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A Review of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

An Ode To Another Genre

Ubisoft to release something that’s not an action-adventure massive open-world game? Impossible. Everyone knows those are the only games that make money nowadays. That and live services, of course. They’re easy, low cost to make. They can be sustained indefinitely. They can survive and thrive with dozens of copy-cats simultaneously on the market. For sure, not a single penny lost on those ventures. Check your math.

So why on earth would Ubisoft invest in something else? Like, imagine if they decided to make a single-player narrative experience. Lol, leave that stuck up shit to Sony exclusives. Or something that doesn’t wall off access to the main menu behind micro-transactions? Like hell, how are the executives supposed to get by? Or even worse, what if they made something indie? Eww, indie!

While we’re on the subject of non-lucrative games, are we gonna hold a memorial for Prince of Persia or what? I don’t know guys, seems like Ubisoft is content with making remakes. We probably won’t get a new PoP game ever again, so we might as well make meet-ups at the cemetery an annual thing. I think I have some spare sand to toss over the franchise’s defiled grave. There, old friend, rest in peace once more. Hold on. Guys. Guys, I think it’s moving.

You’re about to fly high my little phoenix.

So yeah, I’ve been playing Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Spoiler alert, it’s really good. Let me tell you all about it in excruciating detail.

Maybe a bit of catching up is in order first. It’s been 14 years since a mainline Prince of Persia game came out. Forgotten Sands was released in 2010, but most people haven’t played that (nor replayed anything in the meantime), so you could say it’s been even longer. 14+ years since a mainline title! The landscape has changed drastically since then. What is even a Prince of Persia game in the 2020s?

Back in the day, the franchise broke ground on the frontier of 3D platformers. Maybe that’s hard to grasp in this day and age where Nathan Drake flings himself effortlessly from one cliff to another. Before Ubisoft acquired the license, in distant 1999, a studio called Mindscape attempted to make the first 3D Prince of Persia game named fittingly Prince of Persia 3D. Let’s say it didn’t go so well. And how could it have? Back then no one had a clue how third-person cameras should work. The early Tomb Raider games were probably the best source of reference and they still had tank controls!

People praise Resident Evil 4 for being the first game to master the third-person camera, but I beg your pardon, Sands of Time came out 2 years prior. I know Ubisoft would like to get their remake money, but boot up the OG Sands of Time now and you’ll still find it to be as magical as it was when it first came out. It had 3 different camera angles, dynamic loading, more than 700 pieces of animation for the Prince alone. It is the founding stone that propelled all of your modern action game heroes to jump from one rooftop to another.

But what about now? Now that the accumulated experience has made refined cameras not a luxury, but a minimum requirement for any serious third-person game. Now that a slew of different titles have made their own attempts at both platforming and methodical combat. Now that Naughty Dog and Santa Monica have set the bar high for single-player narrative experiences. Now that some lunatics have even put out first-person platformers. What’s a Prince of Persia game in the 2020s?

Easy - a metroidvania.

I’m dragging this intro out again, aren’t I?

You can’t be serious. A metroidvania? I know, bear with me for a second.

In 2011 a little game called Dark Souls came out, but it’s not relevant to our discussion. That’s because Dark Souls was hard. I don’t mean hard to play, I mean hard to make. It had a complex combat system, it was packed with outstanding level design, it hosted a sprawling narrative told entirely through item descriptions and crazy person monologues. Many tried to copy it, many failed. What’s more important is another lil’ game that came out in 2015 stepping swiftly in Dark Souls’ wake. That one is called Hollow Knight and it opened the floodgates.

Why don’t you google “Unity tutorial”. Go ahead. Spend about 2 weeks on it, then call up a buddy who thinks they can doodle. A couple more weeks and you’ll be halfway to your own metroidvania. Two Aussies could do it, why can’t you? Hold my beer. Maybe also call the paramedics before I discover there’s a shit ton of these already catching dust on Steam.

Friends, as we were putting PoP to rest, the dawn of a new era was emerging on the horizon. The maturity of modern game engines allowed people with varying levels of experience to try their hands at game dev. Coinciding with the rise of the souls-like ushered in the renascence of a very particular genre - the metroidvania. And my, have we been gorging on these games for the last couple of years. So far we’ve had metroidvanias starring undead, cats, crabs, cyborgs, Pinocchio, the Catholic church. Considering Iron Pineapple’s dumpster dive still pops up in my feed, we’re nowhere near the end of the trend.

A cynic might ask what bright mind at Ubisoft thought this was a good idea? Does Ubisoft really want to enter another over-saturated market? More importantly, who convinced Yves Guillemot to donate his yacht's fuel money to develop an indie game? Eww, indie!

It would be easy to indulge in this conjecture, but you wanna know something neat? Do you know what other game had interconnected levels that loop back on each other with a checkpoint system akin to bonfires that restore your health, but also all other enemies in the area, and a progression system tied to unlocking new abilities? That’s right, Warrior Within. In 2004, 7 years prior to the release of Dark Souls, Warrior Within had the markings of a metroidvania fully clad in 3D. You know what other game had that as well? That’s right, the 2008 reboot.

So while The Lost Crown’s take on metroidvanias is very modern, traces of the genre can be found in the franchise’s roots long before FromSoft, or Team Cherry for that matter, decided to change gaming history. Mind you, The Lost Crown isn’t trying to be Sands of Time. It’s not aiming to spearhead any trend, nor reinvent any genre. It does however want to impress you with its capital Q quality.

Ok, here we go.

Alright, you know the drill. Let’s see what we’re going to talk about first. Combat or platforming? Combat or platforming? Can’t decide? Why don’t we boot up the game and see what comes up. Straight into the action, I see. We’ve got our first enemy approaching. Good day, sir, how’s it go— **SMACK** Oh, what’s that, bitch? Didn’t get a chance to parry? No worries, why don’t you try aga— **SMACK**

Right, we’ll talk about the combat first.

The last metroidvania I played before The Lost Crown was Moonscars. Moonscars might look mean on the surface, but is actually relatively easy as metroidvanias go. Guess I got lulled into thinking I was any good at these games. I started TLC on the Hero difficulty, which I assume corresponds to Hard, and soon found out that enemies move faster than my eyeballs can track them. A normal person working a 9-5 job would have lowered the difficulty, but I like to suffer.

So, the combat flows pretty fast. For someone expecting more of PoP’s signature combo system, I learned the hard way that vaulting and wall bouncing were out of the question. There’s not much for you to work with in the beginning other than the parry. Dodging and counter attacking aren’t very viable options when the enemies are caffeinated and you’re stumbling around like you just got out of bed. When Dark Souls is concerned, I always considered myself part of the dodge-roll mafia, and I never got around to Sekiro, so I took TLC as a chance to learn a new skill. Lord have mercy on my aged reflexes.

The basics of the parry system are the same here as they are in many other games of the genre. Attacks fall into 3 categories. Normal attacks are not highlighted in any way and can be parried or dodged according to your preferences. Yellow attacks offer benefits to parrying. If you get the timing right, Sargon will enter a special animation which annihilates regular enemies and deals a notable amount of damage to bosses. Missing a parry will hurt you more than a standard hit, making it both a risk and a reward. Finally the red attacks are a big no-no and must be dodged at all cost. Standard stuff, as I was saying.

Most telegraphs are transparent, when they’re not too fast, and once you’ve downed that double espresso and studied the enemies’ movements a bit, you’ll be parrying some mother fuckers in no time. You could end the story about parrying there, but that would be missing half the picture. This game likes to dig deep.

Parrying 101 says: if you parry an attack too late, you’ll miss the parry. Makes sense. Vice versa applies to most games, but you see, not to TLC. This game lets you parry early and it took me a while to notice.

The parry input is a press and not a hold. However, after you’ve smashed that button, Sargon will remain in the parrying pose for a couple dozen frames. Any attack that comes at you while you’re holding the pose will get its ass parried. This is… bizarre. What it means in practice is that a loose trigger finger is often rewarded. Some attacks come so fast that panicking and pressing the parry button as soon as you’ve seen an enemy’s ears twitch will likely save your skin. This is in stark contrast to most Souls games that love to taunt you with long wind-ups to act too early.

At first, I was confused why the game was giving me so much space, but some enemies leave you with no other choice. E.g. The flying fire imps found in the Sunken Harbor have such a fleeting telegraph, you’re better off counting the seconds since their last attack and acting on it. But there’s more to it.

You probably noticed that enemies stagger you on hit for a short duration making it impossible to immediately return the favor. However the stagger doesn’t stop you from parrying. If an enemy is in the middle of flailing their sword, you can hit the parry button and be sure the ensuing stance will catch one of their attacks. Moreover, the game lets you initiate another parry slightly before Sargon’s lowered his swords from the previous one. Holy shit, do you know what this means? Parry spamming is a legit tactic in this game. If you’re crazy enough, you could go down into the sewers, engage one of the ninja rats in melee and theoretically parry-spam your way to victory. You can even use this tactic against some bosses (but more on that later).

But that’s still not all! There’s more than one drawback to a poorly timed parry. While that extended animation makes it easier to intercept hits, it also locks you in it. I became painfully aware of that while fighting the voodoo pirates in the Sunken Harbor. Unlike most enemies, they have a dash they can use to get behind you. If you make the mistake of interpreting the dash as a standard attack, you’ll lock yourself in the parry while the asshole positions himself for a back-stab. But even that situation is salvageable! Remember how I said you could chain another parry right after the previous one? Well you don’t even have to turn around because parrying isn’t tied to Sargon’s direction, but the direction of the stick.

Not this time, you won't.

This principle applies to the rest of the game as well. Attacking, dodging, jumping, parrying - every move in your arsenal takes on a different form when directionality is applied to it. Attack downwards and sweep, tripping the enemy. Attack upwards and launch the enemy into the air. Jump backwards and do a backflip. Dodge downwards while you’re in the air and slam swiftly into the ground. Aerial combos in particular rely on these precise sets of inputs. Wait, combos? Didn’t you say this game didn’t have any? Well…

Once you’ve reached the Haven at the center of the Lower City, it will function as a main hub for the rest of the game. Up on a terrace you’ll find Artaban, one of your Immortals buddies. He’ll show you what I frankly consider to be one of the best tutorial arenas I’ve seen in a game. The only thing wrong with it is that it buries you in a heap of tutorials that could have been spaced out through the earlier sections of the game. Later on, you’ll unlock even more lessons for each new ability you acquire.

Turns out that, yes, there is sort of a combo system in this game, one that was there from the beginning if only I’d known where to look for it. Artaban will teach you all the basics first: the charged attack, the parry, the slide kick, etc. There’s so much you’ll only be able to absorb a fraction. I spent the majority of the game falling to remember I could use charged attacks against shield guys. Later on, Artaban will move on to harder lessons - using those directional inputs to spice up every combination. Without a doubt the absolute worst thing you could do to an enemy is engage them in an aerial combo.

Just like with every other move in the game, the aerial combo has several variations and there are multiple steps where you can get the sucker wrong. The first step is always to launch the enemy into the air and follow them upwards. You do this by holding your attack button and tilting the stick upwards. Mind you, holding the attack button, not pressing it, cause that would only send the enemy up. There, chance no. 1 to fuck it up.

Once you’re in the air, you need to discharge your standard 3-hit attack chain. You could end the combo then and there, but that’s also where the variations come in. The last hit in your standard attack chain pushes the enemy backwards, but what if you wanted them to stay in place? Then attack upwards. Want to take both of you back to the ground? Attack downwards. What if you’ve unlocked the bow? Shoot them to keep you both in the air a bit longer and squeeze in another attack chain. But what if you’ve unlocked the dash? Oh boy, then you get to chase after the enemy mid-air, as your last attack pushes them backwards, and get the chance for yet another attack chain!

Enemies can’t fight back while they’re lifted, so it’s gg well played from there. If you can pull off the combo, that is. Each variation relies on a specific set of inputs that’s easy to mix up in the heat of battle, the most grievous offender being those directional inputs. If you’re fiddly with the stick like I am, you’ll suffer through the constant annoyance of every micro movement being interpreted as a deliberate action. The last variation is particularly challenging as it requires you to dash almost immediately after dealing the last blow if you want to have any chance of landing another attack chain. And don’t you forget to tilt the stick in the right direction lest Sargon dash backwards!

Brings a tear to my eye.

If you look at the complexity of the game’s starting move-set, you’d think that would be more than enough to fuel an entire experience, and you’d almost be right. Relatively early on I stumbled upon two amulets that quickly became my bread and butter. Rukhsana's Gift restores health with each successful parry while the Gleaming Lion increases Athra build-up. Artaban said: “Parry whenever you can”, so I took that advice literally.

This mentality lasted me well into the game, however at some point I started noticing the drawbacks. Thing is, the parry doesn’t have iFrames. Not even one. Scandalous, I know, but what did you expect? You get to parry-spam while you’re staggered? Don’t get greedy on me now. Try practicing that aerial combo out in the wild and you’ll notice it lacks iFrames too, specifically the initial moment where you launch yourself into the air. Ok, it’s fine. It’s all fine. Unless you walk into a room jam packed with enemies, that is.

Yeah, this game has a bit of a problem when it comes to cluster fucks. For the most part, enemy encounters are superbly crafted. Each area has a unique set of enemies. Each set consists of different types of enemies that compliment each other well. Each room takes great care which enemies to place, where and in what quantities.

Then there’s that one mini boss in the Sunken Harbor. Would be easy if there weren’t also fire imps flying around. Then there are those sorcerers in the Sacred Archives that spam-lock you with ice cubes. Would be manageable without those brutes hurling chainsaws at you. Then there’s the eastern end of the Pit of Sand with bobbing head enemies completely unique to that area. Would be refreshing if they didn’t also throw in every other mother fucker you’ve encountered in the level thus far.

These are not well thought out fights. The game becomes very hard to read when you’re getting bombarded with multiple attacks from different directions. Imagine landing a successful parry, getting locked into the animation, not receiving iFrames, and then being hit by the three other ass holes in the room. Hmm, fun times. To be fair, the yellow parry grants complete immunity as long as you’re engaged in the execution animation. However, it’s hard to time right when there’s a tone of visual clutter and other enemies are forcing you to disengage. This game’s combo system is just not well suited for fighting multiple targets.

But, but Artaban told me— Yeah, Artaban’s a big fat liar. No, you absolutely shouldn’t try to parry whenever you can. What you should be doing instead is using the rest of your arsenal.

You can have that back, you son of a bitch.

You’ll get your first Athra surge in the very prologue. Verethragna's Smite lets you rush toward and pierce exactly one enemy. I have to be honest, I didn’t really see a use for it in the earlier levels. Seemed like an overkill for the regular schmucks I was fighting. I left it by the roadside, next to half of the techniques Artaban tried to teach me, and went on my merry way dodging and parrying. Upon discovering Bahman's Breath though, I started to change my mind. Truth is, you’re an absolute lunatic if you insist on playing without surges. Each enemy defeated is a hard-won victory and the game doesn’t want any of that effort to go to waste.

Surges are simple enough to use - gain Athra to fill up a bar and then use it to unleash a surge. Athra is primarily gained by attacking and parrying, the latter granting a more significant boost. However, Athra doesn’t just stay in place. Your progress only “solidifies” once the bar has been completely filled up. If you take a break from harassing enemies before reaching that point, it will silently deflate itself back to zero.

This effectively forces you to keep up the pressure. Want to use special abilities? Good, get in there and earn it. Still, you can’t be careless. Athra surges are just one of the many ways this game shows it understands trade-offs. Get hit or miss a parry and your bar will be viciously slashed away. Even worse, die and lose all progress, including the one you’ve managed to solidify.

Surges are broken down into 3 levels, each level requiring the equivalent number of Athra bars to activate. You’ll start off with one bar and gain two more once you’ve acquired your first level 2 and level 3 surge. Level 1 surges are all variations on the same theme - powerful attacks effective against certain enemy encounters. I settled on Vayu's Wave just because I though the animation looked cool and it was straightforward enough for me to remember. Level 2 and 3 surges get a bit more interesting.

Bahman's Breath is particularly noteworthy as it’s the most effective way of healing in the game. Yes, you can chug potions, but those are only replenishable at checkpoints while Athra can be attained and reused at any moment. Bahman's Breath creates a small area in which it slowly restores your health. This works wonders for exploration, to push forward through nasty platforming sections, but also boss fights, to hang on to dear life even after a couple of sloppy moves.

I must confess, when it comes to level 3 surges, stinginess ultimately got the better of me. Even though Athra is a replenishable resource, who’s gonna burn through three bars just like that? Sure, Bahamut’s Rage is perfect for those cluster fucks, but I feel wasteful unleashing something so devastating onto regular foes. Likewise, Rashnu's Judgment is a great way to get back at bosses, but I’m not gonna wager that much Athra and my ass on parry timing.

Instead, if you’re cheeky like me, you were probably looking for ways to unload three Level 1 surges onto some unsuspecting enemies. The game wisely anticipated spamming, so it implemented a cool-down. Level 1 surges have the longest duration, as their Athra requirement is the lowest, and vice versa for level 3 surges. This strikes the perfect balance between letting you cash in your efforts and preventing you from getting too greedy.

My baby’s mad. (*/ω＼*)

Remember those aerial combos I mentioned? The bow’s yet another piece of your arsenal tied to the rules of directionality. Tilt the stick in the desired direction and press the dedicated button to shoot an arrow. While I’m usually wary of games that make use of the same stick to move the character and aim projectiles, I can’t say I experienced a single issue with TLC. Firing an arrow above ground suspends Sargon mid-air allowing the aiming to temporarily hijack the directional inputs from the movement. Inaccuracy is also not an issue since an aim-assist is always at work as long as there’s a valid target in sight.

You’ll start modestly with 10 arrows in your quiver, just enough for bringing birds down from the sky, but work yourself up to 30 that can become lethal with the help of the right amulets. Yet, no matter how much you try to pimp it, lethality is not the bow’s main purpose. Rather it’s a tool for harassing enemies from afar, breaking their attack chains and stopping them from firing their own projectiles.

One could argue that the bow’s secondary form, the boomerang, is even better suited for that task. Oh, pardon me, I meant the Chakram of Menolias. The Chakram left me dumbfounded at first. What do you mean I can engage enemies at a distance and not use a single projectile? What do you mean I can parry my own boomerang indefinitely? That’s ridiculous! Thankfully, the Chakram is not very useful in combat as the damage it does is miserable. Aiming is finicky, which is ironic considering you get to fine-tune its trajectory. And, before you ask, no, you can’t parry spam it to fill up your Athra. The game’s not stupid.

Is that it? Are those all of your combat abilities? Wait, no, there’s also the Dimensional Claw. Now here’s one for those cluster fucks! The Dimensional Claw lets you open a rift in time and space and trap any object caught by it into your multidimensional pocket. The same can later be released on will. It’s first introduced through platforming puzzles, encouraging you to pick up explosives and throw them at cracked walls. You can throw those same ones at enemies, with great effect, but the Claw has a more sinister function than that.

Trap a living enemy and release the poor bugger onto the world. Not only will it be brainwashed and fight by your side, it will also aggro other enemies. The effect lasts long enough for you to make use of the mayhem and thin out the crowd. Understandably, it doesn’t work against bosses and larger enemies, but still, this is it! This is the component desperately needed to stay sane during gang bangs. Or you could use it to bring a buddy halfway across Mount Qaf, I suppose.

Finally, now I have everything I need to tackle the game. No, wait! What about the Shadow teleport? Press a button to leave an impression of yourself at a certain location, then press it again later to teleport Sargon back. If you thought this was a platforming exclusive ability, shame on you. Some bosses will challenge you with moves that can only be evaded using the teleport, but why don’t you pay Artaban a visit.

You can duplicate your charged attacks using this thing. I beg your pardon? Charge your attack, don’t release it, leave a shadow, release the attack, then do it all over again. But that’s not all! You can do this with Athra surges as well, for the price of one. What?! I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed right now. Surely, this is it. Surely.

No, there’s still the Sash! Unbuckle, Sargon, we’re going to the rodeo. Press a button to attach the sash to an object or enemy and pull yourself towards it. Hold the button to pull the target back to you. This, just… This trivializes everything! Thank god it’s a late game ability necessary for the final few bosses.

Who’s supposed to remember all of this? I’m still grappling with the 50 different aerial combos, but now I also have 10 magical abilities, 2 ranged weapons, a cheat, a teleport and a lasso. How much time do you need to spend playing this game to have all of these memorized, rehearsed and ready to use when the opportunity strikes? When am I supposed to make social calls?

Bro, can't we just toss this boomerang?

Don’t you dare think the game’s done with you. I’ve already mentioned amulets in passing, but they’re worth covering in detail as they greatly affect your play style. For those parry lovers out there, I can re-iterate on Rukhsana's Gift and the Gleaming Lion. Will of Rostam is one I imagine most players are fond of since it increases the standard sword damage. There are a bunch of amulets granting resistance to certain elements, but what if I wasn’t interested in individual amulets. What if I’m looking for sets?

Pimp my bow, someone, somewhere said. Arash's Arrowhead increases the damage of arrows, further amplified by the Blazing Kestrel that sets them ablaze, and finally brought to a crescendo with the White Peacock firing multiple arrows at once. Just don’t be that one madman that occupies slots with amulets that improve the Chakram’s aiming.

A better investment would be an Athra orientated build. Wolf-Bride is a classic converting damage taken into Athra build-up, while humbly taking up only one slot on your necklace. The Ayyar Amulet adds to that by increasing the build-up with each successful attack, and Verethragna's Wrath gives it all meaning by increasing the actual surge damage.

Or you could insist on being a weirdo and equip amulets for the Shadow Teleport. The Divine Spear creates a laser beam along the path of your teleport, cause why not. Shockwave, you guessed it, creates a shockwave at your shadow’s location.

And many, many more. I can’t say I used them all, but I swapped around a lot depending on the crisis at hand. That is much more than I can say for most games that feature amulets, where I’d settle on a specific set of upgrades early on and completely forget about the rest. As we’ve learned, parrying is not always the best solution in TLC, so keeping an open mind goes a long way.

I almost forgot, you can upgrade the amulets! Mama Kaheva is there for you. The game doesn’t make a big fuss when it comes to upgrades. You need cash crystals for everything and one of two special resources. Azure Damascus Ingots are used for the sword and the bow, while Xerxes Coins for the amulets. Both can be found scattered around Mount Qaf, sometimes as the end product of quests, but more often behind multiple layers of chainsaws and other unpleasantness.

This should be illegal.

Where TLC’s combat really comes together are the boss fights. Most metroidvanias apply the same principle - use a level to teach the player a new mechanic, then see how much they paid attention during the boss fight. TLC is no different here, but what’s notable is how much the core of the combat changes as you progress through the game. There are 10 or so main bosses, depending on how you count them, and a handful of minis that come back later as regular enemies. Most of the bosses are excellent with a few exceptions.

