorable spot among its peers.
In its narrative, Prince Alain was spirited off to a faraway island a decade ago as his mother, the queen, was deposed from her throne by the wicked tyrant General Valmore and the Zenoiran Empire. Now, the Empire has all but conquered the continent of Fevrith, and an older Alain sets out to reclaim his throne and liberate the populace from their oppressors, all while bolstering the ranks of his Resistance army. But a mystery lies at the heart of everything: How did the Zenoiran Empire conquer all of the kingdoms so easily? Is there a much darker power at play?
Now Playing: Unicorn Overlord — Official Launch Trailer
The visuals in Unicorn Overlord dazzle right from the opening cutscene, with Vanillaware’s well-loved 2D art bringing a detailed fantasy realm to life. There are a great many characters and environments throughout so there’s plenty of variety to the eye candy–but even if that hadn’t been the case, it would be hard to draw your eyes away from the attractive character designs, exquisite backgrounds, and weighty battle animations that are there. Occasionally, things can get a bit cluttered and confusing–some parts of the UI are messy to navigate–but after a while, it becomes no big deal.
You can’t just stare at the pretty visuals, however–not while evil is afoot. Fortunately, if you want to take your time with seeing all the game’s sights, you can go straight through the crucial story battles, or stop and do all manner of side-questing. Taking the time to explore and help those in need is a good idea, too: When you begin Unicorn Overlord, Prince Alain’s army consists of a handful of close companions, and it feels like the entire world is against you. Only through fighting small skirmishes, liberating towns, forts, and cities from their Zenovian captors can you gradually reclaim territory. Many of these places are decimated from years of war and neglect–but the prince can bring the materials needed to repair the damage, often with a bit of careful overworld exploration. As you do this, your Honors and Renown grow, and you can recruit and hire more soldiers for your army–as well as expand the number and capacity of your current units. It’s a fun gameplay loop that encourages you to explore and rebuild.
But ultimately, games in this genre live and die by how fun the actual strategy and combat is, and Unicorn Overlord passes this test with flying colors. Battles are a mix of real-time unit movement and turn-based battles that play out whenever two units engage one another. Unlike many other games in this genre, each unit consists of a group of up to six different characters, arranged in a 2×3 grid. A designated leader determines elements like map movement speed and what kind of assistance they can provide allied units: If you want to move fast to intercept an enemy or conquer a garrison, a cavalry leader is an ideal choice, but if you want to be able to provide combat spell or projectile backup to a nearby squad then you’ll need an archer or magic user leading the way.
Movement and positioning is critical, since many fights revolve around taking control of key areas on the map–usually towns, forts, watchtowers, or other structures–and using them as recovery, defense, and deployment stations. Sometimes you’ll be blessed with devices like catapults and ballistas that a unit can man and cause serious damage with–if the opposing army doesn’t get there first and cause you a massive headache. Buildable barricades and traps can hold forces at bay while you muster strength, but a winged unit can fly right over them without a care. Finally, stamina determines how many times in a row a unit can attack, be attacked, or assist–run out of energy and that team can’t move until they rest for a while. There are so many options and factors to consider when it comes to something as simple as map movement, allowing you to devise your own unique approaches to combat. When an allied and enemy unit engage, the view switches to a side-view, turn-based battle that plays out automatically. Units will take turns attacking and using skills based on the abilities and criteria you’ve set for them.
The characters themselves come in a variety of classes, each with its own unique traits, abilities, and weaknesses. For example, a Hoplite is a tremendous tank that can significantly reduce damage from many physical attacks and protect other characters, but they suffer when up against defense-lowering Housecarls and armor-penetrating magic users. A spear-wielding Knight cavalry unit can attack a row of enemies at once, while a similarly mounted Radiant Knight is strong against magic, but both are vulnerable to weapons and skills targeting horse-riders. When crafting units, you can carefully concoct a balanced mix of defense, offense, mobility, and support–or you can go all-in on an ultra-specialized team designed for a singular purpose. Weapons and accessories can grant extra boosts and abilities to individual characters, which you can then further customize by setting specific criteria for when and how skills are used in battle. Micromanaging so many factors can be very daunting at first, but Unicorn Overlord is excellent at encouraging experimentation and discovery, and it offers you myriad opportunities to test out new units or character builds outside of key battles.
Team-building is a delight, but what also helps keep your attention rapt is how the combat scenarios you face keep on evolving throughout the game. Besides adding elements like new units and assorted traps and hindrances over time, the unique scenarios of major story battles often present surprises that require you to change your approach. You’ll just be marching along, only to be greeted by a siege of surprise reinforcements, or perhaps a new ally drops in and wants to help–or needs your protection. And maybe, just maybe, that enemy general can be reasoned with if you have the right person speak to them.
Gallery
Unicorn Overlord’s combat is the standout element of the game–which is good, because it manages to carry the weight of a disappointing story. If you’ve played any RPG where a group of rebels reclaims the land from a despot with the powers of darkness fueling him, you probably know where the story is headed. I frequently found myself wishing that the cutscenes were less frequent and wordy so I could get back to the fun of moving a bunch of little guys around a map. The individual characters aren’t much better, with one-note personalities and motives that don’t offer much in the way of development or interesting interactions. There’s a whole affection system among characters that opens up brief little side conversations when relationships reach a certain point, but even these typically fail at making the characters appealing beyond mere utility like “that dude looks cool and hits like a truck, so maybe I’ll use him more.”
But even though the story is lackluster, the core gameplay of Unicorn Overlord is more than compelling enough to make you want to see the story of Prince Alain to its conclusion. There’s so much satisfaction and gameplay depth here to sink your teeth into that you may find yourself thinking deeply about the game’s team dynamics even when you’re not playing. When the primary feeling a game leaves you with is wanting to play more of it, you know you have a gem on your hands.
