The game will probably be pretty familiar to most, but it plays well and the visuals go over well. Straight into the action, it doesn't waste much time with exposition and it's appreciated. Great to just jump into and mash buttons. Overall the visual design feels clean, and the characters somewhat intriguing despite the little time they get. There's some good voice acting in this - I think the Spear Sister's design and voice match perfectly. But the main character's voice either feels awkward or doesn't really meet what I expect from the character. Delivery feels slightly flat? However, it's not a huge part of the game - but would be great to complete the experience
The most glaring thing if the performance of this game. On a Ryzen 5 3600, and a GTX 1070, you cannot play this game on any setting with a reliable 60fps. I have friends with 3080s and the newest CPUs who cannot reliably maintain over 60fps. Maybe those things (so it's said) get fixed in a year's time, so maybe you just come back to it then? Nop The game's core has a weird, jarring, mixture of mechanics. The clean stealth kills you can achieve don't sit right when you're trying to play some kind of aggressive gunslinger, where dying can happen in as little as 3 hits, but enemies have RPG-style health bars. I continue to play this game as with a knife (not specced into Reflex, which Blades is a derivative stat of, if you're familiar!), and one shot every enemy outside bosses. You crit thousands of damage to their head, and it's impossible to miss with a melee weapon! AI in this game is minimal if not existant. They will hide behind cover, facing away from you, if approached. There is no need to explore the other mechanics. I tried crafting, but to craft you have to either buy or dismantle components from stuff you pick up. So why not just use the stuff you pick up? I don't have an answer. It's too hard to craft the best gear, and the game provides no challenge on the hardest difficulty. Perhaps this game's one saving grace is its writing. Again, like the gameplay, it's a jarring mix. You play a character, you have no real choice. No matter your background, which only offers additional text lines (not choices). Some of the side quests are compelling stories, and this is about the only thing keeping me going. The majority of the writing is, as an article put it well, 'Dad Rock'. The game isn't very 'punk' at all, with every character being a classic stereotype. It's the 'honorable' Japanese, the voodoo caribbeans, the overly patriot Americans... It's an easy play (literally and figuratively) if you get it, but you won't get anything great.
This game had me hooked at the beginning. Great characters, a good story. The mechanics and the driving felt smooth. Shortly after the beginning it really butchers its own potential. The game had some barriers during its development, and the particular design I have a grievance with was supposedly down to senior management making a poor choice and trying to reverse it far too late. The mid-game essentially consists of entirely the same missions. Go talk to a person, they tell you that you need to damage a persons' racket in order to draw them out, and then you kill them. I would say roughly 80% of the missions in the game are like this. There is no distinguishing difference between any of them. You drive to a location, shoot some dudes for less than a minute, and move to the next one. Drawing out the regions' boss is nothing exciting either. It plays exactly the same as the rest, and the locations are always reused from your damaging missions. It gets a bit groundhog day. Do not do the optional side-missions that involve stealing cars or cargo or something. You will drive about what feels like 5-10 minutes. Arrive at the destination, steal the car, and then drive back. Nothing inbetween. No shooting, 3 radio stations (with only one good one), just driving. The rewards are not worth it. The best way to play this is in bursts. Do a racket a night or two or whenever you feel like it and stop. Don't force yourself through it, or you'll uninstall. Though you might be entirely justified in just doing that! This games main redeeming quality is the story it's telling and how that story is told through a variety of really interesting characters and superb acting. Father James was exceptionally convincing. The mechanics tend to work smoothly, with some bugs cropping up. Usually you'll have to reload a checkpoint in those instances. Hell, some of the later missions are great! Do you like a good story? Get it. Want an actual solid fun *game*? Take a pass.
I could write at length about this, it's hard to summarise how flawed this potentially exciting title is. Yes you can roam, climb, and fight. However, while the world is populated by small Nazi checkpoints, trucks, and towers you can blow up these will become INCREDIBLY tedious. All it involves is you walking up to it and laying dynamite which quickly loses its charm. You will receive 'contraband' (currency) to buy weapons (you won't bother, seeing as you can pick them up off enemies- except the silenced pistol) and ammo (you get enough contraband from missions for this). There are so many of the damn things you will feel like you aren't making any difference; so you'll quickly tire of them and actually want to do missions. Climbing is a process of MASHING spacebar to jump up from ledge to ledge. You will rarely need to use the climbing function except to escape from Nazis after a mission to hide on a spot in the roof. In fact, later on this will be your only need to go on the roof as otherwise you will be unable to escape the Nazis. Despite being a resistance fighter, you will repeatedly run over (while being chased, so many people!), fuck over, and otherwise harm the French citizens. The game requires you to have a car, and you will often just jack these from poor French people. Oh well, I guess we're fighting the good fight? There's no consequences for any of this. The script, the setting, all seems like a serious story that just can't help but giggle at itself. Immersion breaking. Travelling to missions (seeing as you can't be bothered with blowing up trucks anymore) is SO LONG. There's no cool music on the way, nothing to enjoy. You will spend an enormous chunk of your time doing this. Many missions are often SHORTER than the travel time to go to the next mission. The missions are usually boiled down to "shoot the Nazi", and your best bet is the story missions. But what's the point? It's the same thing again and again. Skip this title!
I finished Aarklash and my opinion of it fits somewhere bizarre, I do not want to simply pass over this game without giving it credit. The ending suggests the game was meant to have a sequel that did not happen :( The game's plot is hardly present throughout the game. Cutscenes come every so often, amidst some awkward dialogue, but to say there is no plot is fairly disingenuous. Each character is a Wheel Sword for the Goldmongers Guild. All of the characters backstories are available through the inventory. After a job goes south the party find out the whole of Aarklash has turned their backs on them. The plot leading on from that is interesting, but the ending is a cliffhanger (sequel when?). To say there is no plot is a downright lie in my eyes. I might even use it as inspiration for D&D! The mechanics look, and are, incredibly simple. Each character has four abilities of differing effect. There are the standard MMO roles. You can swap out several different characters. With four abilities one might wonder how you could stand the repetition. However, the skill tree allows you to effectively choose two paths for each spell. Your stomp can deal more damage or knock down this in a radius. Your taunt can be a rooted AoE, or just a single target. You are free (outside of combat) to change your entire skill tree for free to fit each encounter. The combat, from my exp of hardmode, has been a frustrating yet rewarding experience. Encounters feature enemies that each have their own part to play, with abilities that heal, blind etc. You need to figure out who to target, when, with who. The abilities enemies have can sometimes be overwhelming but figuring them out is always a blast. Basically: Game is very barebones, it's purely combat; it's casual, yet difficult. I wouldn't write it off. There is a lot of fun to be had, but it sits in such an awkward spot. It did a lot of things right, but missed a lot out. Ultimately, I am glad I played it for the 12h or so.
Overall an enjoyable game. However, we found that the Grandfather's side of the story was much more engaging and thrilling than Vic's story. This left us somewhat unfulfilled when playing as her and itching to get back to the story of the Grandfather. Some of the puzzles made decent sense and we were able to complete them with some difficulty, which is precisely what you would want. However, some puzzles we found made absolutely no sense and ended up just pressing all we could until the solution came about. This was only for the minority of the puzzles though. It would be wrong to say that Vic's time period is not enjoyable through, it has a lot of great moments and gets you to ponder questions just as much as you would with the other time era, it may just be a matter of personal taste. In conclusion, one of the first adventure games we played and are now itching to find more, worth a play!