The manticore is the first major fight and also a textbook example of what an entry level boss should look like. It’s got long and short ranged attacks, attacks that urge you to keep your distance and ones that beckon you closer, an unblockable skydive and a yellow parry. These are the fundamentals all other bosses abide by. The only curve ball it throws at you is an orb that follows you around, albeit slowly, firing lasers down at your position.

You’ll have to trek quite a while to get to Kiana, go through several mini bosses and get smacked by Vahram for the first time, but my God, is it worth it when you finally arrive. She’s without a doubt my favorite boss in the game, owed in no small part to her mount. The very first attack admitting you to the party is a pair of red eyes glaring from the dark. I don’t think I’ve ever fought a boss in a platformer that utilized depth in such a clever way. Kiana and her mount jump at you from inside the scene and I was immediately in love.

The duo share a deliciously varied move-set. Sometimes they attack in tandem, other times they solo, in between they split and pair keeping you guessing. If you’ve been honing your parry skills thus far, Kiana will prep you for graduation. There are multiple reds you can’t get by, but tons of opportunities to counter, build up your Athra and heal yourself from the brink of death like five times.

The fight is broken up by two intersections that teleport you to a stylish shadow realm. Here your reflexes will be put to the ultimate test. Dodge, duck, parry, try your best to survive an onslaught of Kiana doubles before being thrown back to an angrier boss prepped for the next phase. Even though it’s a celebration of the parry, the battle also forces you to think about your other abilities. The bow’s the best way to get rid of those poisonous blobs, while the teleport is the only thing that can save you from the sweeping red attack.

The Azhdaha follows in Kiana’s footsteps though, I must say, I was expecting to get obliterated considering how much this snake was built up. The teleport is a must have, as in the previous fight, but also the Dimensional Claw, which I completely forgot to use the first few times the reptile showered me with meteors. Its yellow attack was a bitch for me to get right, though I can’t say I don’t like how the tail sweep sets you up for a mid-air parry.

Knock, knock.

The game really starts switching it up when your former comrades come knocking at your door. Against Orod you might as well shove those parries up your ass. The fucker has more reds than the previous bosses combined and not a single yellow to grace your suffering. Once I understood what I had to do, I started to appreciate how the game makes you play defense against a character it has so far portrayed as a power house. Menolias, likewise, acts according to his image. A ranged fighter, he’ll make you chase him around the arena. Although, he’s substantially less challenging than Orod once you’ve realized how susceptible he is to baiting.

As much alteration as Orod and Menolias bring in, they still haven’t seen Sargon at his fully formed. You’ll spend most of the late game traversing the Tower of Silence with your newly unleashed lasso, wondering what on Mount Qaf’s sandy hallways you’re supposed to do with an ability so OP. That’s when king Darius comes in. His attacks conjure walls of ice and fire covering up the entire arena. Using the sash becomes a necessity as the fighting is moved above ground for most of the encounter. What ensues is an exercise in mobility, zooming left and right, trying to chase down the boss or get away from him as fast as possible. His yellow attack is absolute insanity, the last strike in a chain of lasers you need to avoid mid-air. Just compare this to how you fought the manticore!

Vahram (the mortal, the second time you fight him) had me wondering - can you beat him the very first time you encounter him? For one, he can teleport around the room much like you. Two, his attacks send energy waves akin to the Void Blade. Three, he can trap you inside time bubbles in an eerily similar fashion to the Shield of Mithra. Vahram, did you copy my loadout? I literally came into the fight packing the same shit.

I appreciate Sargon of the past trying to help, but maybe he should sit this one out. Vahram is fast, erratic, he gives you no room to breathe. Each time he rewound time, I found myself sympathizing with the palace guards in Azad. The fight is truly worthy of a story’s main villain - a duel with an aggressive opponent that forces you to make split second decisions. Oh, and you can beat him during the first encounter. Although, the game nullifies your victory and pushes you along the same story path. Missed chance for a secret ending, I’d say.

The same praise cannot be so easily said about Vahram’s final form. TLC likes to play a small cut-scene after you’ve defeated each boss. Sargon rushes them in some dramatic manner and lands the last blow. I have PTSD from Souls-likes, so I was always fearful the game was actually setting up the boss for phase 11. Thankfully, this is not the case. Well, for everyone except immortal Vahram.

His majestic deity goes hard on the rewind, resetting the fight like 3 times. You’d think this was a nightmare, but is actually a walk in the park. The fight has very generous sections of downtime between the phases, letting me wait out the entirety of Bahman's Breath and sip on my hot coco. If you equip the Four Royal Stars, you’ll absolutely annihilate him.

This isn’t to say the fight is bad. Immortal Vahram combines your entire roster of abilities into a single encounter. Seeing all your hard work together at display does create a feeling of accomplishment. You might not sweat your brow, but you will get some enjoyment beating his face into the ground during the last phase.

Have mercy.

TLC has a feature that makes boss encounters that much more pleasant to engage with. When you die, you’ll be given two options. The first respawns you back at the Wak-Wak tree letting you switch surges and amulets, but also walk back to the boss to cool off your head and accumulate some Athra along the way. The second option restarts you at the beginning of the fight. I can’t emphasize enough how amazing this is. Yeah, you’ll restart without your Athra, but sometimes you just wanna stay in the heat of the moment and nail down those attack patterns. No more needless run-backs to the boss, especially if you’re tackling a particularly nasty encounter. Speaking of nasty encounters…

When you stumble upon your first alternate Sargon depends on how you progress through the game. Mine was the optional one in the Sacred Archives. I hate games that pit you against a version of yourself. Designing a player character so they would be well equipped to handle the environment doesn’t necessarily prepare them for an AI mirror image with better reflexes.

If you’re struggling against alternate Sargon, you’ll only help him fill up his Athra making things worse for yourself. His surge melts away half your health, and he can chain two in such quick succession you’ll wonder if he’s even restrained by a cooldown. An aerial combo would render him helpless, but would require catching the bastard unprepared. I resorted to the one thing he didn’t have in his arsenal: cheese. At least beating him made me feel a tad clever, if not capable. Even so, alternate Sargon is not the worst boss you’ll face in the game.

By the time I encountered my second Sargon, I’d rummaged round the sewers hardening my nerves against ninja rats. Things went considerably better, to say the least. When it was time for the twin Sargons in the depths of the Hyrcanian Forest, I was already well versed in the language of the game. I beat them on the first try by standing in one place and parry spamming their dumb asses to victory. Talk about turning tables.

While I made my peace with alternate Sargons, the only boss I still despise is the Jailer. He is the epitome of cluster fuckery that stains this game. Usually, minions are added to a boss fight to compliment its move-set. Maybe the boss was designed to be static, so the minions push you around into its line of attack. Maybe the attack patterns are straightforward, so the game wants you to multitask intentionally. The Jailer is none of those things. Not only are his minions aggressive, he is as well!

The first phase is easy enough, with two archers and one big ax guy. The second phase is where the bullshit begins, throwing at you two sewer rats and a ghost, while the third spawns a pair of voodoo pirates. If you’re lucky, you’ll catch the minions off guard with an Athra surge. If not, the Jailer will keep teleporting behind your back while the rest of the gang swoops in for their fill. Don’t know how I would have stayed sane without the Dimensional Claw at my disposal.

This is what I get for trying to screenshot the puzzle solution in the background.

Historically, the franchise has struggled to get its combat right. The SoT trilogy in particular was an unfortunate combination of unruly cameras and rough combo systems that somehow only got worse over time. All the while, the platforming stood center stage as the perfect poster child. I went into TLC expecting the balance to be no different.

Much like the combat, the platforming starts off humbly. You have your standard jump button. You can dodge in the form of a brisk slide. There are some polls for you to spin around. And… Wait, is that it? There’s no wall running? I mean, I guess you could make due without it, but what’s left to separate you from the billion other metroidvanias on the market? The jump height is variable based on the input hold duration, but what am I supposed to do with that? The early challenges just aren’t nuanced enough. The game doesn’t even let you bunny hop up a wall. It’s all very limiting.

The moment you stumble upon the first unreachable ledge, you’ll know there’s a new ability waiting around some corner. The game’s not being very subtle about it. The only thing I couldn’t figure out is if it was going to be the dash or the double jump. To no one’s surprise, after beating the manticore, you’ll get the first Simurgh feather and unlock the dash.

Coined Rush of the Simurgh, the ability will significantly increase your reach. Although it doesn’t do much to bump up the difficulty, the dash further cements the ingenious level at which TLC utilizes depth. Both the dodge and the dash are bound to the same button, the latter distinguishing itself from the former by being performed above the ground. While dashing, Sargon appears as if wall running across thin air, leaving a trail of ghostly impressions behind him. And here I was complaining about the lack of wall running in this game.

The platforming does start coming together once you’ve unlocked the first batch of abilities. So, you’ll shoot the bow to flip switches, creating and destroying platforming elements. You’ll transport generators and explosives with the Dimensional Claw and place the Shadow Teleport to manipulate the constraints of time and space. Notice that all of these are also combat abilities that uphold the universal rules of directionality, lest you forget about them, heathen.

Guess there must be a wall here in some alternate dimension.

With these tools at its disposal, the game is finally able to put together some decent challenges. They are usually tied to a reward, be it amulets, health upgrades or ingots. However, the one you’ll be encountering the most are Xerxes coins. The coins deserve special attention as they are most often found suspended in air amid perilous conditions. The catch is, you can’t swoop them up and consider the job done. You need to place your feet on solid ground again before being allowed to reap the reward.

These early challenges require not only sharp reflexes, but also a fair dose of puzzle solving. Here’s a little maze filled with traps. How will you unwrap its complexity? Which abilities will you use to your advantage? If you stick to the critical path, you probably won’t encounter too many nutcrackers, but stray into the side rooms and you’ll be gifted with pockets of pure delight.

Then I went into the Pit, defeated the Azhdaha and unlocked the double jump. Lord have mercy on us fools.

It didn’t take me longer than the first side room to realize TLC had shifted gears. Whatever notion of challenge you had, the game will laugh it up in your face. The Pit of Eternal Sands is a jungle of overgrown red crystals, tight spaces and volatile platforms. Every jump you have to make, you now have to nail. Every wasteful dash you threw around before, you now have to time just right. Each platform you land on, you have to abandon immediately, lest a starving centipede or a dysfunctional stone slab be the end of you.

It’s an insane difficulty spike, one I was not expecting and one I was certainly not ready for. To tell you frankly, I love it! The moment TLC takes its gloves off, every ensuing challenge in the game follows suit. No more easy Xerxes coins for you.

The punishment for mistakes is pretty mild though. When you “die” platforming, you lose a bit of health and are reset on the last solid ground you were on. This means you can reattempt a section for as long as there are drops left in your health potion. Later on, you’ll be able to buy the Hardiness amulet, which decreases environmental damage to a feeble amount once fully upgraded. All of this is incredibly generous, but also absolutely necessary. Your struggles might have started with the combat, but not for long and it will be platforming sweat taking the sheen off your gamepad.

Dear Lord, Jesus Christ.

Take that double jump for instance. First, each jump is susceptible to variable height. This doesn’t come to the foreground before the Pit where you’ll be forced to measure every gram of force applied to the button if you want to squeeze your ass through those crystals. Second, you don’t have to perform the jumps in succession. The game simply keeps a counter of 2, meaning any other ability can be inserted in between, chiefly the dash. This opens the door for a wide number of combinations.

There is a catch to it though. If you leave the ground and dash, the game will only let you jump once as a follow-up. As a result, there’s one particular trick TLC isn’t shy of repeating. You'll stumble upon a number of walls protruding from the ceiling, whose lower end hangs over a chasm. The game wants you to stick to one side of the wall, drop down, dash beneath it and jump backwards to attach yourself to the other side. It’s immensely cool when pulled off. It’s also a headache with thinner walls. The actual length of the dash depends on how long you hold the stick in the desired direction. It’s maximum reach surpasses the width of thinner walls, so you have to carefully dose the inputs not to overshoot the target.

You’ll have noticed that directionality is ingrained in every fiber of the platforming, much like the combat. Even the simplest actions, like gripping to the side of a wall, depend on it. Sargon can’t simply be touching a wall to cling to it. No, you have to continuously hold down the input in the desired direction or he’ll fall.

It’s interesting that jumping off a wall launches Sargon away from it at a 45° angle regardless of the direction you were holding. Bear in mind however that the input value will affect the jump’s further trajectory. The game never explains that you can use this to hop up a wall once the dash is in your possession. When that 45° jump reaches its highest point, you can dash back at the wall landing above your previous location. Lord knows how many late game challenges I tried to overcome with this buffoonery.

In general, I’m divided on TLC’s reliance on directionality. On one side, it creates a layer of depth this game would have been poorer without. On the other hand, I had to add a dead zone to DS4W so I wouldn’t lose my mind. I’m fairly certain my sticks aren’t drifting. The vast majority of my platforming deaths can be attributed to me issuing one command with certainty and the game interpreted it as another. You know what, I just think TLC is finicky.

Take yet another dumb example - the backflip. It’s a beautiful demonstration of character handling in this game. Jumping backwards could have been achieved by snapping Sargon in the opposite direction, but why would we do that if he can backflip with all the grace of a gust of sand? Then you’ll discover those goddamn directional stairs in the Archives.

They switch their state based on Sargon’s orientation, but the backflip is a cheat that doesn’t affect them. Just be sure you know what you’re doing. You have to tilt the stick in the opposite direction and press the jump button at the same time. If that stick precedes the jump even a little, no, sir, you’ll be turning and doing a regular jump. Now perform all of that precisely and intentionally against an array of retracting platforms.

Needs more spikes, I’m afraid.

Yet again, there’s a shit ton of abilities I didn’t get to. Another Simurgh feather unlocks Clairvoyance. Aka the Power of Memory from Forgotten Sands, aka the purple plates from 2008’s Epilogue. It’s nice to see how the concept has evolved over time. In the Epilogue, it was as simple as it gets - jump onto a purple plate and it will reconstruct parts of the level. Though, I wouldn’t know, Ubisoft still hasn’t ported it to PC... Forgotten Sands added more agency. Pressing L1 triggered the ability and, as the game liked to call it, recalled parts of the level into reality. The trick is, you could only hold on to one recall at a time, forcing you to repeatedly switch the ground you’re standing on with the one you’re trying to get to.

In TLC, part of the platforms exist in the current dimension, while the rest are in a parallel one. Sargon can transport himself from one plane of existence to another, making the corresponding platforms available to him by simply pressing… R3. R3? You sure about that, game?

Shortly after obtaining the ability, you’ll find yourself in a situation with two virtual platforms a dash apart. What you need to do, after jumping from the first platform, is press R2 and R3 at the same time, the former to bridge the gap and the latter to change dimensions. The combination had me reeling. R3 just isn’t suited for quick and easy presses, especially if you need to follow it up with X/A. Yeah, I could change the controls, but then something else would need to be delegated to the accursed button.

Nevertheless, Clairvoyance has some fun applications, ones its predecessors didn’t think of. Other than platforms, it can cast spinning saws in and out of creation. You’ll also use it to land the finishing blows on the Jailer and, if you’re not dumb like me, figure out it works against ghosts before you’ve beaten the game.

Oh, and the Chakram becomes useful, actually. Beating Menolias gets you an upgraded version. This one lets you teleport to the location of the boomerang by using the same input as the Shadow teleport. Now, that’s some good control scheming! The teleportation cooldown applies to it as well.

The upgraded Chakram lets you cheat your way through locked gates and such. In theory, it also significantly increases your reach, but I never remembered to use it. It would have been catching dust in the back of my mind hadn’t one Xerxes coin in the Tower of Silence made me realize I could toss my teleport.

Oh, and there’s the sash again! Don’t you forget about the sash. It can only be used contextually, primarily with those triangular anchor points, so it doesn’t make you as overpowered as with the combat. Considering it’s the last ability you unlock in the game, the sash is not too complicated to use. There are a few times you have to make use of inertia, but that’s about it.

What’s insane is that sashing resets your jump and dash counters mid-air. You’d think the game would use this to greater effect, yet it’s most noticeable if you decide to backtrack. While late game challenges center on the triangular anchor points, the sash can also be applied in earlier levels on poles and metal rings. It’s as if the devs wanted you brute force your way through any leftover challenges before wrapping up the game.

When you put both the combat and the platforming under the same microscope, you’ll notice that TLC has a problem with progression. New abilities weigh down the latter parts of the game. When they do start coming together, it’s all a little too much, insufficiently apart from one another. What would have been better is if the progression was stretched out over the earlier sections of the game. Those opening hours would have been put to better use and the final act would not leave you feeling so overwhelmed.

Gimme. That. Upgrade!

One of the many ways Warrior Within refined the Sands of Time formula was how it made use of platforming. You weren’t just hopping to get from one location to another. You were also running from the Dahaka and collecting health upgrades, testing your speed and technical prowess at the same time. TLC has so much more to offer.

I already mentioned Xerxes coins. Other than the Pit, you’ll find more of the fuckers in the Sacred Archives. I distinctly remember one centered around platforms affected by directionality and an accursed pair in the upper corners of the level, which I attained without the aid of the sash through sheer stubbornness.

The Sacred Archives are also home to what I’d call the game’s only platforming boss. To unlock Clairvoyance, you have to solve a series of puzzle rooms. What makes them stand out from your typical devious coin is a unique mechanic that lets you overlap alternate Sargons. You’re given 3 runs through each room, the actions of each run affecting the ones that come after it. Solving a puzzle means figuring out where and when the first two Sargons need to be to allow the final one to make a run for the clay inscription at the end of the room.

I was never much of a puzzle person, but something about the ones in PoP always clicked with me. I’m guessing it’s probably because they’re based on correctly executed traversal as much as firing up your brain cells, the former making the latter worth it in my case. The puzzles in the Sacred Archives are a perfect example of this, making wish there were more of them.

By far the mother of all platforming challenges in the game is The Impossible Climb. Once you’ve unlocked the sash, you’ll be able to access a hidden hall at the top of the Upper City. A hermit taking shelter there will dare you to ring three bells suspended high above. The only way of getting to them is jumping from one cylinder enveloped with spikes to another.

The challenge does incorporate the sash, but is primarily a test of immaculate precision. If and how well you measure inertia is a secondary objective. To make The Impossible Climb you have to have mastered your dash and double jump. Sargon slides down from any cylinder he’s holding on to, unnervingly closer to those spikes, forcing you to constantly jump off and reposition yourself between unforgiving hit boxes. To add to that, the cylinders aren’t static, hauled up and down by massive chains.

Another unique platforming encounter comes out of Kaheva’s quest. To get the ore she requires, you’ll be locked in a challenge room and forced to survive six batches of barbed cylinders. The reward is more than handsome - the best of amulets, the glorious Shield of Mithra.

Oh, but Kaheva’s quest has an evil twin. If you take the elevator from the Haven down into the sewers and take a left, you’ll find the Scrapper. He’ll sell you a key to an in-between floor previously unreachable by the elevator. Get off there and reach the aforementioned challenge room. The doors will close behind you and you’ll be served waves upon waves of incoming traps. I mean that very literally. This challenge never fucking ends.

There’s a reason why Kaheva’s room works well and this one doesn’t. The average person can perform only so many precise moves before losing their grip, explaining why most platforming sections in the game are bite sized. I wish a slip of my concentration was the only thing infuriating about the hidden floor. When you die, you have to reenact the entire sequence of traps from the beginning. The more you progress through the challenge, the more you have to remember. A lot of these depend on good positioning, so if you, god forbid, forget the trap coming up next, you’ll soon find yourself back at the start. It goes on like this for more than twenty waves!

I must have resurrected at the Wak-Wak tree like three times before finally beating it. And for what? Extra health? An amulet slot? A prophecy? Money??? No, lilac pants. A repaint of the default skin. Pants. In lilac. They look like shit.

Come, minions!

Saying TLC’s levels are rich with content is a gross understatement. Amid all the combat encounters and platforming challenges, the game manages to squeeze in even more through various side quests. I already mentioned some of them. The Deserter is a quick and easy one to get you accustomed to the game’s quest system, the Lost Warriors takes the opportunity to add more unique enemy encounters, and the pirate gifts you with gold, coins and treasure locations. What a chad.

The Moon Gatherer’s a blast, placing Sargon in the awkward position of having to pull the nutjob out of precarious situations. The game uses it to flex how many different scenarios it can come up with in a single quest line. If you follow those fluorescent moons, you’ll find the dude stranded in pots, cornered by crabs and prematurely coffined. Geez, all of this because he slept through some astronomy classes.

Among the bunch, the Architect’s quest line is the most bizarre. At first, I was left perplexed by all the bare stone plates found around the world. I would have probably walked over them if the little bird on my shoulder hadn’t chirped insistently. I solved the first one by firing arrows at random. The rest of them are even weirder. I mean, what can I say about the one where you mow grass?

The game gives you nothing to go on, except tips found in the environment, but they can be easily misinterpreted. In the Sacred Archives, I was convinced I had to teleport another crazy librarian to the empty spot. No, you yourself have to mimic the pose from the mural in the background. I solved it by crouching on accident. The one in the Soma Tree I actually like as it makes clever use of the Dimensional Claw, but more importantly, sets up the puzzle through a codex entry. Then compare that to the puzzle in the Pit of Eternal Sands. How the hell are you supposed to know to bring over a golem from the Upper City? Madness!

Oh, look! We have matching pets.

I find it fascinating how the game managed to diversify the basic platforming elements between areas, both functionally and aesthetically. Take your regular old platform for example. In the Hyrcanian Forest, you have to shoot a mushroom’s stem to temporarily spawn its caps. In the Archives, you’ll also be shooting, but bells in order to pass between dimensions. The Pit is full of decaying sheets of sand and the Tower loves those trigger-happy spike traps. My favorite, however, are the jellyfish as I know how much they hurt.

Besides common platforming elements, each area is also rich with unique ones. I already mentioned the directional stairs in the Archives, but down in the Depths, you’ll be sliding down chutes covered in sludge. You’ll traverse the many levels of the Pit by bunny hopping through streams of sand, shoot rapidly up the Tower using your newly found lasso, and so on and so on.

What’s interesting is how TLC segments its areas into rooms. I haven’t seen many metroidvanias that are as exact with this. Rooms vary greatly in diameter, from intimate chambers to vast caverns. From a design perspective, they allow the game to encapsulate specific encounters and challenges, but must also grant flexibility when it comes to laying out an entire area. I just wish the game didn’t break my sprint while transitioning between them.

The overall size of the world hits the sweet spot, more than rich with content, yet nowhere as endless as some of its triple-A cousins. What I find funny though, is how a lot of modern metroidvanias still design their worlds according to Dark Souls’ blueprint. Here, ruin it for you.

There’s your Undead Burg in the Lower City. The Depths are not quite a poisonous swamp, but they have more than enough venom to honor Blighttown. The Catacombs are the Catacombs, naturally. Anor Londo is in the Upper City, and the Duke’s Archives split evenly between the Sacred Archives and the Temple of Knowledge. Lost Izalith is as much a tomb of ancient powers as the Pit of Eternal Sands, and both New Londo and the Sunken Harbor would benefit from some drainage.

