Yeah, no. A game with controller support that causes the game to lock up and crash isn't what I'd call a great first impression. Then the first time I *actually* get into the game I die from one shot. No. That's just janky. Thankfully I got this free on a miscellaneous Amazon Prime freebie. I'm starting to see that just about *every* Amazon Prime freebie is a freebie for a very particular reason: cause they stink and they can't get you to play them even if you give them away. Your mileage may vary but *definitely* know that this game is keyboard and mouse only and you'll be dying faster than a round of Battletoads on the NES. In fact, that game was more gracious than this one.
I got maybe 5 minutes in and the controls fought me the entire way. There was no way to rebind the controls and even opening up the menu activated using the right trigger on my controller which the menu said would fire a weapon. Speaking of firing weapons, my ship just fired off all its rounds automatically until it was empty and then kept doing that until some magic moment when it decided to stop of its own volition. Nothing I could do. Then there's the fact that the menu scroll wheel just kept scrolling back to the top no matter if I used my middle mouse to fight it to get to the bottom of the screen or not. It insisted that I be at the very top no matter what I thought of the matter. I couldn't escape out of the game except by Alt-Tabbing out and right clicking and closing it as the controller bindings were all over the place and again...were fighting me. I wanted to fight ships and explore what appeared to be an interesting game, but when the controls failed miserably to work properly and they actively worked against me, I just have to bow out. I couldn't say if this game was any good as to other aspects of the game, but when you can't even properly interact with the game without it "playing" it self and ultimately you, I'd say the game is a hard pass and the quickest refund in some time.
I think what was odd about this game was that I went in to it expecting a beat 'em up game and I ended up rarely fighting. The story was somber. It was melancholic. It was more an exploration of the inevitability of youth and the march of time towards growing up, whether you're ready for it or not. This was a rare game for me: one I actually finished, but it's also a game that it has been over 6 years since I beat it, and I am still not ready to replay it. I honestly don't think I ever will. I know it's been said that the ending is immutable, but I think that's absolutely okay, because some folk are willing to change and embrace the future, but this is a story of one guy who isn't willing to do so. I couldn't say if the combat is any good. I realized I stunk at it pretty early on, but I played to see how the story unfolded and I don't regret my choice in the matter. You can go after the game like it's a beat 'em up or you can take it as more of a visual novel. Both are fine. Both have merit. Both lead to the same conclusion. I wish this review was decent, but hopefully you're just going to go play it for yourself and decide if it's for you or not.
I picked this game up back in the late 90s on 3.25" floppy's and I still have the game to this day. It sits proudly on my desk at home. I discovered that it was on Steam and snatched it up in a heartbeat and had a great time playing through a few missions again. The biggest issue is that you really need a 10-key pad to do the combat missions. This wasn't an issue in 1990 when just about every computer had them, but these days? Good luck! Others have spoken to how good a game this is and I won't bore you with regaling how it cured cancer for me or the like, but I will say that for a game that was made when it was, it had *so* many avenues of play. I always avoided tailing people in cars as that was the least fully baked concept in the batch, but it was still an option. Many, many options to completing a case. That's what I loved about the game and still do. Your mileage may vary as the game's graphics are...rad, dude! Yeah, 16 colors is quite comical these days. But, don't toss the baby with the bathwater, as the saying goes. If you like spy thrillers, like I do, then you owe it to yourself to snatch this game and give it a whirl.
I suspect every game is the game that got you into a genre or resonated so strongly with you, even years later, and Dust an Elysian Tail is one such game for me. I'm not the hugest fan of the Metroidvania genre, though I've tried to find Dust's equal in it, as the majority of the supposedly "good" games are so borderline evil and creepy or support ideologies I just can't get behind. Dust is a "lightning in a bottle" game, like Final Fantasy 2 on the SNES was before it: something you experience that leaves you hungering for years and in some ways, decades later for its equal and you never find it. A unicorn, if you will. "I remember *everything* and it changes nothing!" changed so much for me. This game, for good and ill, brought me out of my video game retirement and made me hope again that there were games that could elicit that electrifying experience that only exists in your dreams. I have tried to recapture that experience, spending mounds of money on games, looking in every nook and cranny, and never seeming to find that unicorn game that harkens to a "better time" or perhaps takes you away from "dark places." Dust is one such game. At least for me. I am both glad and saddened that there has never been a sequel. How do you iterate on something that is complete and finished? I hope to never know. You are unlikely to experience Dust like I did; you may even find it derivative of the Metroidvania genre and believe there are better mechanically, graphically, etc., and you'd probably be right, but for a game that tails such a fantastic tale, I can only hope one more person steps into the wonder and joy that swept me away and made me believe in the video game medium again and that they, too, will stay haunted by one of life's great "lightning in a bottle" moments that they can never get back...
This is an unapologetically old school experience where you create your main character and go on what looks to be a simple adventure, but it's so much more! The graphics look they're like straight out of the 1980s, because, well, it was written on an old Apple IIe computer, so of course they're going to be limited! But, if you can get past the graphics and accept it for what it is, an old school game with some additions that make it superior to some of them, then you're in for a treat. The quality of life improvements that add *just enough* without making it too easy. For one, you don't have to save at the King's castle. Nor do you save when you log off. That may be a pro or a con for you, but for me it's the Goldilocks of gaming: not too much, not too little. Yes, I've died more times than I can count at this point, but I don't lose hours of time and with it my drive to play the game. Auto battles! Playing old Ultima games like Ultima Quest of the Avatar on the NES you had to fight everything! On the battle map. Even on easy mobs that you should be able to mop the floor with quickly. But, noooo! You have to slog through a map to beat the low level mobs. Not so with Nox Archaist! You get the option to quickly dispatch easy mobs in maybe 15 seconds. Even better, the game tells you if a group of monsters should be taken on quickly or tactically so there's not much guessing on what you should do! This has been a game changer for me! There really aren't any cons I can think of. Yes, it's hard. It won't hold your hand, and if you *do* want that, you can fork over some cash to get the book of hints. There you go. Mommy can hold your hand now there, shnookums! For the rest of you that know how to pull yourself up by the bootstraps, this is definitely a love letter to the old CRPGs of the 1980s and it shows. There's even options to copy the game to old floppies and play on an Apple IIe. That's pretty rad, if you ask me. But, I'm good with emulation, thanks!