TLC even has the obligatory optional areas. In Dark Souls, you could take a pair of raven wings back to the Undead Asylum. In TLC, you can trace your steps to the Old Royal Road whence you came from and check if the horses are still there (they’re not). Similarly, the Lighthouse is a gem of an area, hidden peacefully on Mount Qaf’s fringes. Stepping up its undisturbed staircases, I couldn’t help but be reminded of that very first time I got down to the tranquil shores of Ash Lake.

Except… What’s up with the Raging Sea? Why are all of these guitar riffs blasting over ships burning at sea? Don’t tell me. Is this a Warrior Within tribute?

Yep, that’s Sen’s Fortress over there.

PoP and metroidvanias were always a match made in heaven. Lots of games with large worlds struggle to make traversal through those spaces interesting. PoP has no such problem. Platforming is at the core of the experience, making the act of trekking from one area to another nothing short of a pleasure.

Everything you’d expect from a modern metroidvania you’ll find in TLC. Each area has a number of static checkpoints in the form of Wak-Wak trees. When you die, you’ll re-spawn at the last one, reviving all enemies along the way. Levels branch in multiple directions, some following the critical path, some leading to treasure, some locked off behind progression, yada yada. There’s even a “map guy” just like in Hollow Knight.

What makes TLC stand apart is the sheer number of quality of life improvements that wouldn’t have been possible without the long lineage of games that came before it. Take Fariba, the map girl, for instance. Buying a map from her reveals the layout of the current area, as you’d expect. What it also does is grey out the corners of the map you still haven’t explored and bring them to full saturation once you have.

Two months after release, Ubisoft added in the option to spend more money at Fariba’s by buying Treasure Maps that allow you to view the location of all remaining goodies in a level. This is the work of pure genius. Why would you Alt + Tab and go to Google to comb through long lists of collectibles when the game can do it for you? Treasure Maps are, of course, not available as you're exploring an area for the first time, but later on once you’ve returned to the Haven. Fariba also doesn’t swindle you into buying maps of areas you’ve already cleared on your own.

Even without the Treasure Maps, I was able to find most of the collectibles on my own. When you hover over an area on the map, you’ll be given its statistics: the total number of collectibles per type and the number you’ve found so far. You’ll deduce the location of most by their proximity to platforming death traps. Others are more sneaky.

There are illusory walls, obviously hidden on the map and not so easily perceived in the world. That is, if you’re not a cheater. A friend mentioned he had trouble finding them, to which I replied: why don’t you just equip the Prosperity Bird amulet? It sticks to illusory walls, dummy. Then I realized that one comes with the deluxe edition. Oops! You can still buy King Jamshid’s amulet from the Magi Emporium as a partial replacement.

Only a few lore items required googling, as they’re not part of Treasure Maps and the bloody bird failed me. You can break crates and vases to your satisfaction, but 99% of them won’t yield more than scattered dust and flying scraps, except a select few that actually hold lore items. How the hell are you supposed to know that? Did the designers forget they placed them there?

This is a must have from now on.

One feature TLC’s successors will be copying with devotion is taking snapshots and pinning them on the map at your current location. Lots of games let you place customizable markers, which TLC also does. However snapshots, or Memory Shards as the game calls them, offer invaluable information that just can’t be conveyed through a marker. The only thing I’m not sure about is why they didn’t give you the max amount of snapshots from the start. Maybe to prevent players from plastering all 30 of them at once? Maybe because they also need to be uploaded with the saves to the cloud? Maybe just to have more resources to unlock? I don’t know.

Another option I was surprised to find out was patched in later is the ability to fast travel between Wak-Wak trees. Playing through the early game, I always felt like the trees were ideally positioned, never too close or far apart. If you wanted to fast travel, you had to discover dedicated fast travel points. These are much rarer than trees and usually positioned at the entry and exit points of an area, effectively keeping you in the clutches of unexplored territory until you’ve made it out yourself.

The patch becomes available after you acquire the sash, meaning well into the game when most of the world is at your disposal. Back at the Magi Emporium, you’ll buy the ability that lets you fast travel from one tree to another. Even better, while panning through the map to find the desired tree, the game will display the stats of each area. This should be considered a best practice for any game in the genre.

Die a couple of times and you’ll notice something odd. Does the game not take away any crystals upon death? According to the internet, it robs you of a massive 10, not that I ever felt the weight of that punishment while playing. This is peculiar. Does TLC not want me to sweat trying to find the next bonfire with a purse full of souls? Apparently, not.

If you paid attention, you’ll also have noticed a divine touch of subtlety - the golden petals of the Wak-Wak tree dancing in the breeze whenever you’re close to it, gently guiding you to its location. Apparently, TLC doesn’t want me to get (too) lost either. Then why does it leave a death mark on the map if there are no leftover crystals for me to collect? Don’t tell me it’s so I could get back those measly 10. Game, please, I’m not that poor.

I’m wondering if TLC dialed down some of the genre’s more unforgiving sides because it lacks the rewind mechanic. Back in Sands of Time, rewinding time wasn’t just the crux of the story. Without it, the error prone platforming would have been a nightmare to get through. Since TLC is no walk in the park (if you have a bruised ego or troubles finding the difficulty settings), maybe it makes sense to trade the rewind for a more lenient metroidvania experience. It certainly would have made a very different game otherwise.

It’s always good to support your local business.

I poke fun, but you’ll rarely be reminded of Dark Souls while residing in TLC’s world. In no small part, this is because they differ mechanically, but primarily it’s because of the setting. Games don’t often portray the Middle East (unless it’s behind the scope of a Call of Duty title), and it’s even rarer that they pay attention to the ancient cultures that once thrived there. PoP has always been an exception, though we’ll agree with varying levels of success (Warrior Within, ahem, ahem).

TLC nails the Persian setting like no other game in the franchise ever has. But don’t trust my layman’s word on it, ask actual Persian people online. There’s no other place on earth you’ll be thinking of while walking through the sandy halls of the Lower City, passing past the statues of long gone kings, admiring the ornaments on the walls and glancing at the massive citadel in the distance.

Very few metroidvanias have the resources to pull off a 3D game, yet TLC had the advantage of dipping its hand into Ubisoft’s bank account. The results speak for themselves. Backgrounds disappear into the distance hinting at grand halls, mysterious passageways and endless vistas.

The game syncs its teeth into 3D even more. When it’s time for those important story moments, the camera zooms in on the characters and transitions into cinematic cut-scenes. These are lavishly over the top, yet perfectly in line with the tone, especially the well choreographed fights that lead in and out of boss battles.

On top of that pastel canvas, the game throws on an unlikely comic book aesthetic. This style is used consistently across the entire UI, making its presence known through a flamboyant display of tutorial cards and boss intros. I’m not sure how it fits aesthetically, but it is crisp and comprehensive. The HUD elements make for some good contrast and I never experienced a single unpleasantness cycling through the menus.

That’s one classy entrance.

Good old Stuart Chatwood isn’t doing the soundtrack this time round. Instead, the responsibility is shared by an unlikely combination of two artists. On one side, Gareth Coker, the guy behind the exceptional OST for Ori and the Blind Forest, brings his vast expertise to the table. On the other, an Iranian musician going by the name of Mentrix, who specializes in mixing her native folklore with modern electronic music. Mentrix’s inclusion is particularly noteworthy as it further proves the game’s genuine desire to do right by the culture it’s depicting. The end result is a soundtrack Chatwood would be proud of - strengthened by SoT's Middle Eastern roots and spiced up with WW's hard rock fetish.

The track list is mostly divided between the two artists, the exception being the outstanding Main Theme where they are both credited. While Gareth is a sure hard hitter, I found Mentrix’s tracks to be far more influential in shaping the game’s overall feel. Tracks playing through major areas like the Sacred Archives, Hyrcanian Forest, Pit of Eternal Sands - these are the ones that dictate the mood of The Lost Crown.

Gareth wasn’t slacking either. As the man likes to put it in interviews, his contribution to the OST brought the full might of the orchestra in support of Mentrix’s dreamy vocals and enchanting melodies. All of his tracks are loud and dramatic - The Seven Immortals opener itself and all the ensuing fights against its members. Still, I prefer Mentrix’s boss tracks! The Imprisoned God, The Forest Queen, The Darkest of Souls - this is some premium material. For someone who hasn’t worked in the gaming industry before, Mentrix sure left an impression.

I wished I paid more attention to the sound design, as it’s full of little touches that enrich the experience. For example, try standing in place and parrying someone over and over again. The sound will evolve with each strike, culminating with a crescendo as you irreparably humiliate your opponent. Likewise, try switching up your amulets at the Wak-Wak tree. A unique sound is played when selecting each amulet in the menu. The animal themed ones are particularly fun as they roar and hiss at you with all the contained energy of a menagerie.

Shahdee, girl, you here?

You know, I like to classify time travel stories into 2 categories. The first leans in on the logistics. These stories lay down the exact rules that govern their time travel, then interweave a narrative following those rules. The enjoyment comes from figuring out how the puzzle pieces fit together. The second category merely uses time travel as a conduit for the plot. The exact rules are fuzzy and unimportant. The focus is rather on emotional arcs and character development.

Problems arise when a story wants to have its cake and eat it too. Imagine not setting the foundations for your time travel, but trying to pull off some otherworldly plot twist that only makes sense in your head. Even worse, imagine getting preoccupied with time travel shenanigans, then wanting a tearjerker ending with characters you forgot to flesh out. Yeah, TLC is kinda guilty of both.

I mean, the story is fine. It’s just fine. At first I thought it would fall into the second category I mentioned. Somewhere in the background, the space-time continuum is falling apart, but don’t you worry about it. You’re here to save a prince and learn some humility. Alternate Sargons can worry about their own mentor issues.

What completely broke my mind is an optional conversation I had with Fariba while trying to defeat Vahram for the first time. I was back at the Wak-Wak tree to switch up my amulets, when some crazy twist of fate got me to speak to her. Sargon will explicitly state that he has been dying and coming back to life over and over again. He’ll talk about it only in regards to the ongoing fight with Vahram, but it begs the question. Each one of the billion times I died during the game, did Sargon just brush it off? Oh, what just happened? Did I somehow come back to life? Unexpected, but I suppose stranger things have happened.

Fariba will then state that Vahram can turn back time, Sands of Time style, but isn’t aided, nor aware of the Simurgh’s meddling with the timeline. This means that each time Sargon is resurrected, Vahram knows nothing about it. Every fight will be his first fight against you. Hold on. If Sargon remembers all of my his failed attempts at defeating Vahram, why doesn’t he save Anahita? He knows that blade is coming, so why, Sargon, whyyy??? And how does Fariba know all of this? Little girl, just how many Simurgh feathers have you ingested?

Neith will drop by before you go to face immortal Vahram and proclaim Sargon is being consumed by his new powers. Pardon me? Since when? This is never addressed later on. The game is full of similar bs - wild claims about the side effects of time travel that never come to fruition. You’ll remember, in the beginning, how the men who were sent as the Immortals’ vanguard were later found as old or long deceased. This was to suggest the abnormal flow of time on Mount Qaf, yet it never affects the main characters. The only way Sargon is coming back with a beard is if you equip a skin.

And what was Thomyris’ plan anyway? The Simurgh would never have given its blessing to Ghassan, she must have known that. Even if she did want to give it a go, why not do it in secrecy? The kidnapping turns too much attention to it. Did she suspect Vahram of an uprising? If so, why didn’t she frame him as some sort of traitor right there in Persepolis? Things are well out of her reach on Mount Qaf.

And what was the bloody bird thinking? So, Sargons from the multiverses have been trying and failing to defeat Vahram, while the Simurgh was too busy pouring all its resources into the current one. If the bird can help Sargon learn from his mistakes by resetting the timeline, then why is it dragging in alternate Sargons just for them to suffer? How many devastated multiverses are there? Argh!

No shit, Sherlock.

At least the game does a much better job with its environmental storytelling. The codex entries are spaced apart just right and do a brilliant job of portraying the areas you explore. I particularly like the ones detailing the descent of the Hyrcanian Forest into Kiana’s grasp and the letters of the young scholars observing his master’s corruption and eventual metamorphosis into the Jailer. One codex entry even states that the Simurgh takes the appearance of a tiny bird landing on the shoulder of those it deems worthy. You hear that, Prosperity Bird?

There’s one special lore item in the game - the prophecy fresco. If you’re diligent, you’ll decode all of the game’s major twists from snippets of the poem alone. The game’s called Prince of Persia, so there must be a prince, right? Well, why have one when we can have three. Mama’s boy is not a real prince, the dickhead is the actual heir to the throne, and Sargon… Wait, what’s Sargon?

There’s a single codex entry shedding light on that mystery, provided by Thomyris’ physician no less. Apparently, Thomyris’ children kept dying from dubious reasons, so she swapped her third baby with a fake one, sending the real child who knows where. That is, Ghassan took Sargon’s place. Wait, don’t tell me. Was kidnapping Ghassan some roundabout way of getting Sargon in front of the Simurgh? Please, no, that’s even dumber.

Vahram might have been a good surprise villain if all the trailers didn’t make him look so ominous. Even if they played that card right, I still wouldn’t have been impressed. For a story’s main villain, Vahram’s relationship with Sargon sure is slim. He’s barely in the foreground before the big betrayal. All those early moments are like: why is Anahita doing this, and what are Anahita’s intentions, and how does Sargon feel considering Anahita was his mentor? You guys, Anahita is not even an Immortal! After Vahram stabs you in the back, they patch in a flashback showing how he and Sargon met. Too little too late I’m afraid.

His grand plan impresses me even less. I’m long over Thanos copycats whose sole intention of destroying every known particle in the universe even they can’t explain. How fitting that Sargon beats him with the power of friendship. Although, if that friendship was Sargon and Artaban’s, what man could stand the might of it? At least Neith and Artaban will do a good job of raising little Vahram now that he’s had a reset.

When it comes to Sargon, I know what you’re doing, game, trying to pull off that Sands of Time arc. You want your lead to start off cocky and arrogant, but turn kind and thoughtful towards the end. Well, shame it’s not gonna work this time. Know why? Because Sargon is a baby.

Just look at the boy! He can put on that frowny face all he likes - I still see through him. The moment he stumbles upon someone in need, all that bravado comes crashing down, replaced by the biggest sweetheart in the universe. There just ain’t no foul bone in his body. I felt compelled to hug the boy each time his somber expression came up in a dialogue box. Don’t cry, Sargon, aww!

I adore his interactions with the denizens of Mount Qaf. Sargon is trying his darndest to be polite while hiding the bewilderment. Take Maryam, the royal architect. What an excellent homage to the “PALACE’S DEFENSE SYSTEM.” If you ever wondered what type of lunatic fortifies a palace with traps dangerous to its inhabitants, here she is. I feel Sargon’s pain as he walks the thin line between acknowledging the Architect’s ingenuity and cautiously hinting that her designs might kill someone. No, wait, they already have!

While all of Sargon’s interactions with the supporting cast are memorable, without a doubt the heart of the entire story lies in the relationship between him and Artaban. Those tutorial arenas are amazing for more than one reason. Sargon starts off by being impatient with beginner drills, to figuring out the powers of Mount Qaf together with his master. The final lesson made me bring out my tissues - Sargon demonstrating his skills, while Artaban nods along with pride. This is a beautifully executed character arc that conveys infinitely more than any other time travel machination going on in the main plot. To top off that final lesson, Artaban gives you a troll of a training manual. Yes, master, I will absolutely engage in one hour long planks and eat half my body weight each day.

So you’re saying I’m worthy if I bought the deluxe edition?

TLC released 2 DLCs in an orderly fashion. The first, the Divine Trials, came out in June. If you thought you were any good at the game, the Trials are here to reassure you - no, you’re really not. At the time of writing this review, I only got through the first few, so I can’t rate the overall experience. Even so, let me tell you, the torture is sublime.

Masochistic tendencies aren’t the only reason I’m into this DLC. Everything from that heap of forgotten abilities, combos, special attacks - everything I had to remember. Oh, yeah, I can slide kick. Shit, I forgot I have a bow. Guess I could finally learn that aerial combo. Playing through the main game, you’re likely to have accumulated at least some bad habits. Correcting those and surpassing the Trials requires perseverance, but is rewarded with hard-won proficiency.

I still hold some of the same grudges I did with the base game. Overlong challenges are hard to remember and only lead to more frustration on retries. Cluster fucks are a sensory overload and hard to handle even with my improved skills, but I shouldn’t repeat myself.

The Mask of Darkness is a completely different beast. Released in September, the DLC is more of a traditional expansion with new areas to explore. It picks up Radjen‘s story, who spent most of the main plot conspicuously sulking on the sidelines.

The DLC makes the smart decision of resetting your health bar to 3 notches and cutting all your health potions. You still have your Athra surges, but say goodbye to the double jump and all abilities unlocked after it. For most players (who haven’t stretched out the game over several months while writing a 10k review), this will be a welcome return to the basics.

The DLC also strips you off your amulets in exchange for some new ones to play around with. The Vengeance Reservoir was made just for me. After stacking 5 successful parries, you can follow the fifth one with a special attack. However, taking damage resets the stack, so my shitty play didn’t get to see it in action as much as I would have liked to. The Seal of Fate is god-given for crowd control and the Vampiric Chakram turns the boomerang into a source of heal— Wait, is the game still trying to make me use the Chakram? Get outta here.

Don’t you start me with those tragic backstories.

The DLC doesn’t keep you well equipped for no reason. The most prominent foes occupying the first two areas of the DLC each are the Puppet Soldiers and the Wraths. The Puppet Soldiers have a mere 3 attacks, but can chain them up in a number of different ways to keep you on your toes. The Wraths have a much more complex move-set. They mix up two different overhead lunges, with two different projectile types and an enraged red phase whose purpose I’ve yet to discover.

Both of them will keep you busy, but neither one is a match for the deadliest fucker of them all. Seldom encountered, a twin-faced sentinel will have you questioning what nightmare you just walked into. Considering it has a second phase, I’m not sure why it wasn’t promoted to a mini-boss, which it’s certainly more worthy of than that Undead Black Belt.

While the new enemy design is stellar, platforming is the star of the show here. The two elements taking up the spotlight are the blue teleport from the left area and the blue teleport from the right— Wait a minute. Yeah, these are very similar. Both take you along a predetermined trajectory, the subtle difference being in how they’re activated. Additionally, the teleport on the left can change states and take you through solid walls, while the one on the right has shit hit-boxes. Guess which one I prefer.

I was happy to see columns make a comeback, but I would have liked if they functioned the same as in Forgotten Sands. TLC has you circle round a column first before letting you jump off in that direction. FS, on the other hand, supports the same functionality with a swift combination of the two inputs at the same time. Weird they didn’t also go for a more dynamic implementation in TLC.

The sequences I preferred the most were the ones combining disintegrating platforms with materializing saws, though I wager most people will remember Radjen’s wandering Eye of Sauron. The Dahaka is the immediate comparison, yet the eye is much less out to kill you. It’s more up for a friendly game of catch, the way it floats in the distance throwing shy glances your way.

Radjen is considerably deadlier up close. Since you’re working with an early game repertoire, the fight is more in line with Kiana’s than any of the latter bosses. It’s a tense parry-based battle against an opponent who swerves, feigns and teleports. They even included intermezzos similar to the ones everyone liked so much about the Forest Queen. Fighting Radjen is certainly more fun than listening to her whine about not being Vahram’s favorite child. Sargon’s immense power of friendship brings over Neith to put an end to the issue. What a classic Sargon move.

The cherry on top of this DLC waits for you outside of the Mind Palace. After Artaban’s helped you freshen up, it’ll be time for one more lesson - a 1 on 1 with the master himself. “Artaban, you’re telegraphing.” Stop making me laugh, game, I need to concentrate on parrying! Truly, is there any better way of wrapping up this wonderful experience than a playful competition with the man who saw you through it all? Dear lord, I love this game.

What an absolute legend.

You can’t hurt me Ubisoft, I already survived the 2008 reboot. Oh, TLC didn’t sell well enough? Gee, I wonder where this is heading.

Let’s be frank, The Lost Crown had an uphill battle to begin with. The metroidvania genre is seriously oversaturated. Even with the heap of crap covering up Steam, we’ve still got high quality indies spilling out our backlogs and most of those are closer to a 20€ price tag than the baseline 40€ asked by TLC. Ubisoft’s rotten reputation ain’t helping either. Why would you support one of the worst publishers in the industry when there are so many small studios that could make better use of your money?

That’s all sad and true, but… You know what, fuck it. No, I don’t think this game should cost 40 bucks. It should cost 60. Yes, in this degenerated industry where overcooked pieces of crap like Skull and Bones get branded quadruple A, I’d pay 60€ for The Lost Crown and it would be worth. Every. Damn. Penny.

This is an incredibly polished game. It’s jam packed with high quality content from start to finish. It offers an insane amount of depth, ripe for replayability. It released two excellent DLCs mere months after it came out. Are you kidding me?

The Lost Crown didn’t just copy what its predecessors were doing. It studied the evolution of the genre, learned from its mistakes, improved, iterated and delivered its own twists. It is one of the pinnacles of the metroidvania genre and can stand proudly next to Hollow Knight. Moreover, it can stand proudly next to Sands of Time and take over the franchise’s torch.

Where is this game at award ceremonies? Why am I not seeing more nominations? No Witcher 3s nor Baldur’s Gates came out this year to mop up the awards. Are you telling me this game is not a worthy GOTY contender? Do you think it shouldn’t be recognized for its achievements in action, animation, art style and soundtrack? Oh, it got an accessibility award. Fuck you, Keighley.

I have a habit of ending reviews with a downer, but I really don’t want to do that with this one (or at least the last paragraph). I know nobody reads these, but I’d still like to address the developers directly. As a fan of metroidvanias, I think you delivered a game that elevates the entire genre. As a diehard fan of Prince of Persia, I think you gave us infinitely more than we could have ever hoped for. So thank you for everything you’ve done. Thank you for fighting to make a game that defies the triple A machine. Thank you for pouring every piece of your heart into it. The passion is recognized by everyone who played the game, I assure you. I don’t know what the future holds, but I hope you’ll once again get the chance to work on something as incredible as The Lost Crown.

Cheers!

[icyschreviews]

A Review of Need for Speed Heat

Back to the Streets

EA, are you trying to become my favorite evil corpo? Come on, don’t be shy. Just admit it. You’ve stopped the production of live-service games, you’re releasing rich single-player experiences, you haven’t laid off an entire studio in a while. Wait, don’t tell me. Do you have a crush on me?

Why, EA, I am flattered. Truly. But I must say, I’m not much into the whole corporate type. All those fancy business suits and trunks full of cash aren’t really my thing. I’m more of an indie sort of girl. So while I do appreciate your efforts, I think I’ll have to turn you do—

Hold on, what was that sound? Is that an engine revving up? Did I just hear police sirens in the distance? Whoa, where are all these neon lights coming from? And the smell of burning tires, good lord! Is it? Could it be? No. Oh, no.

Fuck me.

I’m a millennial, alright? However I grew up in a household without any gaming consoles and our first PC came in sometime in the early 00s. Need for Speed: Underground was one of the first games I laid my hands on (not counting Flipper). I’m pretty sure my dumb ass didn’t know what Lil Jon was rapping about, but it sure sounded cool! And the cars, they go vroom vroom!

You know where this is going. The Fast and the Furious movies were just coming out and the hype around street racing was at its peek. Underground laid the foundation for my love of the series and by the time Carbon came out I was an outright zealot. I was in love with tacky decals and the flare of nitrous long before I learned how to drive. Long before I realized I was a bad driver!

However as the 00s neared their end, my adoration slowly died down. EA being EA thought it would be a grand idea to keep releasing one Need for Speed game per year, while continuously molesting its studios. What bugged me even more than the sameness of it all was the direction they decided to take the series in.

In 2010 Hot Pursuit came out. An homage to the series’ roots, the game was praised by both fans and critics alike. It bored me out of my fucking mind. Someone has to sit me down one day and try to explain the appeal of this game. A multitude of sequels followed in its wake, but I just couldn’t be bothered.

I know what you’re going to say. Trends change and franchises need to grow. Need for Speed can’t just be about street racing. Even I would have eventually grown bored with it. However, dear reader, change is not what I’m advocating against. Case in point, Pro Street. That game didn’t have open worlds or cop chases, and it didn’t need to. What it did have was crisp controls, colorful tracks, diverse challenges, an insane customization system, and all of that spray-painted with graffiti and in tune to some electro-pop. What I’m saying is that it had character, a concept none of its successors really understood.

So, yes, Hot Pursuit was boring. No, the constant showering of high-performance cars does not turn me on. No, I don’t want to keep driving along the same generic mountain roads. I need a sense of place, a context! I need a game that has it’s own identity, not just photo-realistic graphics. I need a progression system that’s palpable, not a conveyor belt of super cars that all handle the same.

With as many NFS games as it was churning out, EA didn’t really care about preserving the older titles, as long as you were buying the new ones. Underground, Most Wanted (2005), Carbon, all fell to the wayside. I hung up the keys of my Toyota Supra and looked into buying a public transport card. Long gone were my street racing days, occasionally coming back to mind like flashes of neon glimpsed from the corner of the eye.

Until…

I’m getting to Heat in a moment, I swear.

Behold, a new challenger steps on to the scene! After half-bludgeoning its studios to death, EA decided to groom the upcoming Ghost Games as its main Need for Speed studio. Some middling games (and years full of torture) later, Ghost Games revealed its new NFS game in 2019. But this wasn’t going to be just another NFS game. No, no, we’re going back to the streets, for real this time. Back to being an aspiring nobody behind the wheel of some battered Civic looking to score it with the big league. Yes, street racing is making its long-awaited comeback to the series!

At least that’s what they were saying. Oh, believe me, I was skeptical. It’s been so long since EA did Need for Speed right that I took every announcement with a pound of salt. But beggars can’t be choosers, and since we certainly aren’t getting any re-releases of the old games, I might as well give Heat a try. So I did.

I’ll give Heat one point straight away - it knows its target audience. It does just about everything it can during its 10 minute intro to milk your nostalgia to the last drop. You start the game behind the wheel of some overpowered monster of a car, one whose likeness you won’t be seeing again till late game. The race goes awry (as it always does), the cops bust the average Joe you were playing as, leaving him to limp back to town with his pride shattered. It’s all pre-rendered footage, but what we can’t have in FMVs, we can make up later in stupidity, right Heat?

Then the game cuts and you’re in some garage inhabiting the floating body of an FPS camera. You turn around to meet papi— I mean, Lucas the owner, and then bam! Heat hits you with a character selection screen. Come on, champ, you didn’t seriously think you were playing as Joe?

Heat lets you pick from a roster of 12 characters which is diverse enough, I guess. I certainly wasn’t expecting EA to license MetaHuman just for Need for Speed. I’m here to customize cars, not people, however I was still pleasantly surprised by the addition. Seeing your character interact with others on screen feels more natural than viewing everything from the lenses of your bobbing camera body.

Then I spent the next 20 minutes picking out bucket hats. Unashamedly. No, Ghost Games didn’t have time to develop a character creator, but an outfit picker? Man, we gotta have that! It’s a silly little indulgence, probably there just for EA to strike some deals with clothing brands, but one I liked none the less. Any game that lets me make my character look like a complete idiot gets points from me.

Lucas lets you pick from 3 cars, and of course there’s one American muscle, one Japanese import and one European classic. Oh, I can feel the Carbon tingles come over me again! I must say, I was tempted by the BMW, but just couldn’t resist the Mustang. One paint job and two white strips along the center of the car later, and we were ready to go!

This is peak fashion right here.

This is where I really start to judge Heat - the moment those wheels hit the tarmac and the game lets me loose behind the steering wheel. The world is something that can make or break a Need for Speed game and Palm City certainly had a lot to prove. Thankfully it did.

This is a superbly crafted map. I like just about everything it has to offer. Palm City itself is more than just a mesh of copy-pasted buildings. It feels like an actual place people could live in, with its sprawling boulevards, long overpasses connecting the beach to the glistening downtown, seaside walkways and quiet suburbs hidden in between.

Although at the beginning the game only generates races in Palm City itself, the map extends much further than that. Heat doesn’t wall off parts of the world behind progression. All of it is available to you at once, so you are free to ditch the campaign and go cruise around the countryside by yourself. However if you do decide to follow the breadcrumbs laid out for you, Heat will slowly introduce you to Palm City before it starts fanning out. It’s a seamless way to get you accustomed to the game without caging you in, and there’s a lot to discover once you do get going. There’s a huge raceway behind your safe house, a space shuttle launch site, a forest recently devastated by a fire, an abandoned quarry, etc.

What’s equally important is the size of the map. Modern triple-A games have developed a wearisome habit of stretching their maps into oblivion, but Heat got the balance right. There’s not too much content if you want to make it into a 20h experience, but more than enough if you’re eager to dig in. There’s a huge quantity of events and together they make use of just about every tight corner, every mountain slope, every bare piece of highway the map has to offer. The variety is excellent and Heat makes sure you get to experience all of it.

Just your average view of Palm City.

And of course it’s pretty. I feel that statement might be redundant at this point. EA’s studios have been polishing the franchise’s graphics for years now. However it’s not the graphics, but the different weather effects that give the world a whole new level of depth. Port Murphy feels a lot different when you come up to it on a sunny morning than on a murky afternoon. Likewise, are you climbing up Cloudbank on a dry midday or is the pouring rain making your night ride even more treacherous? Couple this with the choice to switch between night and day and all of a sudden each location has multiple facets for you to experience.

This is what Need for Speed games are all about for me - pulling up my BMW in front of the safe house on a bright summer day, as sea gulls coast in the distance and “Tu Manera” fires up the radio. I relished exploring every bit of this world. Instead of fast traveling, I’d take my time driving from one race to another. That’s how I fell in love with Carbon in the first place, slowly learning different parts of the world and eventually being able to find my way without the assistance of the mini-map. I could still navigate parts of Palmount City to this day. There’s nothing more satisfying in these games than realizing you recognize a street corner and knowing exactly where to go from there.

If there’s one aspect of the exploration I must criticize, it’s the mini-map. As much of an expert on Palm City as you might become, you’re still clueless at the beginning of the game and need the mini-map to guide you to your destination. This is one of the essential features of these games. What bothers me is that the mini-map is the only thing you can rely on for navigation. If you want to know where to go, you have to keep glancing at that bottom-left corner of the screen. This is an awful way to play the game. Instead of having both your eyes on the road and savoring the world around you, you’re forced to avert your gaze from the content that actually matters.

The game sort of offers an alternative. Quest markers and manual waypoints exist as permanent banners that float in the sky. You can make your way to them, in theory, by driving long enough in their general direction. However they are fundamentally inaccurate and can have you driving in circles, not to mention that Ana’s face looming in the distance is nothing short of terrifying.

What I would have liked is something that doesn’t break your immersion and is equally reliable. How about an arrow at the center of the screen which points to where you need to go according to the route computed by the mini-map? Or anything else you can come up with. Keep the mini-map by all means, it still needs to be there to resolve ambiguities, but give me more natural way-finders that don’t take me out of the experience.

A perfect day to fire up the engine.

Heat fills its world with an ample amount of events to keep you busy. There are more or less 4 types of events for you to engage with: race, drift, off-road and time trials. Races are your standard affair - fight your way up a pack of 8 and finish in 1st place. They come in two varieties: circuit and sprint. None of this is new, but I do find it interesting how these races are distributed. Circuit races are almost exclusive to the day, while sprints make up most of your night events.

It took me a while to truly appreciate this detail. In the context of the game, day races are legal and sponsored events attended by professionals. If you want to win, you have to master every corner, and that’s when the nature of the race comes into place. Of course it’s a circuit race, the game is giving you more than one chance to learn and overcome the track.

On the other hand, night races are illegal. You don’t have the luxury of barricades; a pickup truck could come at you from any corner. Also, you’ll probably have the police breathing down your neck, so it doesn’t make sense to race in a circuit. Everyone involved just wants to rush to the finish line and disappear around the nearest street corner. These races aren’t about mastery. They are about survival.

All together races make up close to 70% of the game’s overall events. This is an absurd ratio considering that Heat had more variety at its disposal, so it’s good that plain old racing never gets old. One of the reasons for this is car handling. Being the billionth NFS entry, Heat boasts some nuance in this regard. None of the cars I drove felt quite the same on the road. I would charge my Mustang into corners and slam the handbrake to slide through the competition, where my BMW would require more gracious handling to squeeze its way through.

The second reason has to do with difficulty and, boy, does this game have some crazy difficulty spikes. I started the game on hard and had no troubles until I hit performance rating 200. That’s when things started getting out of hand. Before if I botched a corner, I could always count on catching up with the competition on the next straight. You can forget about that after rating 200. If you’re not driving pitch perfect corners, every corner, then you’re not driving to win. I’d have to enter a race with a rating 30 above the minimum requirement just to have a chance, and still feel like the opponents’ cars were the ones 30 ratings above mine.

This caught me off guard at first, however I have to admit I grew to love it later on. I’m not playing Need for Speed games for realistic driving mechanics, but I do love me some challenge. Some of my favorite tracks in the entire game are the once I had to attempt over and over again, until I finally got to experience the triumph of finishing in 1st place.

The problem that eventually becomes apparent is that the difficulty is far from well-balanced. As you fight your way up to performance rating 300, you’ll notice the difficulty slowly receding to what it was at the start of the game. You’ll occasionally run into a couple more teeth-grinders, but not much more than that. What’s worse is that two races with the same performance rating often present different levels of challenge. You never know what you’re up against. Even more bizarrely, this difficulty phenomenon only applies to race events. I would regularly enter drift and off-road events under-leveled and get out on top without feeling I was overreaching.

Out of my way!

Time trial events are exactly what they appear to be. You have to complete a course in a set amount of time to earn bank. You race alone with a ghost car following behind you, re-enacting the time you have to beat. However what makes these events truly special is that the tracks are insane. The courses are narrow, winding, demanding your full concentration and meticulous braking. None of the standard race events test your ability to control a car as much as these do. Some time trials, like “Up Up and Away”, made me fear for my car’s suspension.

Off-road events are the awkward newcomer to the series. Quite evidently, Heat isn’t a Colin McRae game, so I was curious what it had in store. The answer is not much. Don’t expect to find a self-contained version of Dirt in here. The physics simulations are no where near a true rally game. The cars fly over the terrain without much obstruction, and you have a higher chance of losing control of your standard racer driving down wet tarmac than of your jeep sliding through mud.

Still… As much of a gimmick as they are, off-road events can be loads of fun. They are few and far between, enough to be considered a palette cleanser. Driving off-road in Heat made me feel like I was given the cheat codes for the game. I’d send my Subaru storming down paths that would make all my other vehicles crawl to a halt and laugh as a madman as the scenery flew by.

Moreover, off-road events are some of the more inspired ones. The game has you racing across beaches, under bridges going through wetland, down forest paths you didn’t even know were there, all while intersecting bits and pieces of tarmac just so you could remember what civilization looks like. Lots of collectibles and additional activities are only accessible off-road giving you even more of an incentive to snoop around. The mini-map also handles itself beautifully. While in other vehicles it will never lead you off road, but switch over to your designated mud collector and all of a sudden it’s guiding you across hills and meadows.

If I were to complain about one thing, it’s that off-road events are way too easy. Admittedly, this is one of the reasons why they work so well for unwinding, but I wish Heat twisted my arm just a little. I would sometimes finish a race with the next person being 1-2 km behind me. I got so used to beefing up my car for race events that I’d enter off-road ones obliviously over-leveled. It’s only when I intentionally started skipping engine upgrades that I felt the competition slowly catching up with me.

Even though I enjoyed them, I don’t know if off-road events have much of a place in the series. They seem like an awful lot of effort for what is ultimately a bite-sized piece of entertainment. I have no idea how much the physics engine would need to be revamped to support more nuance, nor how that would impact the arcade-style handling that makes up the rest of the game. Then again, if Forza can do it…

Aw, I didn’t bring my swimsuit.

Unlike off-road, drift events feel right at home in the series. Although not present in every installment, they have still undergone a significant journey from where they started off in Underground. I can’t say I was much of a fan of those earlier renditions, but my mind was thoroughly changed by Pro Street. That was the first game in the series to introduce a more realistic drifting model and I loved it to pieces. Thankfully Heat continues exactly where Pro Street left off.

I admit, that introductory tutorial was quite rough for me. It took me some time to get back into the groove of things, but afterwards I found Heat’s drifting to be some of the most satisfying I’ve had the pleasure to engage with. To pull off a continuous drift, especially around those long U corners, requires meticulous handling of the both the gas and the steering. There’s more technique on display here than on all of the other events combined.

So after the tutorial ended, I gleefully hopped over to the dealership and got myself an RX7 (like the basic bitch that I am). I equipped it with drifting gear back at the safe house, rolled it out of the garage and set it out on the streets… Only to find out I could barely get a hold of it. It had none of the restraint of the tutorial car and it kept miserably over-steering in each corner. That other RX7 performed just fine, so it must be me, right? I went online to search for help.

Turns out you shouldn’t equip your drift car with drift gear. No, no, instead you should put on showcase gear. What’s showcase gear, you ask? Well, it’s somewhere in between your pure race and pure drift gear. How are you supposed to know that? Beats me! This all terribly reminds me of wheelies in Pro Street. To get any lift out of your car, you had to go into the advance settings and tweak your suspension accordingly. Did the game indicate that you needed to do this in any way? Of course not, fuck you.

Unfortunately, Heat’s bullshit doesn’t end there. God forbid, next you have to exit the garage and open up the special numpad menu. I repeat, the special numpad menu. Inside there are additional car tuning options which are not available in the garage. What the actual fuck, Heat? Why are these particular options only available once you’re in the open world? Was this menu patched in later? Sure enough, when you make your way through the very intuitive n u m p a d m e n u and tune your steering sensitivity and down force, you’ll be able to drift. Hooray!

Thank you internet, imagine if I had to sit there and figure out what the different suspension and tire kits were for. Like what the hell is speedcross? Or what’s the actual difference between race and on-road gear? Or why would I ever equip drag— Drag? Wait a minute, Heat, do I smell cut content?

Whenever you preview an event from the map, you’ll be presented with a quartered rectangle indicating the type of car you should bring along: race, drift, off-road and, yes, the ill-fated drag. This is only one of the many signs pointing to Heat’s unfinished state. I’ve no idea why drag events were cut, but you can see their ghostly remnants all over the game, from the unused gear to the long stretches of road begging to be burned upon. Considering the race events’ unquestionable dominance, I would have appreciated one more event type to play around with.

It’s like I’m in the canyons again.

Heat has a simple, yet effective progression system tying into its events - two currencies and a day and night cycle. During the day participating in events earns you cash which you can use to buy everything from cars, to upgrades, to those illustrious bucket hats. On the other hand, racing during night grants you reputation or, as the game likes to call it, rep. It works the same as XP, unlocking higher level events, more powerful parts and meaner cars.

I understand Ghost Games did something similar in Most Wanted (2015) where rep was gained by performing special activities and used to unlock additional car parts. This works so much better in Heat. The day and night cycle feed back into each other, with both currencies essential for your progression, and that’s not mentioning how perfectly they fit within the larger context of game.

Up until the end of the main quest, which comes at you around rep level 30, I had absolutely no need to grind. If you follow newly generated events as they appear on the map, you’ll slowly rise through the ranks as intended. However Heat does take the possibility of grinding into account. At some point I started noticing exclamation marks over events I already completed. Turns out you can compete in them again with a higher performance rating, granting a higher reward to go along. This is a pretty good fail-safe if you don’t want to be bothered with some of the nutcracker races I mentioned before.

Once you approach rep level 40 and start tackling end-game content, you’ll do have to engage with some amount of grinding. On one hand, it seems the devs didn’t bother putting that much content into later parts of the game. On the other hand, your super car spendings won’t cover themselves. Thankfully those exclamation marks are there to save the day and cause of the overall abundance of events, I didn’t mind jumping into old ones. As you repeat an event more and more, Heat does gradually decrease the winnings, meaning you can’t theoretically grind your way into infinity. This is alright as you’ll never need to go that far, and cash and rep are plenty even if you get busted a lot. Speaking of which…

Suck it, losers.

As I mentioned earlier, there are a couple of differences between day and night events. Most importantly, night events are illegal, meaning there are no barricades blocking you off from the traffic. Passers-by become bowling pins and ambulance cars start looking like bull's eyes, so of courses those polite officers eventually come after your ass. I laughed when I saw my first cop in Heat. Look at that precious thing in its tiny patrol car! Let’s see what sound it makes when I give it a little crack. Except I was the one to receive all the cracking.

I’ll tell you, dear reader, the shock was immeasurable. I got so used to smashing cops in Carbon like empty beer cans that I just couldn’t get my head around what was going on. What do you mean I’m not doing any damage to them? Did they steel those patrol cars against concrete walls before they came after me? What do you mean my car’s at critical health already? There’s no way I’m getting busted, I just got started. Wait, don’t push me into that building. Wait, where did that other cop come from? No, don’t you box me in, you mother fu—

Yeah, I got my ass handed to me by the cops. Multiple times. It became a regular occurrence, to be frank. Heat instilled the fear of law and order into me. It was something I was actively worried about in the beginning. I couldn’t just go rampaging around town willy-nilly. I had to keep peeking around every corner for any sign of those rotating lights. And you know what? That’s how it should be. You should have the fear of the cops etched deep into your bones. They shouldn’t be laughable piñata dolls. They should be the force of reckoning raining down upon you. And my god, in Heat, do they.

Eventually I learned how to handle them. No, you can’t face off with a cop, you idiot. Fold your tail between your legs and run! Managing cops in Heat is a game of crowd control. You have to be aware of how many there are around you and how many are about to pop around the next corner. You have to be smart about how you evade them. Don’t smash into them, don’t let them make you smash into something else, don’t let yourself be boxed in. Keep a lookout on your surroundings. Jump pads are your best friend. Go where the cops can’t follow you. If your car is fast enough, try to ditch them on the highway. And know your nearest gas station, for the love of god!

Get chased enough times and you’ll eventually start noticing the patterns. That doesn’t mean that heat 5 chases start being any less vicious, they always are, but you will be able to predict your way out of some predicaments. E.g. right after you’ve evaded them, the game will spawn columns of cops patrolling around your last known location. It’s easy to spot their trajectory on the map and slip by undetected in the opposite direction. Likewise, cops are polite enough to announce when they’re going to ram you, so you can use that to pull off a sharp turn or hit the breaks as hard as you can.

The algorithm can be annoying at times. After heat level 4, the game just keeps throwing them at you. Sometimes this is called for. You can farm heat by buzzing back and forth the same speed trap, but the game doesn’t let you enjoy exploits like that for long. You’ll eventually aggravate the operator, making her use her otherworldly powers to conjure up a patrol car right in front you. However at other times this happens at random, spawning cops out of the blue and forcing you to swerve off the road into the nearest ditch just to avoid being spotted.

Some nights you win…

High heat events are a beast of their own. You’re not really meant to engage with them early on. Heat 3 cops and higher are not to be trifled with and best avoided by your low rating vehicle. Enter late game though and you’ll need to get your hands dirty if you want to top off your super car. Building up heat level 3 is sure enough, but heat level 5 is not so easily achieved and requires a considerable time investment. Things don’t get easy once you’re there as the events match your current performance rating and the cops are at your throat the moment you launch.

When it comes to the best gear I don’t mind that the game walls off the cream of the crop, but high heat events are nothing if not unforgivable. As I said, you need to grind heat just to get a chance to compete, but you can’t simply crash through cops to do so. You need to conserve your health and items for the big event, meaning that grinding needs to be conducted slowly and methodically further increasing the downtime. The events themselves are ruthless, both from the perspective of your unwavering opponents and the merciless cops. If you lose or get caught, you have to repeat the entire process all over again. What’s worse, you’re not allowed to restart the event even when you’re not being chased, as you can with all others in the game. Come on, Heat, give me a break!

The only time I considered the cops to be a nightmare, and not an excellently crafted challenge, is during nightly drift events. Heat, this is not ok. As I said, the best tactic against the cops is to run, but you can’t do that while drifting. Performing a successful drift means pulling off a continuous uninterrupted slide around a curve. Sliding is not akin to running away, not in the least. You won’t be loosing anyone at that speed. What’s worse, a lucky cop (or more likely two) will be able to trail behind you at ease and keep knocking at your rear, breaking your drift combo over and over again.

Not only can’t you win the event at pace, you have to lose the police afterwards as well. Do you know what it’s like to lose cops in a drift car, Heat? It’s a fucking nightmare! It’s a drift car, it slides! It slides if the wind blows against it a little harder, not to mention if some asshole is ramming into it. You can’t even reliably retry the event with a bruised ego. The game always spawns patrol cars along particular curves, meaning some events are doomed from the start. If the track goes by a gas station, be sure a cop will be waiting for you to show up. Why aren’t there any off-road races during nights? I’d love to see those mother fucking Corvettes try to chase me through the forest.

…some nights you lose.

It’s good that the gameplay throws such a strong emphasis on the cops as they also present the main conflict of the story. We’re introduced to our antagonists right from the start, lieutenant Frank Mercer and his ruthless squad of deputies, keen on abusing all their might to rid the streets of those pesky—

Hold on, Heat, what are we doing? I know police violence is a serious issue in the States and I’m certainly not here to defend the cops. However, Heat, is this really the hill you want to die on? Oh no, the honest tax-paying street racer is getting harassed by the police again! Will these fascist pigs ever let me enjoy my fundamental rights to crash through everything that isn’t a solid wall? Most of you probably don’t think that police violence is a laughing matter, and I’m with you 100%. That’s why I find it particularly troubling that Heat tries to look at it from the moral high-ground of street racing.

Look, Need for Speed just isn’t the franchise to tackle this topic. You simply cannot make a case for street racing in real life. If this were the real world, my MC would have had her driver’s license revoked the first time she got busted. The only thing she would have been allowed to drive afterwards is a tricycle. This is why the franchise has always been camp as hell, with dumb story lines that never took themselves too seriously. Street racing is something that’s only allowed to exist and look cool in fantasy land. So bringing in the sensitive matter of police brutality into it… Ugh.

Ok, at least it’s not saying anything that I fundamentally disagree with. Cops equal bad, alright, let’s move on. Heat, what else do you have in store for me? Who is this character I’m supposed to be building up a crew with? Ana? You cool, Ana? She’s not cool, she’s not!

The Rivera siblings hold the emotional core of the story: Ana, the racer who appears in the intro, and Lucas, the mechanic who treats you to your first car. Ana is all fired up about making it into the big league, while Lucas is done with his reckless past and would just like to grease his hands on my a— on some cylinders. Naturally the game couples you with Ana, her being the like-minded street racer who’ll help you tear up the town.

Tear up my brain cells more likely. Dear lord, this woman is a car crash. She pulls you into her street racing scheme without so much a second thought and continues to batter you with her ludicrous ideas to get acclaimed. She constantly calls you up to whine about whatnot. She harasses you even while you’re trying to save her from the cops. At one point she makes a grand speech about making something of her life with street racing. I was waiting for her to divulge how we’re going to save this town using the power of street racing and friendship, but alas. Seriously, what hellish mind thought up this woman? Why can’t we hang out with Lucas more? Is he single? Did I ask that already?

What’s up for tonight, Ana? Breaking the law, you don’t say.

When you think about it, it’s weird how your MC doesn’t really have any emotional ties to the Riveras. You’re just an outsider to all of their drama, an accidental tag-along that occasionally comes up with vague encouragements. I should have minded the disconnect, but strangely I didn’t. There’s something about the female voice actress, Jamie Gray Hyder, that clicked with me. To my ears she managed to perfectly convey the barely concealed sarcasm of someone who deals with idiots on a daily basis, all while wearing sunglasses and a bucket hat indoors. What’s worse, I’m not even sure I’m imagining it.

There were times where I was honest to god convinced the MC was low-key making fun of Ana. E.g. there’s a piece of banter that becomes available after you’ve beaten the main quest. Ana calls you up to tell you how she triumphantly humiliated her ex, only for the conversation to reveal that the aforementioned humiliation consisted of one text message and that she dropped and broke her phone afterwards. Your MC patiently nods along and cheers her up as if talking to a child. I couldn’t help but laugh my ass off.

On another occasion you get to hear all about her chicken burger induced diarrhea. The writers must have been having a laugh, right? Then again, even Lucas catches the idiot disease eventually. He starts off as a former hotshot, now a sensible and restrained mechanic, only to give in to Ana’s bullshit. By the end he’s the goofy guy who can’t drive a car no more, so he calls you up hoping you’ll distribute fliers for his shop to your cool new big league friends (who you never get to meet btw).

Look at these three geniuses.

The game throws in some side characters to give you a break from the Riveras, with middling results. Dex is the first from the bunch and the only thing you can make out about him is his undeniable crush for sexy garage man. Lucas and Lucas’ daddy issues are all Dex ever talks about, so much so that even me, another one of Lucas’ fangirls, couldn’t take it any more. That said, I was surprisingly pleased to see him pop up again after the last story mission. Proximity breeds familiarity, I guess, and I found the last couple of races he organized with the Riveras to be absolutely adorable. Although it would have been nice if the three of them didn’t always fight for last place, but maybe I’m asking too much.

The drift guy (whose name I can’t remember, so let’s just call him that) goes by remarkably fast. He comes off quite likeable after that initial drifting tutorial and continues to be so even as you destroy all of his high scores. Following Dex’s reappearance, I was waiting for drift guy to make a comeback as well, but to no avail. It’s a shame, considering he’s the most down-to-earth of the entire cast and someone I’d actually want to grab a beer with. I mean, imagine sitting over a drink with Ana, Jesus.

That just leaves me with one more guest driver to cover. By the time the elusive hacker chick rolled up in her pickup truck, I was already used to the game’s feeble attempts to portray more believable characters. I was certainly not ready for FBI cross-country dodgery. My girl looks like she never got out her Matrix phase, and sadly I can relate. If this were any other NFS game, her kind of buffoonery would fit right in. Unfortunately as a follow up to drift guy, she sticks out like a clown at a funeral. In some other game I would have loved listening to her signature deadpan and watching her evade the Feds using her mythical off-road powers.

I’m not sure the cop characters deserve much recognition. Shaw’s your stereotypical psycho cop, there to laugh maniacally and do all of the worst shit you expect of him. Torres might have been a good secret villain if the plot made any (less) sense. Frank Mercer though, I’ll never forget. At the climax of the final mission you have to chase the man down in his stolen M3. Yes, it’s that M3. A bit of a weird place for a cameo, but maybe I’m missing the larger context of the franchise’s ongoing story (if there is such a thing). Anyway, in a moment of utter madness, Mercer launched the M3 up a ramp from the top of a hill and flew over a valley like Icarus taking his very last breaths. What’s worse, I’m not even sure it was scripted. We were just racing down the mountain when the poor bastard decided his best chance of losing me was skydiving.

Hold on, Captain Niobe, while I put on my Trinity cosplay.

Although I’m critical of it, Heat’s story ended sooner than I would have wanted. The game tried to emphasize the Riveras’ crusade against the cops, but all I could see hanging was the juicy carrot of racing with the big league. Say Ana, what are these crews I keep hearing about? When are we going up against them? Can we form our own crew, minus you of course? Then it unceremoniously ends and all that’s left of “the big league” are glowing arrows pointing towards the multiplayer. Oh, ok…

To the game’s credit, there’s quite a bit of content after the final story mission. For starters, there are those Dex + Rivera races I already mentioned. Hacker chick comes back for one last race before she escapes the Feds into the underbrush. There’s a series of so-called Discovery events which take you along the outskirts of the map and those heat 5 events only make sense once you’ve gotten your hands on a super car. The banter is also surprisingly good, with characters no longer barraging you with quest reminders, but actually checking in with sometimes hilarious pieces of dialogue.

What stole the show, to my surprise, were activities and collectibles. It’s been a while sine I played a game that handles these so well as Heat does. Usually when you reach the point where you have to collect an X amount of Y to get an achievement, the game becomes a slog. Thankfully Heat found a way to avoid that. Instead of making them available all at once, the game slowly unlocks new activities/collectibles as you level up. Although this is meant to prevent you from feeling overwhelmed, I still did at first glancing at all the markers muddling the map. Relief came in when I actually started poking around the world. You’ll clear most of them just by driving from race to race and encountering them alongside the road. When you get to mopping them up in late game, the leftovers are significantly less formidable.

Both activities and collectibles come in 3 varieties, the former consisting of speed traps, drift zone and long jumps, while the latter is made up of billboards, flamingos and street art. There’s some culling to be made here, for sure. The only one I’d call objectively shit content are the flamingos, being nothing more than purposeless pick-ups. Graffiti might seem like the same thing, but I beg to differ. Not only do they exist as actual pieces of art inside the world, but upon being found, they are unlocked and added to your decals repertoire. They are all beautiful and unique pieces of art you would gladly put up on your car. Billboards and long jumps are, again, kind of the same thing, billboards providing the mindless satisfaction of pure destruction, with long jumps requiring some more thought and build-up to a perfect lift-off.

The ones I enjoyed the most were drift zones and speed traps. Drift zones make up for a lack of actual drift events, with a staggering 35 to 16 ratio. Each zone encompasses a couple of curves which is nowhere near a full-on event, but what they lack in quantity they make up for in challenge. To get 3 stars on some of these you need to spend time perfecting your corners, figuring out the best ways in and out of a curve and learning how to drift close to edges for that sweet proximity bonus.

Speed traps sound basic in theory, but check the global achievements chart and you’ll see that they are the ones people struggle with the most. For starters, yes, 3-starring them requires the investment of a super car, but that’s only the beginning. Not only do you need to develop ridiculous speeds, but the lead-up to some of these is particularly tricky. A 120 degree corner doesn’t seem all that intimidating if you’re going into it driving 200 km/h, but bump that speed up above 300 km/h, and all of a sudden every twitch of the steering wheel could send you flying off the road.

What is that? A bird?

Now all of those drift zones and speed traps would have been fine and dandy if it weren’t for one thing - the fucking traffic. Oh, I understand why it needs to be there. First, from a believably perspective, you can’t be driving around a ghost town. Second, you need a couple of wild cards to spice things up. Racing around night wouldn’t be nearly as exciting if there weren’t any occasional passers-by to look out for. However we’re not talking about a couple of vehicles here and there. The streets are littered with these vermin.

If you’re trying to 3-star some of the more difficult activities, you’ll get all too familiar with the spawning algorithm. I’ve had some of the nastiest car crashes doing speed traps. A good chuck of them are nigh impossible when the game consistently keeps generating 5 vehicles on the same stretch of road. How can I hit 338 km/h if my passage is essentially blocked?

Driving in the opposite lane is generally a recipe for disaster. Over-passing even a single car can be a gambler’s game. Dead angles, sharp corners, elevation differences - these are all instances where you can expect someone to pop up from the opposite direction, as they most often do. I flew over inclines and slammed straight into lorries, I got knocked over by incoming traffic, I watched helplessly as my car drifted sideways into unsuspecting vans. No wonder there are so many ambulance cars driving around - someone needs to mop up after your street racing brethren!

Intersections are your worst enemy. Not only do cars come at you out of nowhere, they also stop in the middle of an intersection like a deer caught by headlights. What are you doing, friend? You don’t just block intersections like that! Am I missing something? Is this an American thing? Did the same driving school also teach you to suddenly switch lanes when someone’s approaching from behind? Bitch, do you ever check your review mirrors? Who’s issuing driver’s licenses to these people? And I thought I was the hooligan.

Son of a—

After some time with the game, I realized none of the activities and collectibles were initially visible on the map. No, a DLC came out a couple months after launch allowing you to reveal their locations. I’m sorry, but how exactly did people live without this feature? Did those poor pioneers have to check behind every fence in the game in search of flamingos?

Speaking of DLC, Heat offers two so called Black Market DLCs. One gives you an Aston Martin DB11, while the other a McLaren F1. You have to complete 6 contracts with each car, each contract consisting of 2 series, and each series of multiple challenges and events. The events can be race or drift, while the challenges usually involve completing certain activities with certain requirements. Later contracts even make use of high heat races, meaning you’ll have loads more content on your hands.

I got the DB11 as part of a discount I was buying the game at, which would be considered a pretty generous offer if it weren’t for the fact that the DB11 is a shit car. Aston Martin, I sure hope this model handles better in real life, cause in the game it’s stiffer than my grandmother’s back! I had to equip drift tires just so I could get a little slide out of the corners.

Considering Black Market events are so varied, you’ll often have to re-spec that DB11, which is a bit tedious, if not a considerable money spender. What bothered me more is that Heat genuinely expects you to be able to drift in this goddamn car. Remember how I told you I had to tone down my RX7 so it wouldn’t over-steer? Well, for the DB11 it’s quite the opposite. Either you’re maxing out those drifting configurations or you’re not drifting at all. For me, the hardest drifting event in the entire game was with the Aston through the shipping yard. As if it weren’t hard enough tightly squeezing the DB11’s fat ass between piles of containers and not scratching a single one, the event also demanded a ludicrous score in order to complete it. Afterwards, I spent restless nights wondering if the game would try to make me tune the car for off-road as well.

I ended up not getting the McLaren F1 DLC, as I concluded I already milked more out of the game than was intended, though maybe that was a mistake considering they named the DLC “The Greatest Car in the World”. That might be so, but I have to wonder if these people ever drove the Ford GT. Watching the GT’s precious little spoiler go up and down on its own invigorates my soul more than baby seal videos. Does the F1 have an automatic spoiler? No? Didn’t think so.

I like to think Aston Martin paid for this endorsement.

Heat boasts around 127 cars for you to call your own. While the number feels more than sufficient, the initial choice between a muscle, a tuner and an exotic might give you a false impression of variety. If you were wondering who the main sponsors were, there are 14 BMWs, 13 Porsches, 11 Lamborghinis and 8 Ferraris in this game. Unless you’re a car aficionado, you won’t know, nor care about the nuances between the many different BMW M-whatnots and Porsche 911-who-gives-a-fuck. They’ll just appear as copy-pastes taking up space in the dealership. I did register a fair choice of old-school muscle cars, but the Japanese selection is quite meager, with the exception of Nissan’s strong 14 car line-up.

Before buying a car the game lets you know how much you’ll be able to customize it on a scale of 1 to 10, from a vanity point of view. I appreciate this kind of upfront information. A car with a higher score will have loads of spoilers and bumpers and side skirts at its disposable, while ones with a lower score will only allow limited tinkering. For those looking for more detailed customization options, there’s no such thing as body sculpting, but the game does offer additional quirks like neon lights, coloring tire smoke, adjusting the sound of the exhaust, etc.

The one editor which reigns supreme above all others is the decals editor. We’re talking Pro Street levels of depth here. The editor divides your car into regions: front, hood, roof, sides and rear. You can slam an insane amount of decals on each region, scale them, rotate them, move them around, adjust layers. If you’ve got the imagination, the sky’s the limit. It’s only tricky if you want your design to span more than one region, but even that’s manageable. Trust me, I’ve sprinkled a galaxy’s worth of stars across my BMW.

The best aspect of the decals editor are the community wraps. Each time you edit decals on your car, the game bundles and saves those changes into a so-called wrap. All wraps created by all users are automatically visible to the entire community. You can browse through them and apply any one on your car. This is an amazing feature, especially if you don’t feel like doing your own paint job or you saw a particularly cool design online. What’s more, the game can be modded to replace existing decals with whatever image you desire. This can be a daunting task, requiring the use of both Photoshop and the Frosty Editor. Luckily, modded decals get saved into wraps as well, meaning you can apply someone else’s unabashed anime homage (and defile your car for all eternity).

Performance parts could have been a simple affair, but Heat decided to throw in some curve balls. Most parts are easy enough to pick, but you’ll have to make up your mind regarding other ones. Suspensions, tires and differentials are the ones that lean your car towards a specific handling profile, but you don’t have to invest all 3 in the same category, rather construct whatever hybrid suits you best. Swapping a turbo makes your car feel noticeably different, and there’s even some nuance to picking a gearbox if you’re interested in fine-tuning your acceleration and top speed.

The one addition I found confusing were the engine swaps. There’s a ton of videos online comparing different engine models, but generally you just want to buy the most expensive one. I say the addition is confusing because it seemingly only exists as a money sink. Performance parts for one engine model don’t match another, so you have to equip your car anew each time you swap an engine.

Besides that, there are 2 slots for auxiliary items divided into actives and passives. Most of these are cop related: take less damage from cops, do more damage to cops, etc. Repair kits were a must have for me, as well as the radar disruptor which I found to be absolutely OP. It severely limits the detection range of the police’s radar, meaning you’ll not only be harder to detect, but will also be able to slip away more easily. Pair that with a fast enough car and, heat 5, you’re on!

Some of the auxiliary items are related to nitrous and, I have to ask, does nitrous serve any purpose in this game? It certainly didn’t feel so at the beginning. The starter packs are miserably useless, and not just objectively. Whenever you hit that nitrous switch, the camera zooms out, making it seem like you’re lagging even more behind your opponents. Nitrous only starts being handy ones you’ve unlocked the ultimate parts. The 5 x 3lb tanks are plentiful enough to be abused and switching on the 15lb big boy made me fear for my life.

Come on, Cupcake, smile for mama.

I wouldn’t have much more to say about the customization options if it weren’t for one thing tripping them over - the UI. My god, is it a mess. The key bindings are an arrangement of oddities you’ll get all too familiar with. I know I’m approaching this critique from a keyboard perspective, but still! Ghost Games, at least some of your staff must have played games with a mouse and keyboard before. They must have, right?

I already mentioned the insanity of the numpad menu. Other than additional configuration options, it also holds a list of on-going quests. This is the only place in the UI where you can find this information. Heat, couldn’t you have put it like anywhere else? I swear, some chief creative director must have gotten a full sized keyboard for the first time in his life and been blown out of his mind with it. Who the fuck else would think the numpad menu to be intuitive?

I also talked about the exclamation marks which pop up above old races when they become available for higher performance ratings. When this first happened, I had no idea what was going on. No, Heat, I don’t keep track of all of the event markers on the map. When I see an event standing out like that, my first assumption is that it’s a special kind of encounter and not an old one I already completed. Maybe I could have figured it out hadn’t my mind completely glossed over the goddamn N U M P A D prompts instructing you to cycle through the different variations of the event.

But why am I holding myself back? Let me bring out my mighty friend, the bullet list:

The first time I wanted to pause the game, I kept smashing the Esc key, just like any other sane person. Except, no, if you want to bring up the menu, you need to press Tab. Tab? The fuck?

There are absolutely no options for sorting or filtering. Each time you want to look through clothes, cars, rims, graffiti, etc. you’ll be forced to go down the same elongated lists, over and over again.

The game keeps track of how many specific performance parts you own. Whenever you want to equip one, it asks you if you want to buy a new or re-equip an existing one. However, it never tells you from which car it’s stealing the performance part from, nor does it give you any convenient shortcuts for swapping entire suits of gear from one car to another.

The same applies for vanity parts. I.e. you don’t have to buy new parts, just equip old ones. However, the interface is completely different. Not only does the game not tell you if you already own a vanity part, it also lets you buy a duplicate that you’ve already got equipped at the moment! If you want to check which vanity items you’ve got on you, you need to press Q and then X to remove any given item. Very intuitive, yes.

Some cosmetic changes, like neon lights, aren’t displayed during customization, but only once you’ve exited the garage.

When tuning the sound of the exhaust, you’re able to rev up the engine to hear the results. However, holding the arrow up key also moves your cursor in the customization list. Every. Single. Time.

Keyboard shortcuts make the otherwise excellent decals editor into a frightening experience. The bottom bar shows a dizzying array of commands at all times. It’s incredibly easy to mistake controls and do something unintended. Thank god Ctrl + Z works. If only holding down Ctrl wouldn’t also pan the camera within the editor…

The X key is the placebo for everything. You press X to remove vanity items. You press X to add new decals. You press X to exit the game from the main menu. You press X to scratch that itch deep up your ass. No, Ghost Games, the X key on the keyboard is not equivalent to the A/Cross button on the gamepad.

Press X to pay re— no, wait, to add decals.

When stripped of the incomprehensible UI, there are parts of this game’s presentation that are worth applauding. The loading screen, for example, is one of the best I’ve ever seen in a game. Each time you exit the garage, your car is seamlessly transported to a dark room with lights pulsing along the walls and the ceiling. The music you were listening to a moment ago kicks in even harder. The camera pans around your car showing off your design under the changing lights. Then, right as its about to end, the camera centers behind your car. The mirage of the loading screen pops like a bubble, and all of a sudden you’re parked in front of the garage in the open world. It never gets old.

Similarly, while you’re out in the world, you’re able to switch from day to night on the click of a button. When you do that, the camera pulls back and rolls around your car, transporting you back to the imaginary room with the throbbing neon lights. It doesn’t linger there for long before rolling one more time and putting you back where you were, changing the time of day in the process. Whenever you end the night, either by returning safely to the garage or getting caught by the cops, the transition is accompanied by equally elaborate sequences. Either you have the pleasure of watching your rep fill up with your earnings or you’re forced to swallow the bitter pill of being escorted by a cop away from your wrecked vehicle.

No less important to the overall feel of the game is the soundtrack. If there’s one thing EA has a good reputation for, it’s their taste in music. Whoever’s been working in their music licensing department for all these years needs another raise. I love Need for Speed soundtracks, I play them all the time. They’re filled with music I wouldn’t usually listen to, but that inevitably grows on me over the course of the game.

Even before Carbon cemented things, earlier games unofficially divided their cars into 3 categories: tuners, muscles and exotics. Along with these 3 types of cars there were also 3 music genres accompanying them: rap, rock and electronic. Pro Street started muddling the water a bit, and after that, it’s a blank slate for me. I was curious what Heat had in store after all these years. The initial car selection made me think we were going back to Carbon’s way of things, but, boy, was I wrong. Rap and electronic are still there, but rock has been swapped out by latin music. Imagine my surprise at hearing Inna out of people! Now, my knowledge of Spanish starts and ends with por favor, meaning I’m not much of a fan of latin music. However, this is Need for Speed, so it didn’t take long for me to start acquiring some new tastes.

Instead of dividing songs by car types, Heat divides them according to the time of day. The daily playlist is filled up by most of the latin music, meaning it’s fervently upbeat, while the nightly one is more gloomy and aggressive, matching the constant threat of the police. There’s also a playlist for the garage, which is laid-back and soothing, helping you wind down from the pressure. Each playlist perfectly accentuates the mood their respective setting is striving for. Besides that, there are tons of tracks to get hooked on. During the day I’d patiently wait for that one Cardie B verse, while the night had me chanting to Machine Gun Kelly out of all people.

Now, I know what most of you are going to say. Who listens to Need for Speed soundtracks when you can just play Spotify? How long is this game anyway? You’re not going to keep listening to the same 50 songs, are you? I get what you’re saying, however I find the soundtrack to be an essential part of a game’s identity. If you’re gonna swap out the music, you might as well do that with the entire art style. I don’t mind the repetition, besides, you loose a lot of the little touches when you forgo the in-game music. There’s no automatic volume change when hopping in and out of menus. There’s no switching of tracks when you enter an event, start being chased by cops or go back to the garage. All of this makes the music diegetic, firmly grounding you within Heat’s world.

Now this speaks class.

Gee, I’m so glad EA has gotten a hold of itself. Finally, we can receive high quality games that aren’t infected by any of the plagues of modern monetization. Sure, Heat is rough around the edges. It has gaping holes were content should have been, but we can fix that. What’s important is that we’ve found the right formula and know where to go from there.

Right, Ghost Games? You did so well, EA might even give you more leeway with the next Need for Speed. Imagine that! Ghost Games? Your there? Where have they run off to? They must be busy working on the next game, those rascals. Let’s see what Google says. Ghost Games studios…

Disbanded!? EA! No! We said we wouldn’t do that any more. Bad, EA! Bad! What do you mean you couldn’t find enough talent to build a studio in Sweden? Don’t you bullshit me, EA, all of the kids want to make games nowadays. You just can’t be pleased, can you? Make a good game, disband a studio, make a bad game, disband a studio. What’s that? I shouldn’t be worried because Criterion will continue working on the franchise? Sure, EA, go ahead and let Criterion parade Ghost Games’ limp body across the streets. That’ll make things better.

Oh, I feel so filthy now. Why did I indulge in your flattery even for a little? That’s it, down you go. You heard me, down to the bottom of the list of existing game publishers. Yes, even bellow Ubisoft. Ok, maybe not bellow Activision-Blizzard, but don’t you take that as a compliment! No, I won’t be bought with an anime Need for Speed. Why don’t you pump that cell-shaded tire smoke up your ass! Now if you’ll excuse me, I feel the need to wash myself.

Rum-dum-dum…

[icyschreviews]

A Review of Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands

The One You Should Have Remembered

Well isn’t this awkward? Allow me to hype you up for a game no one ever gave a shit about. Don’t worry, we’re so late to the party, the game’s server support has long been dead. Now you can enjoy it without having to worry that Ezio skin is going to steal 5 bucks from your wallet. So allow me to introduce you two. Forgotten Sands, here’s another misguided reader. Dear reader, this is Forgotten Sands, an incredibly polished piece of fast-paced action and an essential entry in the catalogue of every true Prince of Persia fan. Don’t you now feel silly for not having played it? I mean, neither have I, but we can rectify that mistake together.

Forgotten Sands is simultaneously an inevitability as well as a defiance of fate - a movie tie-in produced solely for cash that somehow managed to be a darn good game on its own merits. I know it gets a bad rep, even when it is seldom mentioned, yet most of the criticism I heard is inextricable from the movie. Ah yes, the Hollywood Prince of Persia. Eye-rolls ensue. Yet another shoddy video game adaptation that not even Jake Gyllenhaal could rescue.

I can’t say I blame the cynics, but if you asked the people who actually played the game (and not the ones who came out of the theater jaded, only to realize they were being sold a video game along with the movie ticket), they would have told you that Forgotten Sands has nothing to do with the movie. No, FS let the adaptation do whatever the fuck it was doing, while trying to snuggle itself somewhere between Sands of Time and Warrior Within.

You heard me right, this is another installment in the Sands of Time trilogy. Same old Prince, same old Yuri Lowenthal doing the voice work. The promise of yet another adventure with our beloved protagonist might make your heart flutter, but I’d strongly advise caution in this particular case. FS’ story reeks of cheap action movie screenplays, something an underpaid writer must have slapped together over a drunk weekend. It’s so astoundingly bland, I don’t even have the desire to ridicule it. Even the movie adaptation outperforms it by miles.

Some of you might be scrolling back to the first passage right now. Didn’t you say this game was good? How can that be true if the story is shit? Aren’t Prince of Persia games all about time travel shenanigans and the allure of Arabian Nights? Normally I’d agree with you, but with FS I’m willing to make an exception. What this game strives for is gameplay excellence, and since it came so close to peaking, I decided to turn a blind eye towards its less flattering sides. You’re more than welcome to make your own judgement.

I wonder, did the game snatch this shot from the movie or vice versa?

Since we’re definitely not talking about the story, there are two avenues along which we can further this discussion. Platforming is the more straightforward path, but let’s leave it for later and jump straight to the controversy. Let’s talk about the combat. You with me? You listening? Good, cause Forgotten Sands might have the best combat out of any Prince of Persia game.

You still there? Has the disbelief turned into outrage yet? Forgotten Sands? Best combat? Excuse me, but what? Why, I swear on my copy of Warrior Within there’s no other PoP game that comes close. What is this hack ‘n’ slash garbage and how dare you compare it to a true hardcore experience like WW? I played through Forgotten Sands and hadn’t died once! You call that a game? Are you some filthy casual who always plays on easy? Have you even finished Warrior Within? I beat it like twenty times on the hardest difficulty with one of my hands tied behind—

Shut up. Shut it. Yeah, I’m talking to you. I don’t care for the blind admiration you’ve been dragging around since you were 13. Why don’t you find a place for it somewhere up your ass? Yes, WW’s combat can be exceptional. Emphasis on can be. If Jupiter and Saturn align and Mercury is not in retrograde, Warrior Within can make you feel like a god. Or it can make you smash your gamepad against your desk.

I went over the damn thing in another review (shameless self-promotion here), but it all boils down to one thing. Half of WW’s difficulty comes from poor design choices, making the other half much harder to enjoy. Each time you enter a room you have to make a blood sacrifice to the camera gods lest it misbehaves itself, and then roll a perception check in case some mother fucker is coming at you from a dead angle. What FS offers me in turn is consistency. Being the fifth major PoP title released by Ubisoft, FS had the privilege of looking back on its predecessors and ironing out the creases. And you bet it did its homework.

The lock-on system is gone. Finally I can move in any direction I want and aim my attacks wherever I want. No more moving to the left only for the game to decide it should reroute my inputs towards a foe on the right. I understand that FS is a hack ‘n’ slash and that removing the lock-on must have been a necessity. If there are 30 enemies in the room, you don’t want the camera whip-lashing the player. However this change feels so liberating, I can’t help but wish it was part of the previous games as well. I despise soft lock-on systems in general and have yet to play a game that employs them successfully.

On top of that, I can cancel out of animations that don’t have iframes, and vice versa, I have iframes for the animations I can’t cancel out of. I cannot overstate the importance of these features and how sorely they were needed in the previous games. Further on, the arenas are spacious and the camera never gets stuck on anything. Couple that with smooth and responsive animations, a clean and comprehensive presentation, and you get yourself a combat system that flows like butter.

Did I hear anyone complain about Warrior Within just now?

This might be a good place to stop and take a step back. While FS introduced a bunch of quality of life improvements, which would have worked wonders in WW, it’s important to note that the nature of its combat is completely different. As I mentioned a few times by now, FS is definitively a hack ‘n’ slash.

Making your way through the tutorial, you won’t really notice any differences. You can still roll, swing your sword and jump over befuddled enemies. Then a few minutes in, a siege tower will open its doors and spew out 15 enemies at you. From then on FS just keeps adding to the deck. "More" is not a word that has a negative connotation in its vocabulary.

In itself I find this change to be neither good nor bad. Rather I’m much more interested in the side effects brought on by this design decision. As I said, looking at your basic arsenal, not much has changed. However a bit further down the line the game introduces you to the kick and the heavy attack.

The kick is there to facilitate the rock-paper-scissors nature of the combat. Way back in Sands of Time you could employ the jump attack against certain types of enemies, but would have to resort to wall bouncing against other types who were immune to the jump. Likewise the kick is there to deal with enemies hiding behind a shield, but can also be utilized as a powerful weapon against regular foes.

The heavy attack, which is undoubtedly my favorite, needs to be charged up and released. This sounds pretty basic, but the devil’s in the details as they say. First off, the attack can be cancelled at any time. Enemies can swarm you pretty quickly, so the game lets you abort and scurry off to safety instantly. Second, it doesn’t matter what direction the Prince is facing when stopping to charge up. You can tilt the stick any way you want and the Prince will launch himself there upon release. Third, the attack can be chained together from one successful hit to another. Mwah!

I know what you’re thinking right now: wow, what cool new additions. I wonder what kinds of combos you can build from them? Well, none.

As I’m sure you remember, both WW and the 2008 reboot had extensive combo trees. I liked how versatile and dynamic they were. You had numerous options for creating your own combat style. However they were shoehorned into the games at best. You’d expect them to be introduced gradually through gameplay, but no. The designers just dumped the entire combo sheet on your head and expected you to read through it. Even if you put in the time to try them all out, you’d eventually settle into using only a handful.

FS doesn’t bother with this. The closest it ever gets to a combo system are the variations of the jump attack. Besides simply vaulting over an enemy or smacking it over the head, the dedicated kick button also lets you tackle them to the ground. If you try to jump over an enemy with a shield, it’ll just knock you off with it. Furthermore the animation changes based on the enemy’s health. If it’s close to dying, the Prince will perform somewhat of a finisher. These special animations can also be triggered when driving an exhausted enemy up a wall or close to a banister.

Say hi to the movie’s ratings when you get down to the bottom.

As neatly packaged as it is, the combat system would certainly have felt barren without any further additions. Luckily FS decided to adorn it with more features. There are 4 brand new elemental powers for you to play with. No, they don’t make any sense within the narrative, so don’t bother frying your brain cells.

The Ice Blast is the most straightforward one, sending waves of ice along the trajectory of your attack. It’s great for mowing down entire rows of enemies, much further than your heavy attack can reach, and especially if you’re trying to get to those bothersome summoners. The Trail of Flame is somewhat of a passive, useful if you’re playing defensively of just like hit-and-run tactics. The Whirlwind is your obligatory AOE, considering the genre. Its logical counterpart, the Stone Armour, is perfect if you don’t want to be interrupted while going after a single target, like a stunned charger, or just want to shield yourself from those annoying scarabs.

Overall I feel the powers are decently rounded. They are specifically designed to be effective against the game’s main challenge - the ever increasing hordes of enemies. The only one I tend to question is the Trail of Flame, since it’s a rather passive ability in a combat system that favors aggressive play.

It took me some time to come to that last conclusion. The first thing I realized is that blocking is not a thing any more. The designers just made off with it and I didn’t even notice. Later I began thinking about how you obtain health and energy in this game. While it’s perfectly possible to dodge each and every attack, it’s not a realistic expectation to have. The staggering amount of enemies means you’ll get hit eventually, especially if you’re one for rushing into crowds. The game accounts for this by making fallen enemies drop health and energy. That way it creates a system akin to the one Bloodborne popularized a few years down the line - a closed loop of hitting and getting hit, an incentive to get in there and tap some ass instead of standing on the sidelines.

I do find it funny how the elemental powers are introduced to you. At some point the game tells you that you’ve gained enough XP and should open up a level-up menu. Level-up menu? There, among the obvious improvements to your health and energy, you’ll find the elemental powers just waiting for you without any further explanations. FS, you didn’t tell me this was a buffet. In a way this is the same transgression committed by the combo sheets from the previous games, although it is much more concise and comprehensive. For starters, the level-up menu fits on half a screen.

All of you need to chill out.

Well I guess it’s time to start nitpicking now. What? I said FS might have the best combat out of any PoP game, and I’ll emphasize that might again in case you missed it. While I think it polished much of what its predecessors got wrong, it made quite a few blunders on its own. God forbid there isn’t anything to bicker about.

Let’s start off with the minor stuff. Finishing off knocked-down enemies doesn’t quite work. You’re supposed to approach them and press the attack button, but it takes a while for the Prince to realize what he should be doing. Likewise, jumping on top of enemies is pretty imprecise. The Prince’s jump is ridiculously long and in most cases he’ll just leap past an enemy instead of engaging them.

Other than the 4 elemental powers, there’s another special ability I failed to mention. The Power Of Flight, or the dash as I’m sure it’s colloquially called, is a platforming ability that also made its way into the combat. It allows you to knock down enemies like bowling pins or quickly distance yourself from tricky situations. It’s devilishly fun, in both combat and platforming, but I worry it’s too powerful without the restraint of a cooldown bar. Then again, restricting it because of the combat would break some of the platforming challenges, but more on that later.

Boss-wise, there are only two types in the entire game: the chargers and the giants (or whatever class Ratash is supposed to represent). Timing the dodge on the former is completely broken. I could not for the life of me pinpoint the precise moment when you needed to leap out of the way. Its attack pattern is rather simple, though I do like how it’s expanded with crowd control. You can use the boss to clear out whole packs of minions, but then have to keep watch for those same minions not to overwhelm you while you’re chipping away at the boss. I wonder how this fight would evolve if they threw in a summoner…

Ratash, in his first two appearances, is perfectly serviceable, if not a bit too lenient. He also makes use of crowd control to add an extra layer to the fight, though it's not as effective as with the Chargers. Ratash shoots lightning bolts which can be used to kill minions, but he’s much less imposing and allows you to clear out all other enemies before engaging him.

The bosses that really get me going though are the trolls. Their move-set is more or less the same as Ratash’s, with one notable exception. They are the only enemy type in the entire game which forces you into a soft lock-on. Guys, what the hell happened here? The trolls are the perfect example that the lock-on does not work, especially not in this genre of combat. As if this doesn’t tamper with your ability to tackle smaller enemies, the trolls are also the only boss type which gets mixed in with summoners. Oh, now you remember to put them in! Watch as I get stunned-locked into oblivion while the camera stubbornly refuses to move away from the troll.

Overall, all of the boss types are severely overused, even for an 8 hour game. There’s also Ratash’s final form, I guess, but that fight is too short and too easy to make any impressions. If this were any other franchise, I’d be much more critical, but other PoP games set such a low bar with their bosses that I find it hard to complain.

I was also let down by the arena modes. I feel FS laid down the basis for a good combat system that could have been pushed much harder than it was. There are two arena modes in total and once you beat them, which won’t take you more than 15 min, there’s really no reason to go back to them. This could have been an opportunity to try out new and more challenging enemy combinations, to let you tweak the difficulty and measure your performance in various ways. It’s sad thinking of other games that have much more complex arena modes, but not nearly as polished a combat system as Forgotten Sands (The Witcher 2 and Alan Wake ffs).

Now you see me, now you don’t.

I think we can let the combat rest for a while and finally talk about the platforming in this game. Unlike the combat, the core of the platforming stayed the same as it was in the Sands of Time trilogy, with numerous improvements and additions further expanding on the original formula. This allows FS to deliver some of the best challenges the series has seen so far.

A number of tweaks have been made to the basic move-set, a lot of them inspired by the 2008 reboot, no less. This is rather surprising considering that FS leans heavily in WW’s direction, with its complex control scheme and relentless late-game sections, while the reboot made its mission to use as little buttons as possible. First off, you can now jump off pillars instantaneously by pointing the stick in the desired direction and pressing the jump button, regardless of where the Prince is facing. Next, you don’t have to press the jump button to pull yourself up a platform, but just tilt the stick forward without breaking the momentum. Last but not least, you can run up a wall after jumping towards it from any other obstacle, significantly increasing the potential of wall-to-wall scenarios.

I was also pleasantly surprised by how they revamped the control scheme for polls. Previously you had to hold down the special action button to initiate a swing and then press the jump button to launch yourself off the poll. Changing the Prince’s direction on a poll was particularly frustrating, as you had to keep twiddling the left stick like a mad man until the game decided to oblige. Now swinging is initiated by holding down the left stick in the direction perpendicular to the poll, while the direction parallel to the poll moves the Prince along it. Switching the perpendicular direction also neatly switches the Prince around the poll, removing any ambiguity from the mechanic. I appreciated this the most when tackling timed obstacles, such as doors, where being able to switch direction without breaking momentum is necessary for completing the challenge.

One new addition, which I’m positively blown away by, is the ability to initiate a wall run while holding on to a ledge, both horizontally and vertically. To give you my favorite example, you’ll come across a familiar trap when you first start descending into the underground city: a ledge and a spinning saw. However this saw is spinning right under the ledge, able to cut through the Prince if he were hanging on. At first I was confused. What is this setup? Then I realized what the game wanted me do. You have to grab onto the ledge when the saw moves away from you and run up the wall to let it pass beneath you on its way back. Then you have to slide down and move quickly along the ledge before the saw comes back to get you. My mind was positively blown. The game is full of little reinventions like this which make you view old obstacles in completely new ways.

Characteristic of a PoP game, all of FS’ animations are fluid and seasoned with little details to further enhance the experience. E.g. if you jump towards a hanging pillar just beneath its lower tip, the Prince will grab onto it with his arms and yank himself up until he’s encircled it with his legs. This comes off much more naturally than simply snapping you into place. Another good example, when you jump from one poll to another at a lower elevation, the Prince performs a different animation. He’ll grab onto it with only one arm, as if to signify that this is not a clean landing, perform a spin and then settle into the default position. All of this adds nicely to one of the most polished platforming experiences in the entire franchise.

Booby trapped corridor, my favorite.

The game wouldn’t be much fun if it only stuck with the basic move-set. There are three new platforming abilities tied to the Djinn: the Power of Flow, the Power of Flight and the Power of Memory. The Power of Flight, aka the dash, I already mentioned. What I didn’t go into is how it’s used exactly. See, another change made to the basic move-set is the separation of the jump from the roll. In previous installments, these were mapped to the same button and triggered contextually. In FS they occupy different buttons, clearly signifying the player’s intent.

To be honest, I don’t really understand this decision, neither in combat nor in platforming. To add to the confusion, the jump almost makes the roll obsolete. There are two reasons for this. First, the jump is ridiculously long. Rolling used to be king when it came to overcoming timed obstacles, but now it sits in the shadow of its far superior counterpart. Second, the camera feels weird when rolling, like it crashes into the Prince from the behind and squeals to a halt. It makes the already modest distance crossed by the roll seem even shorter.

To go back to the Power of Flight, the only reason I can justify the divorce between the jump and the roll is that their button combination is used to dash. As mentioned, the dash is recklessly unleashed during combat, but much more tuned to my liking during platforming. The camera work is exquisite. There is a genuine sense of exhilaration when swishing ahead, and an even greater satisfaction upon smashing onto your destination. The only thing I worry is that it over-saturates the game with yet another move for crossing distance, threatening to retire the other two mechanics whose buttons it makes use of.

The Power of Flow, i.e. freezing water for a specified amount of time, is an absolute banger. The game uses it to string together some insane challenges, which push your platforming skills to new heights. You’re asked to perform your usual assortment of moves while also rapidly switching the state of the water, freezing it to give the Prince new obstacles to interact with and unfreezing it to allow him through. This all culminates during the game’s final stretch where you’re tasked with hopping your way past multiple rows of waterfalls.

The Power of Memory, or level reconstruction, is yet another surprising inspiration provided by the reboot, specifically the phantom walls found in the Epilogue. On its own, it’s much lower stake then the other powers, requiring only the quick engagement of one button to successfully pull off. Never the less, it can be thrilling jumping off one solid surface, letting its safety disappear behind you, and then watching anxiously as another one forms in front of you in the nick of time. Coupled with the other two powers, it creates another layer of complexity around FS’ platforming mechanics.

The game introduces each of these powers in separate sections, allowing you to get used to them on their own terms. Soon though, it starts mixing them together to form some of the franchise’s most intricate platforming sections. You’ll find yourself splashing through waterfalls, landing on freshly reconstructed walls, bolting to unsuspecting birds, and then back swinging around bars of ice, all in the matter of seconds.

Come here, birdie, birdie.

Come to think of it, there are actually 4 powers of the Djinn, aren’t they? The poor Power of Time somehow got lost in the process. If I were to take a closer look at it, what’s the point of having it in the game at all? No, I don’t mean because of the lore implications. I couldn’t care less about that, not to mention that the other powers aren’t tied by some narrative thread either. What I’m aiming at is gameplay. Isn’t the rewind kinda pointless in FS?

I mean, just think about it. Auto-saves are so frequent, you’re basically being restarted on the last solid surface you were standing on. Minus Elika, it is functionally the same system as in the reboot. Why would you waste your rewind on that? Likewise, slain foes drop health, meaning the mechanic is equally useless during combat.

I only found two applications for it in the entire game. The first one is for poorly timed dodges on incoming Chargers. The second is for misinterpreting directional inputs (more on that in a sec). So, yeah, you could say I used the power rather frequently, but both of these instances were for correcting the game’s busted mechanics and not some intended design choice.

Furthermore, why on earth is the rewind power using the same energy bar as the combat abilities!? The Power of Flow has its own cooldown meter, the Power of Memory can be triggered at any time (as long as you like having a floor beneath your feet), and the dash has some (barely noticeable) downtime between bursts. It’s like they added the rewind just so they could have another reason to lodge the game within the SoT trilogy, without considering if the power even had anything to add to the gameplay.

Don’t you dare slip.

If I could add more complaints to the pile, I have some serious gripes with the camera. For the most part, it performs its job rather competently, but problems quickly start to arise. The first one that became apparent to me was its restrictiveness. The camera is fixed during most platforming challenges, giving you only a little wiggle room to look around. On one hand, I like this. You are constantly being pointed in the direction you need to go in. There is no ambiguity about what stunt to perform next, allowing the action to flow uninterrupted.

On the other hand, I felt like I was stuck on rails. The previous games let you explore their worlds without much hand-holding, emulating a sense of freedom which the open worlds in Warrior Within and the 2008 reboot made real use of. Sure, the camera would occasionally point to a specific direction, but only when necessary for clarity’s sake. I think that restricting the camera as much as it did, FS inadvertently created a sense of artifice, like its world is no more than a set of static scenes going by a carnival ride.

But enough about the camera angles. What really gets me about FS’ platforming is how directional inputs are handled. For some obstacles, moving the Prince forward requires pointing the stick in the direction relative to the camera. For others, you just have to push the stick forward. This is insanely confusing to say the least.

I don’t remember the previous games having this issue, at least not often enough to notice. In FS it is a constant recurrence. I wish the designers decided on one approach and kept it throughout. The camera is at its absolute worst when the game strings together two obstacles which don’t apply the same movement principles. It adds and unwelcome layer of uncertainty to platforming challenges which require quick decision making. The problem is further magnified by the fact that the game insists on using cinematic camera angles to frame the action. Yes, I know, it looks a lot cooler than your standard bird’s eye perspective, but it’s also much harder to tell what constitutes as "moving forward" when you’re viewing the Prince from some weird angle.

Those Warrior Within drapes will never go out of style.

Although FS is more than capable of chaining together some exhilarating platforming sequences, the levels the action takes place in are often quite forgettable. Whether from a lack of inspiration or pressure from higher-ups, the designers seem to have dug up SoT’s art book somewhere in the back of the office, and just blown the dust off it. The line between homage and rip-off dangerously leans towards the latter. You’ve got your baths, your gardens, your astronomy chambers, etc. They even reprise the palace’s defense systems.

Each time you enter a new area, the game swirls around the camera to give you a sense of the room and display its name in bold letters across the screen. Unfortunately, they all have a terrible case of the cookie-cutter syndrome. Each room is square-shaped. Each is entered from a balcony up above. The obstacles are placed circularly around the walls. There’s always an indistinguishable hallway leading from one room to another. On and on like that.

SoT was linear, but its levels were much more spatially complex than simple cubic environments. For some reason FS’ designers skipped that lesson while screening the predecessors for inspiration. Instead they just slapped over some SoT-looking textures. As a result, Malik’s palace feels like a temporary movie set, like a bunch of fake walls hastily propped up just before the player enters the room.

To give the game some credit, the levels do start to improve once you’ve made it past the halfway mark. My favorite sections are those adjacent to the Terraces. There the game finally stops leading you from one box to another and lets you scale spires and hop over balconies. The visuals are crisp, selling the opulence and magnitude of the palace’s rooftops. The featured content is also varied, giving you a pretty good puzzle section in the observatory and a chase sequence with Ratash, an unexpected throwback to all those fun times with the Dahaka.

Good old crank puzzles.

Ok, you know what, I lied. I said we wouldn’t talk about the story, but we absolutely must. I can’t believe they slammed some random door between the Prince and Malik just to stop them from settling their argument. It’s one of the main contrivances the plot keeps recycling to justify its existence. The brothers are like: could we toss over this amulet and fix everything? Yes, we could, bro. Ok, you do it first. No, you do it. No, you. No, bro, you do it!

Hold on, game, wasn’t the Prince’s biggest mistake in SoT not trusting Farrah with the dagger? Then why on earth is he not handing in the freaking amulet!? Also why do the brothers not trust each other in the first place? Did I miss something? What is their relationship made out of anyway? It wouldn’t have hurt to flesh that out more, especially if you’re going to make it the focal point of the story.

What’s worse, here’s the Prince, a couple of years past the most significant event in his entire life, still bearing fresh scars from letting his arrogance get the best of him. And does he talk about it with Malik? No. Does he share some insight regarding this strikingly similar situation? No. Does he try to appeal to his brother instead of succumbing to the same childish stubbornness? No! They could have had an honest to god interesting story about strained family relationships, the abuse of power and the difficulty of speaking up about one’s issue. But that would have required some actual effort, wouldn’t it?

The game culminates with the laziest Hollywood ending I might have ever seen in a video game. To my utter amusement, Malik died in the Prince’s arms as the camera zoomed out and the Prince screamed into the heavens. I was hoping they would squeeze in the Dahaka’s appearance somewhere in the post-credits, but I wasn’t even rewarded with that much.

Bro, we’re meeting up at the baths, right?

It’s really quite sad how often the game relies on SoT’s branding, but tosses aside everything that could have been drawn from its story. Instead, it desperately copy-pastes whatever it can get its paws on. Here’s yet another army attacking yet another desert city. Which army/city, you ask? Who cares. Why don’t you chew up SoT’s tutorial section - we nearly identically transplanted into FS, down to the specific camera angles.

Someone must have flipped through SoT’s glossary at this point. What are we missing? But Farrah, of course! Here’s her knock-off counterpart, what’s her name? Razia? (I had to Google that, just so you know.) She and the Prince share as much chemistry as Godsmack and a glass of lukewarm water. Most of her time on-screen is spent blabbering out exposition - I didn’t listen to a single word she said.

Yuri Lowenthal is back, and while I’d love if he narrated my life, could the Prince please keep his mouth shut unless he has something substantial to say? Yes, how dare I, but the dialogue is so poor it’s barely listenable even with the stellar performance. The only remarks the writers could come up with are so inconsequential, they could have had the Prince comment on the weather. They reuse the same joke about a collapsed staircase three times!

And could we take a minute to talk about the Prince’s face? I know technology evolves over time and new models need to be created to present the same characters. It’s not uncommon to have someone’s appearance change between installments, especially if there have been longer breaks between releases or if the in-game context justifies it. So for example, I can get on board with the transition from SoT to WW, where the 7 year in-game gap, as well as the Prince’s move from adolescence to adulthood, more that justify our protagonist’s altered visage.

On the other hand, Forgotten Sands, what the actual fuck? Who is this person? How does this Prince fit in between SoT and WW!? If it weren’t for those bangs and that signature goatee, I wouldn’t have recognized him to begin with. I’m becoming more aware with each new installment that our blue eyed Persian is a genetic abomination. At least we’re all in agreement that Warrior Within’s armor is the best armor.

Wait a minute… You’re not Farrah!

Here comes the obligatory section where I shit all over the publisher. So let’s see, Ubisoft, what have you done this time? Did the game have a troubled development? Hmm, I don’t think so. I can’t remember any such reports from back in the day, nor could I dig up ones now. Were there any egregious online features? Not really, just some inconsequential skins.

Wait, I remember now! Uplay! Let it perish in the deepest depths of hell where it came from! Uplay was what you had in store back in early 2021 when I first gave this game a try (yes, I know, late to the party). What I had to go through to get the game up and running on Steam was ridiculous.

At first, I didn’t have Uplay installed, so the game was trying to boot itself up using some archaic Ubisoft launcher I had leftover on my PC. After I installed it, it still wouldn’t run because the cache files created by the old launcher were causing issues. After clearing the cache, it couldn’t sync non-existing save files, so I restarted it in offline mode. Then, the cherry on top, it kept crashing silently whenever I tried to boot the game. Why, you ask? Because you can’t have your gamepad connected before the game itself starts. Don’t even ask how I got to that conclusion. It took me more time to get to the title screen than to download and install the damn thing!

At the time of writing this, early 2023 to be precise, Uplay is dead and gone, replaced by some other infernal construct called Ubisoft Connect. I flinched when I realized the game would put me through more launcher torment, but fortunately this time the effort was minimal. Except I had to launch a separate EXE to change the display settings. Ok, whatever. Now the new launcher tracks my in-game achievements. Cool, I’ll still be sure never to use it.

Ubisoft, don’t you keep pushing me.

To be honest, there’s not much here I can blame Ubisoft for specifically. Well, except for one thing. It’s clear as day why they ran back to the SoT trilogy. The earnings of the 2008 reboot were supposedly disappointing, leading Ubisoft to cancel the game’s sequel - a grudge I plan to take to my grave. Even so, I don’t mind they took that as a reason to revisit the old formula. FS shows just how much room there is to build upon the original mechanics. What I do mind is that the game’s creative wings have been clipped from having to stick so close to SoT. FS doesn’t lack polish, nor fun gameplay twists. It lacks an identity.

Just who talks about this game any more? People who’ve actually played it cannot come here in good faith and slander its quality. However, I doubt the game has many fierce defenders. I’ve looked through old reviews and couldn’t find critics being unfair with it. When you comb through them all, it comes down to the same thing. What good gameplay, what bad story. I can’t say I disagree. FS is notably better than any movie tie-in has the right of being, but is still a soulless husk despite its shredded body.

In a way, Ubisoft got exactly what they wanted, the polar opposite of the 2008 reboot. A game that tries to stick to everything a diligent marketer identified as the franchise’s strong suits. A venture that must have been pulled down each time it flew a little too close to the sun. Even so, I’m amazed it managed to get away with as many gameplay innovations as it did. There were clearly some incredibly talented people on the PoP team, who fought for every inch of creative freedom they could get there hands on.

Despite all that effort, the game failed the test of time miserably. True to the irony in its name, Forgotten Sands slips my mind way too easily. This review sat in my virtual drawer for two years until some twist of faith brought it back to my attention. I daydream about Sands of Time, I pull my hair over Warrior Within, I cry in my pillow thinking of the reboot, but I barely contemplate FS unless it somehow plants itself right in front of me. It never managed to carve itself a piece of anyone’s adoration, so it was left behind in the dustbin of gaming history.

Ezio would have jumped, you pussy.

[icyschreviews]

A Review of Dragon Age: Inquisition

Part 3: Let’s Pad This Review as Much as They Padded the Game

This is part 3 of a multi-part review of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Click here for part 1 and part 2.

You might have noticed that I’ve been talking about this game for a while now, but still haven’t mentioned most of its features. Inquisition tries to squeeze in just about every trick from the triple-A handbook. It’s so bloated it makes a whale carcass look slimmer than a runway model.

Of course there’s crafting and of course it completely useless. There’s an absurd number of crafting materials in the game, most of which you’ll gather just by strolling through the map and smashing the same button. That is, after you’ve installed the mod which gets rid of that annoying pick-up animation. You’ll also want to mod your inventory capacity so you don’t go mad from going back and forth all of the time.

Each material has different attributes which lets you fine-tune your gear, but it’s all pointless down the line. None of your custom creations can compete with unique drops found in quests. I only ever crafted a few Shokra-taar armors just because they look the best on my Qunari Inquisitor, stats be damned. Even though the finest gear is the one you loot, you still need to sift through heaps of hot garbage to get to the cream of the crop. My inventory grooming routine consisted of picking out the purple stuff and getting rid of everything else.

The game has a trading system to take in all of that superfluous equipment. Merchants supposedly sell some good items, but I honestly couldn’t care less. The game has a gag merchant in Val Royeaux who sells you a golden nug for 10k. The item’s ridiculous price tag is a fun nudge at Orlesian culture, but I had so much money by the end of the game that 10k barely counted as pocket change. I could have built myself another fortress across from Skyhold if the game let me.

Skyhold’s Undercroft is home to a couple more workbenches. Herbs are another category of crafting materials which you can use to make potions, tonics and grenades. After I’ve upgraded the regular health potion, I completely forgot about this feature for the next 100 or so hours. I was only reminded of it when I glanced over my leftover achievements.

The game lets you upgrade your garden to be able to grow specific herbs, which is cute considering I bring back sacks of the stuff while the garden only grows 6 feeble plants at a time. There are two more major upgrades to your keep, one to the courtyard and one to the watchtower, both purely cosmetic. You can also change your curtains and other equally insignificant pieces of furniture. The whole system is so painfully simplistic it couldn’t possibly satisfy anyone with a genuine desire for base building.

Dagna, any chance you could customize my toilet seat?

The war table is yet another feature used to stuff this piñata. There are a few things I like about it. The mission blurbs are far away from throwaway placeholders. They actually tell compelling little stories that are going on in the background. You can fail a mission if you pick the wrong advisor for the job. The game lets you guess the outcome by judging an advisor’s estimation and understanding the context behind the mission. I also found the occasional banter adorable. I love how Leliana’s voice comes out of my left headphone while Josephine’s from the right one, as if I was actually standing in the room with them.

That said, real-time missions are an obnoxiously stupid idea. There’s absolutely no reason why any of the game’s mechanics should be tied to a clock. It adds nothing to the experience and just makes you run back and forth from and to the war room. You probably guessed that this was one of the first things I modded. Come to think of it, this game requires an alarming amount of mods just to be playable.

Well anyway, the war table also lets you spend Inquisition points to unlock special perks. Most of these are garbage. Of course I don’t need more inventory slots - a mod already gave me 400. Better deals with merchants, the chance to gather more crafting materials and unique gear are all needless additions to an already excessive system. One perk lets your rogues pick more complex locks which only really impacts a handful of doors in the game. The only useful things are a few combat related benefits and additional dialogue choices. The latter upgrade is great as it unlocks special options in almost every relevant conversation.

If you want to live out your supreme leader fantasies, the game lets you play a judge once after every main mission. The sentences are varied enough, but rarely seemed to impact much other than my companions’ approval. Once you’re done ruining lives, you can climb up the tower and find your research assistant. There you can submit anything new you’ve found about your enemies. Your research assistant will do some quick math in her head and immediately grant you damage bonuses. That’s so nice of her, but why the extra steps? Couldn’t the game have applied these bonuses automatically after I defeated a set number of enemies? I kept forgetting about this feature and thus failed to utilize it as much as I should.

Report, minions!

The UI is mostly a mess, as I’ve already mentioned. It’s barely usable on PC and is missing a bunch of pop-ups and contextual text you’d expect to see when hovering over certain elements. While the menus don’t glitch out with a gamepad, they are somewhat hard to maneuver. There are simply too many menus and sub-menus and not enough sticks and bumpers and triggers to properly cover everything.

You could easily fill a bingo card with all of the issues plaguing the system. E.g. whenever you switch between companions in the inventory screen, there’s this awkward pause before the game loads a character’s model. This problem is also present in the leveling and potions menus, even though the latter doesn’t show any models to begin with. This makes the simple act of flipping through your party a slow and arduous process.

The crafting menus are especially egregious. When creating new gear there’s no way to compare its stats to your current one. The UI elements used to select different kinds of crafting materials are incredibly finicky to maneuver. The tinting menus display the stats of the selected materials even though they won’t be applied to the gear during that particular process.

The only part of the whole UI experience I like are the codex entries. To my delight, Inquisition decided to keep much Dragon Age 2’s art style. Each codex entry has a gorgeous picture accompanying it. I raced over to read new entries just so I could see how a beloved character was portrayed. I only wish that new entries were easier to spot and that the bloody text was properly capitalized.

The most genius aspect of the codex entries is their inclusion in loading screens. Besides tips, you’ll randomly be given a few entries you can shuffle between and read while waiting on the level to load. If I could snub an idea from a friend, this feature could have been improved even more by letting you stay in the loading screen after a level has become ready. You could then finish your piece of reading, press a button to proceed and maybe even mark an entry as read right there on the spot.

A fancy portrait indeed. Too bad he’s dead.

After I beat the base game, I looked over at the list of DLCs and decided to go for Descent - the one I woefully stumbled across while still getting my bearings in Skyhold. It didn’t take long for the PTSD from Amgarrak to kick in. You remember Amgarrak, don’t you? I still wake up in the middle of the night after having dreamt of being smacked by golems.

Why, oh why do Deep Roads missions always have to be like this? Yes, I get it, this is supposed to be thematic. The Deep Roads are a treacherous maze of tunnels infested with all kinds of vermin. Few make it out alive. I understand how a designer might be tempted into clogging the level with enemies thinking they’re honoring the premise, but this kind of design is pure bullshit. Endless waves of enemies don’t promote good difficulty, but breed resentment and frustration. Rage doesn’t even begin to the describe the emotions I went through.

Descent is nothing but boss after boss after boss, after horde after horde after horde… Everyone’s a bullet sponge, even the regular enemies. It takes an absurd amount of time to trim a simple genlock’s health down to zero. Minions spawn indefinitely while a boss is still alive. Enemies only ever spam their deadliest attacks. Archers insta-kill you the moment you step out of cover. Ogres are able to pick you up and keep stun-locking you over and over again. Meanwhile your Inquisitor dances three laps around an enemy before finding a suitable spot from which to smack them.

The pathing is abysmal. I appreciate them trying to be creative with the level design, but it doesn’t help much if I keep getting stuck between stalactites. Getting nudged off a cliff is a regular occurrence. The war table can open up new precipices for you to explore, but Inquisition’s platforming attempts just make me shiver.

One of the few times I died in this godforsaken game was in this DLC. Just before the end of the third floor, you’re tasked with defeating a horde of darkspawn. The horde consists of a dozen or so bosses and endless swarms of minions. The game does not let you save while in the midst of this. It offers two supply caches along the way, one it wouldn’t let me access while being engaged in the final boss room. It also, for some reason, lets you open an optional door with more genlock alphas I certainly did not need in my life.

I barely got myself through to what seemed like the final challenge - two more ogres blocking my way to a new campsite. The game felt inclined to shower me with genlocks and emissaries until no one but Blackwell was left standing. I slew the last ogre, preparing a sigh of relief, only for the game to spawn the final-final boss in front of me. What’s that? There’s no achievement tied to difficulty? Guess who’s switching over to Easy mode.

Or so I thought. I ended up caving under my pride over night and reattempting the section on Hard again. I swapped Dorian for Vicky and used my previous experience to cheese the hell out of the game. Still, the section stretched my patience to its utmost limits. It ended up taking an hour and a half of meticulous micro-management to get myself through it with a few potions and a sliver of sanity left to spare.

Story-wise Descent sets out to answer one of the biggest questions tossed around in the base game. I remember furrowing my brows when Bianca first announced that lyrium was actually alive. She came to this conclusion after discovering that red lyrium was infected by the Blight. Sure, Bianca, but isn’t that a pretty big leap in logic? Why couldn’t organic matter like the Blight affect non-organic compounds as well? It’s all just chemistry down the line.

Before you have any idea it’s driving you towards the source of lyrium, Descent tries to sell you on its big Titan mystery. Even though the mere mention of Titans reminds me of that one anime, I couldn’t seem to care much about it. I found myself significantly more intrigued by Descent’s fundamental premise - plunging into the unknown. There has always been something tantalizing about this concept. The raw curiosity of stumbling through the depths mixes potently with the ever creeping anxiety of accumulating more and more layers of rocks above your head.

The mystery still needed to be solved, so the DLC decided to bend over and barf out an unprocessed heap of information right at your feet. The lore implications are huge, but Decent can barely hold itself together to form a coherent sentence. The final cut-scene is borderline nonsensical and I was ultimately left with more questions than answers. Why should I have to decipher the story from codex entries?

So supposedly Valta got super powers. What kind of super powers? How can she be so sure? After she tells you she’s staying in the depths, you can ask her how she plans to find food and water. She just shrugs. Shrugs, I tell you! Say, Valta, how exactly am I supposed to pass on this information? No one in Orzammar is going to listen to a Qunari, a fake Grey Warden or a bunch of cast-less dwarfs. I might as well announce the existence of lizard people. Maker knows I found enough notes to support that theory.

Good old elevator times.

I spent my time much more pleasantly with Hakkon, although in many ways this DLC is an extension of the base game, both the good and the bad. The Frostback Basin is full of little nooks of interest hidden for you to explore, yet separated by packs of spiders which hound you relentlessly. The Avvar enemies are no less annoying, being nothing more than re-skins of human opponents you’ve fought so many times before. Their mages even chant the same nonsense as the Venatori.

The DLC tries to pull off a few gimmicks, the most bizarre one residing towards the end. To unlock access to the Hakkonite fortress you need to activate ancient Tevinter devices starting from one corner of the map and going diagonally downwards. Some other game might have used this opportunity to make you see the map from a new perspective, but Inquisition just reveals how little thought it put into the level design. There is no clear path from one device to another. A lot of them are located on barely accessible cliffs, so teleporting from waypoint to waypoint is ironically the least painful approach.

On the story side things are much more engaging. Unlike Descent, Hakkon takes its time to flesh out its premise. The Avvar are a fascinating culture whose beliefs and rituals present a clever twist on Thedas’ other religions. Instead of showering you with codex entries or jamming everything into the last few minutes, Hakkon builds up its Avvar through numerous side-quests which steadily fill in the picture. It’s even throws in a few gags here and there, like rescuing a bear and later lecturing it by denying it candy.

I was much less interested in Inquisitor Ameridan’s quest, even though that was supposed to be the through-line of the DLC. I failed to see its importance or be shocked by the final reveal. I already knew the Chantry had a habit of rewriting history to its own benefit, especially if that said history was elven. Even so, I was entertained by professor Kenric’s enthusiasm for the matter. Nerdy Sebastian was not something I knew I needed in my life. Speaking of Kenric…

Scout Harding is by far the secret star of the show. I love how she rose from obscurity to one of Inquisition’s more prominent roles. It shows just how much you can do with a character by carefully measuring conversations and spacing them apart for maximum effect. It also helps that Harding is incredibly likeable and down to earth, being the representative of the common folk who make up the bulk of the Inquisition. Her interactions with Kenric are hilarious - the practical farm girl trying her best to keep a sheltered city boy out of trouble.

Lace, I think I found you a boyfriend.

Trespasser starts off with a bold red warning informing you that this is the point of no return. I have to hand it to the game for making me hesitant to take the leap while simultaneously being completely fed up with it. Most decision-heavy RPGs don’t have what I’d call good endings. I don’t think the narrated slides before the credits are sufficient enough to convey your impact on the story. This is precisely why I found Trespasser’s initial premise so appealing. Two years have passed since Corypheus’ defeat and you are finally able to see what your decisions have wrought.

Catching up with your companions is fascinating. I unironically spilled my tea when Varric announced that he had become the viscount of Kirkwall. If someone had told me back in DA2 that this Lowtown hustler would rise up to take the office I would have laughed. And is that seneschal Bran standing in the background? He looks like he has taken up the bottle, the poor man. It was nice to know that despite his new role Varric still made time to troll Cassandra. You find her fidgeting in a corner over trivial matters, as usual. Some things never change. I snickered when she called “Most Holy” a tyrant. But wait! Is she… wearing pink? Are those little hearts engraved into her armor? Girl, what are you not telling me?

Meanwhile Josephine is as fired-up as she’s ever been, not surprising for a woman who’s been taking a steady dose of political intrigue each morning for the past two years. I like how, if you’ve romanced her, her frustration with the state of the Council seeps in to strain your relationship. Leliana is in her top shady form, eyeing the representatives from her little alcove like a hawk. Way to fill up the sinister meter! Over at the bar, Sera has some surprisingly deep observations about the Inquisition’s future, mirroring much of your spy master’s conclusions. But don’t worry! Now we can throw pies at Orlesian nobles without reviving the reputation counter. Look how far we’ve come!

Oh and Dorian, you heartthrob! You can’t just tell me in a sultry voice that I’m the dearest friend you’ve ever had. No, don’t give me your magic phone number, just break up with me! How am I supposed to go back to my soon-to-be fiance and tell her I’m in love with a Tevinter magister?

On the downside, Bull’s betrayal just made me sigh. As if it weren’t obvious enough from his unwillingness to speak to me at the Winter Palace. I’d like to say I told you so, but I watched more of his scenes on YouTube and now know there is an alternative. Well shame on me for dissing on the Chargers. Guess you can’t push a man aside and not expect him to crawl back to his former masters. On a side note, that “boss” to “bas” transition was a sneaky little touch I would have missed it if it weren’t for the subtitles.

Looking at the initial premise, I was intrigued by the Exalted Council at first. The conflict between relinquishing power and testing the inevitability of corruption is a fascinating one, but sadly left unattended. I was baffled how the game never sat you down with your advisors to try to come to a mutual understanding about the future of our little organization. So many details were left up for debate. Why are we still occupying Ferelden territory? Wouldn’t they be ok with us if we just, like, left or something?

I got even more dissociated from the story when the Qunari plot made its way in. I already mentioned how shoddily the game handles your Qunari Inquisitor, yet these issue are even more of an eyesore in Trespasser. The game has enough common sense to let you speak ancient elvish if you drank from the Well of Sorrows, but not so much when it comes to Qunlet. Leliana has to be your translator as if the Inquisitor was not raised by native speakers.

Despite the threat of a Qunari invasion becoming alarmingly real, the Exalted Council still seemed more interested in bickering over the Inquisition. Even when the assassination attempts were made public, the nobles somehow forgot to point their fingers in your direction. There’s no way past suspicions about a Qunari Inquisitor wouldn’t again rise to the surface. I’m also disappointed the DLC didn’t end with a proclamation of war. The whole Viddasala affair could have been a grave precursor to a global conflict, but the game just turned her into the villain of the week.

Sup, losers.

Gameplay-wise Trespasser is a throwback to the good old Fade sections from Origins. While I appreciate the visuals, I can’t say I was impressed with the level design. Back in Origins, you had to piece your way through the Fade like a puzzle, but in Trespasser everything is regrettably linear. The new abilities are pretty pointless. I wasn’t motivated to go back and unlock any of the previously inaccessible areas. There aren’t even any proper visual indicators to let you know when you’re immune to those bizarre purple flames blocking the way.

I could speak about the new enemy encounters, but I honestly couldn’t be bothered. The entire ending sequence drags on for way too long. I hoped the dragon fight was the last of it, but the DLC just kept rolling past the point of infinity. Speaking of the dragon, BioWare must have realized they overdid their favorite mascot, so they let you bypass the entire battle. I usually like when games let you make story decisions through gameplay, but who the heck thought it would be a good idea to solve a puzzle while being harassed by minions? I didn’t even understand what I was supposed to be doing.

Trespasser uses those overly extended levels to pack as many codex entries as it possibly can. I am a fan of this kind of info dumping as much as Descent’s hastily thrown together cut-scenes, which is to say not at all. I tend to prefer minimalist design, so I found most of the information superfluous and unnecessary. We already know Solas’ identity, so there’s no point building up the anticipation again. At least Trespasser gave me a bit more time to process everything.

The only relevant detail (served by Avina’s ghostly cousin) is that Solas was the one to create the Veil. This is a jaw dropping revelation which almost goes unnoticed. Hold on a minute. If this fact were to be taken at face value, it would shake the foundation of just about every religion in Thedas. Most importantly, it would shatter the Chantry’s carefully crafted visage. Preaching any of this would be condemned as heresy, yet no one even comments on it.

While it was perfectly content to layer more lore about Fen’Harel, Trespasser didn’t really bother to setup how your Mark is killing you. The first occurrence of this is somewhere towards the middle and by the end of the DLC your companions are saying their farewells even though no one knows what’s going on. If this is the path they were going for, I wish they didn’t chicken out and actually killed the Inquisitor. I always though your character’s arc revolved around the concept of self-sacrifice. Letting your Inquisitor die could have been an excellent way to conclude that story - an inescapable tragedy born as a consequence of giving too much of yourself away to save the world.

Ironically Trespasser ends with more slides. Even though Claudia Lee Black’s narration was sorely missing, I still thought they contained a bit more meat than the ones from the base game. The best part actually comes when the credits start rolling. Of course Varric wrote a book about the Inquisition, but what’s even better is that we get to listen to Cassandra read it. I pissed my pants multiple times during this sequence. Bless Miranda Raison and how she’s able to pull off being dead serious while barely containing her inner schoolgirl. Can we start a petition for this woman to narrate an entire audio book? Preferably Swords & Shields if possible.

Here’s you, yeah, still clearing out those optional demon rooms. You must be proper daft.

I write this review in the year of our Lord 2022 and a lot has happened since 2014. At the dawn of the 2010s, EA went all in with the live service model. At the time the concept hadn’t yet matured into what we know today, but that didn’t stop EA from investing into every new form of monetization: loot boxes, micro-transactions, battle passes, elusive pre-orders, you name it. We might be living in a completely different reality hadn’t it been for two things.

First, Anthem. The colossal failure of any live service game usually puts a smile on my face, but the fact that it was BioWare’s neck on the line this time did not bring me any joy. EA has a long and bloody history of sacking studios and, by all things considered, BioWare was counting its last days. That is, if it weren’t for the second thing, a little game called Jedi: Fallen Order.

Bless Respawn and all they’ve done for us in the long run. Most publishers would look at Fallen Order’s success and immediately start thinking of ways to milk the cow, but somehow someone in EA’s endless chain of villainy started exhibiting common sense. People didn’t want the dressed-up scaffolding which were live service games. We wanted rich single-player experiences. So they decided to give us just that.

I think a publisher’s words are worth less than a pile of dog shit, but thankfully actions speak louder than words. The Legendary Edition of Mass Effect proved an undeniable level of quality. Just recently, Need for Speed Unbound was announced - a return to the classic Need for Speed formula fans have been begging for. Respawn is queuing another Star Wars and even poor old Dead Space was scheduled for a remaster. But, most importantly for our story, Dragon Age 4 was reported to have no online features.

All of this would be more than enough to fill my deprived little heart with hope, a hope that would burn bright weren’t this Dragon Age 4 we were talking about. I don’t know of a single other narrative-based game that has reached the fourth entry in its series. Most games which feature heavy decision-making try to trim their runtime as to avoid the exponential complexity that comes with each new entry. Yet here we are, three games in and Dragon Age still hasn’t come close to wrapping up its story.

This makes me extremely nervous. Inquisition has already shown me that it can’t keep up with the same level of detail that adorned Origins and at the same time juggle all of the different paths the players took to get there. I think I’ve been playing games for long enough to know where this might be heading. An even more watered down Dragon Age seems like the most cynical, yet most realistic outcome and one I’d want the least. If we were to judge Inquisition’s scope, I think a much more substantial game could have been made with half the content. A smaller, but denser Dragon Age would make me immensely happy, yet I’m not sure this is what the publisher nor the mainstream audience would be satisfied with.

Another thing that comes to mind, while I’m looking at my wishlist of Dragon Age books and comics, is the reported existence of a BioWare cannon. Continuing the franchise with a particular world state in mind would allow the writers to shake off the weight of the branching narrative and focus on delivering the best story possible. Of course this would breed outrage. I personally value the quality of a game over anything else, so I’d begrudgingly get over my save files if I had to.

All of this is not even mentioning the gameplay. Before EA promised it wouldn’t let the live service plague infect DA4, footage of alpha gameplay circulated the internet. What was shown seemed like yet another Dark Souls clone and, as a Dark Souls fan, I hope to god we let that genre rest in piece already. That said, I’m not sure my desire for Origins’ tactical combat is enough to bring it back from the dead. At least we’ve had enough good open-world games for BioWare’s level designers to take notes.

I’ve already lived through disappointment while playing Andromeda and I never wish to repeat that experience again. Despite everything I have against Inquisition (and as you had the pleasure to read, there was a lot), I still played through it with zeal. While Andromeda left me cold for the world of Mass Effect, Inquisition has me sitting here biting my nails over where this juggernaut might be heading.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a shopping cart full of books and comics to order. Congratulations if you've actually made it this far. Cheers!

I look forward to modelling you in Dragon Age 4, Inquisitor Adaar.

This is part 3 of a multi-part review of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Click here for part 1 and part 2.

[icyschreviews]

A Review of Dragon Age: Inquisition

Part 2: Your Own Personal Jesus

This is part 2 of a multi-part review of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Click here for part 1 and part 3.

If you're not into Dragon Age because of the combat, you must have come here to savor the many layers of lore, intrigue and drama that make up this buffet. Thankfully this side of Inquisition is much more capable of pulling its own weight. Just like the dungeons, each of the main quests is hand-crafted, packed with unique content and wrapped together in an elaborate premise.

Inquisition tries hard to honor its predecessors. The game sets us off in the midst of the mage and Templar war, hot on the heels of the Dragon Age 2. The much hyped Orlesian court makes its first appearance and the long and grisly subjugation of the elves finally takes center stage. These and many more of Thedas' contemporary issues are tackled throughout the game's runtime. That said, I can't say any of these elements jell well together.

Nothing in the world of Dragon Age exists in a vacuum. As DA2 showed us, seemingly insignificant local events can have a large impact on the outside world. As if the premise was not complex enough in Origins, Inquisition needed to handle two games worth of branching decisions. Even without that overhead the basic plot must have filled a room full of flowcharts. So while I recognize the care and attention put into each of Inquisition’s set pieces, I don't think they can be taken at face value.

To show you what I mean, just take a look at the first batch of missions in the Hinterlands. They do a good job of portraying how the war between the mages and the Templars swallowed up Ferelden, to the point where the nobility is getting kicked out of their estates by foreign agitators. Yet the same conflict is nowhere to be found in Orlais, despite that country being infinitely more entangled with the Chantry than its neighbor.

Similarly the game tries to convince you that all of the Wardens disappeared into thin air. To put aside how utterly ridiculous this is, it focuses on the Orlesian branch of the Order, as if they were the only Wardens going about. Did the game forget about Awakening? The Wardens are supposed to be an apolitical organization with whom most countries practice a hands-off approach, but Ferelden’s relationship with the Order is much more personal than that. Ever since the Fifth Blight, their fates have been inseparably intertwined. You can’t just wish the Wardens away and expect it to go unnoticed. For fuck's sake, the whole region of Amaranthine was put under their jurisdiction. Who’s looking after it if they are gone?

I understand the overwhelming complexity needed to establish all of these connections across Inquisition’s many parts. Yet the little details were the ones giving life to the previous two games. Without that level of consideration, Inquisition appears shallow upon closer inspection.

I also feel the game lost some wind from its sails after introducing Corypheus. His reveal made all of us who played the Legacy DLC squeal with excitement, but that fervor did not last long. Before the reveal, the game gave off a certain sense of mystery. Why was the Fade seeping into our world? What was going on? Then Corypheus shows up and, despite his fascinating background, proceeds to play the role of the stereotypical cartoon villain.

I always thought Dragon Age was above cliches, but guess I was wrong. What sinister plot could Corypheus’ minions be cooking up this time? Wait, it’s red lyrium again. Never mind, lets go spoil his plans again. Samson, Lambert, who give a fuck? Corypheus briefly shows up at the end of each quest to waggle his fist at you. Argh, you Inquisition mutts, I’ll get you next time!

And what happened to the Architect?! Does the game think I forgot about him? How can he not be hugely important considering everything that’s happened?

Smells like elven trickery to me.

My favorite main quest might be Halamshiral just because of how bonkers it is. I love it on paper, but it feels like the whole section is barely held together by nothing but duct tape and paper clips. The game got me laughing the moment I went through the Winter Palace’s gates and got slapped with a penalty for being a Qunari. Ha, perfect! Give me more, game. The game, sadly, didn’t have many more of those punches left. You won’t have to spend that much time in court to see how shallow the reputation system is.

Orlesian politics have been hyped up as this nuanced and elusive game where a single wrong move would be like lunging head first into a snake pit. And yet the game has you gaining court favor by rummaging through flower pots and looking beneath benches for forsaken coins and dirty paper slips. It gets even more absurd when you realize you don’t get any penalties for doing insane shit like jumping over banisters onto unsuspecting bystanders.

Even in dialogue, where the game should have taken the most advantage of the premise, the system is incredibly easy to gain. You only have to keep picking the elusive options to look savvy to the Orlesian crowd. There are no contextual answers you have to keep an eye on, no penalties for asking the wrong questions or asking too much like some ignorant pleb.

The night is divided into segments which it transitions between after certain events. Some sections allow you to go about freely, while some restrain you with various timers. However the game doesn’t do a very good job of telling you that. It showers you with quest markers and secondary objectives, to the point where it’s hard to distinguish which one of your many schemes will move the night forward.

Right around this point you might be asking yourself what in hell did I like about this mission? Well for starters, the reputation system ties in wonderfully with the action-orientated bits. I usually don’t like when exploration is tied to timers, but it makes perfect sense here. Each dirty secret you overhear in the ballroom means a few more moments gained storming through the servants’ quarters.

But the real reason I’m so fond of Halamshiral, despite it being a stitched together mess, is that the whole mission is pure gold. The night starts with Cassandra telling off the announcer after he’s only had the chance to read 10 of her billion titles. Varric walks in next to be introduced as a renowned author because of course the Orlesian court in secretly swallowing up Hard in Hightown. Later on I missed that second bell while I was too busy sneaking around the library, only for the game to reward me for being fashionably late.

How your advisors handle the situation is equally entertaining. You stumble upon Josephine and her sister and it’s like walking into their family’s Christmas dinner. Meanwhile Cullen is silently calling out for help while drowning in a sea of unwanted attention. I chuckled when he was later asked at the war table if he wanted to respond to any of the advances. And, in the midst of it all, Leliana is gliding like an eel through water. It speaks a great deal of volume that she pulls you aside to warn you about a certain someone.

The plot between Celene, Gaspard and Briala was good enough, if not a bit convoluted due to the fact it wasn’t really properly established. I knew who Corypheus’ informant was the moment that person appeared on screen, so I can’t say any of the night’s surprises made me gasp. Even that certain someone’s presence was already spoiled by the game’s promo material. Never the less, I thought the mission’s final decision offered a decent amount of morally grey choices between which you could pick based on your preferences and how you digested the many layers of interwoven scheming.

P.S. Shout-out to Tipsqueak's absolutely gorgeous mod of the formal attire.

So Yvette, what was that thing Josie used to do back in school?

I’m somewhat less satisfied by Inquisition’s first real pair of main quests: Champions of the Just and In Hushed Whispers. I have loved hard branching paths like this ever since The Witcher 2. There’s no better way to make your decisions feel impactful than cutting off entire portions of the game. Not only that, but choosing between these two missions also has gameplay ramifications. Fighting the Red Templars is a very different experience than spending the entire game fighting the mages.

I went with the mages the first time round because I’d throw myself in front of a bus for Dorian, but as much as I love my baby boy his mission almost gave me a heart attack. Time travel? In my Dragon Age game? Get outta here.

There is nothing quite as awful as introducing time travel 3 entries into your epic fantasy series. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with time travel as a concept in general. However if you’re going to tackle it, it needs to be the front and center of your story from the very beginning. Introducing it later on brings so many headaches and lazy excuses for the writers to undo their past decisions. Thankfully the game treats this quest as a Simpsons episode. No sooner will you walk out of Redcliffe than the game will forget all about it. Secret time travel magic? Never heard of it.

The mission’s final decision left me a bit baffled. I wasn’t quite sure what conscripting the mages, i.e. making them my allies really meant. Whatever you do they end up at your headquarters, yet after being conscripted they complain about their living conditions. So what, if I had made an alliance with them, they would have somehow gotten fancier accommodations? This should have been a big decision with noticeable outcomes, both short and long term ones. My limited point of view could only see the differences in my companions’ reactions. It wasn’t until much further into the game that I realized the decision’s full weight, but more on that later.

I took a look at the Templars’ quest after finishing the mage one and was struck by how many similarities they shared. Both quests introduce a companion. Both quests have sequences which show what the Inquisition’s future might look like (although Champions of the Just does it way more sensibly, be it without Leliana’s Rambo moment). In the end both present you with the same ambiguous decision.

I wonder why there’s so much overlap. Was it a budget constraint or did they worry about players missing out on content? Then why on earth did the Templar mission cost more on the war table? I wish they let these two paths diverge more than they did. If you’re going to introduce a companion in each of the missions, then why not cut out the other one from the game entirely? I would have respected that decision, ruthless as it is. The story barely makes sense otherwise. If you play along with Dorian, then Cole appears on your doorstep like a lost puppy and vice versa.

I love how my rendition of Jesus looks like the devil.

While I’m already paddling backwards, I’d like to discuss the beginning of the game for a moment. If I could refer to The Witcher 3 for the billionth time - I know the trick you’re trying to pull, EA. Publishers try to attract new audiences by obscuring the fact that their latest game is well into an already established series. Hence Dragon Age: Inquisition and not Dragon Age 3. However for this to work you need to craft an intro which caters to both old and new audiences. This is incredibly difficult to do and most creators only manage to pull off one. Inquisition miserably fails at both.

I came into the game straight after replaying the previous two entries, so my memory was as fresh as it could get. Regardless of that I had trouble parsing Inquisition’s opening moments. What the heck, guys? Just try putting yourselves in the shoes of somehow who’s encountering Dragon Age for the very first time. Who am I? Where am I? Who are these people holding me hostage? Who got blown up exactly? Why is there a hole in the sky? And who the heck is this Andraste person?

The Dragon Age universe was no less richer in Origins, but that game introduced the world much more gracefully. The main quest provided you with the bare minimum you needed to know and the rest you picked up along the way. Meanwhile Inquisition throws you into the Hinterlands and assumes you’re already informed about the war raging between the mages and the Templars. At this point in the game a new player wouldn’t even know who these factions are, let alone why they’re fighting in the first place.

Wouldn’t it have been better to start the game on the night of the Conclave? There must have been an earlier draft of script that looked something like this. This would have given the writers a chance to lay out the present state of the world and simultaneously onboard the newbies while refreshing the memory of returning fans. They also could have properly introduced you to your character and maybe even customized the sequence based on your origin story. Then they could have just blown up the Conclave and rolled the opening credits. There, done!

Hasn’t your mother taught you not to put your hand in the holes in the sky?

Speaking of your character, I chose to play as a Qunari because how could you not? Not only is their addition as a playable character a first for the series, but also the cultural and political implications are just too delicious to ignore. Imagine if the Catholic church announced the second coming of Christ, but then it turned out that person was a Muslim. That’s basically the gist of it. I savored every conversation judging the rationale behind the situation. I took every last opportunity to declare I was not Andrastian and watch people’s heads spin in circles. I dressed my black-horned Inquisitor in nothing but red and roared at the satanic imagery.

Despite all of that I was disappointed the game didn’t take things further. The irony should have been even sweeter considering what role women have inside of the Qun. A female warrior is somewhat unheard of if you’ve been paying close attention in Origins. Because they are usually bound to domestic occupations, female Qunari are a rare sight to southerners, yet the game never acknowledges this.

I was also hugely irritated by the lack of any meaningful conversations with Bull. I was looking forward to the prospect of locking horns (metaphorically speaking) with someone whose perspective on the Qun was opposed to my own. However I barely got any of that, even in other conversations. I wanted more moments like the one where Solas gave me a backhanded compliment by saying I was surprisingly civil for a Qunari.

On a side note, I’m not sure BioWare had the time to account for the height of their Qunari models. Many cut-scenes have my character’s head way above the frame, up in the clouds. If my Inquisitor is making direct eye contact with someone, it’s because she sunk knee-deep into the floor. Watching her attempt to sit on any chair just makes my back hurt by proxy. She was slouching so much, I was afraid her ass would slide down to the floor.

P.S. Another shout-out to jacknifelee's mod of the outwear. I gotta look extra fine strolling through my mansion.

How’s the air up there, Inquisitor?

One of the few surprises Inquisition tried to pull was not really a surprise at all. I already knew Hawk was going to appear in the game based on the promotional material. I was very keen on that moment, but less so for the character creation screen which hit me at 2 in the morning. For some reason I was convinced Keeps imported my Dragon Age 2 save files in order to auto-generate my Hawk. Of course it wouldn’t do that, stupid! The game’s using a different engine with different models. Ok then, let me spend just a couple more hours modelling this woman’s ear lobes…

Well, having finally played through Hawk’s parts, I think I can safely say I spent more time on her in the character creator than BioWare did in Inquisition. The Hawk we ended up getting is the budget version. The main thing that got imported from Dragon Age 2 is Hawk’s dominant personality. I more or less noticed that right away. Hawk behaved more or less the way I expected her to, but that’s where the story ends. She never really acted according to any particular decisions I made in the previous game.

What baffles me the most is the decision to tie her to the Grey Wardens. Sure, there was the whole Corypheus affair and I also had a Warden Carver, so things weren’t quite so jarring at first. Later though I started to wonder. Exactly what connections has Hawk made with the Wardens as an organization? I could only remember brief encounters. Carver drops out of the picture after Act II, so you don’t get to hear about his experiences with the Order. Even Anders doesn’t share much.

I feel like the writers wanted Hawk to be present because of her ties to Corypheus, but couldn’t think of any way to jam her into the story without stealing the spotlight from the Inquisitor. Let’s just append her to the Warden agenda, I guess. What’s worse you don’t get any special conversations even if Carver was a Warden. The Wardens have begun hearing voices, but super protective Hawk never wonders if her little bro might be compromised.

Adamant’s conclusion and Hawk’s argument with Stroud were even more nonsensical. My Hawk stood with the mages at the end of the second game despite their blood magic. You can’t discard the whole basket over a couple of rotten apples, was her train of thought. Despite that, she seemed quite quick to condemn the Wardens’ actions. They could have made it so that Hawk’s feelings about the Wardens are muddled because of Anders, but the game never made any hints in that direction.

Even worse, the game thought it would be a grand idea to pit Hawk against Stroud. Here we have a woman I built up from nothing for over 60 hours vs. some random side character. You have got to be kidding me. Who the hell do you think I’ll choose? Does anyone ever pick Stroud, I mean seriously? If, for example, they made me pick between the Hero of Ferelden and Hawk in some other context, now that would have been one hell of a decision.

Hold on… Frenzied googling… You’re telling me it could have been Loghain instead of Stroud? You’re telling me it could have been Alistair!? What? Then why not the Hero or Ferelden? Why am I getting the least interesting option in Inquisition for having saved my Warden at the end of Origins? What a load of rubbish.

Where is the Hero of Ferelden anyway? At some point Leliana finally gave me a break and told me she got some leads on the Hero. I raced over to the war room to start the mission, only for it to end in utter embarrassment. The only thing you get from the Hero is a letter. “Hello, it’s the Hero speaking. Just wanted to let you know I’m out trying to find a cure for the Calling. Cheers!” Like, what? Haven’t we already established that Corypheus is behind the fake Calling? Then what is the Hero doing fucking about? God, I wish they cut out like 3 maps just to implement this.

Maker only knows the unholy hours I spent modelling this woman after a screenshot.

Speaking of returning characters, we absolutely must talk about Morrigan. When I first played Origins as a teen, I thought Morrigan was the coolest person ever. Coming back to the game several years later my understanding of the character has changed. Morrigan was not a confident badass any more, but an insecure young women who hid her inexperience behind snark and needless little cruelties. Ironically this did not diminish my love for the her one bit. Instead her shortcomings made that more compelling.

You can see the writers had all of this in mind when they brought her back ten years later. This is still the same Morrigan - cheekily illusive just to mess with you, straight to the point when she needs to be and absolutely intolerant of superstitious nonsense in favor of progress. Yet this is now a woman who has seen the world and is approaching it with tact and elegance. The transition from a young and crass to a mature and thoughtful Morrigan is so impeccably done, I can safely say it’s one of Inquisitions strongest pieces of character writing. I love how, after joining the Inquisition, she steps up with you to the war table. It makes my little heart overflow with joy each time.

My one and only complaint is that there isn’t enough of her. Letting her into Skyhold should have been like throwing a fox into a hen house, but she ultimately doesn’t have that much of an impact. My Warden let her go with the Archdemon baby, so my jaw dropped to the floor when I actually met the kid. Sadly it never expands much further than that. The most you get is one baffled comment from Leliana whose own relationship with Morrigan was in dire need of additional scenes.

The character she has the most interactions with is Solas and I absolutely love each one of those moments. Morrigan sees straight through his bullshit and calls him out for withholding information. She cuts to the chase and immediately starts tackling the ancient elven shenanigans stirring behind the scenes. In turn, Solas criticizes her undying hunger for power and her irresponsible meddling with things beyond her comprehension.

This leads up to the final decision at the temple of Mythal. To be perfectly honest, Morrigan’s motivation to pursue the Well of Sorrows didn’t sit right with me. She has always been desperate to uncover things which would give her an edge over Flemeth, so I get why she’d want to drink from the well in case she hadn’t had the Archdemon baby. However in my case she did have the baby and I could not fathom why she’d ever want to put that in jeopardy.

Furthermore, the quest comes off extremely clunky in an attempt to obfuscate Flemeth’s reveal later on. I appeased the guardian elf dude hoping he would give me the more information about the Well of Sorrows, but he quits his job and leaves abruptly just so the game could keep up its shady facade. Excuse me, mister, can’t you stay a while longer and tell me why you’ve been scooping up leaves from this pool for the past few millennia? No? Ok…

Before deciding who was going to drink from the Well, I asked my companions for their opinion. Solas said he agreed on only one thing with Morrigan - that we shouldn’t leave the well be lest it fall into the wrong hands. Since he has been extremely critical of her up to that point, I concluded he’d prefer if I drank it. Cassandra on the other hand was mortified by the entire pagan nature of it all. She said she’d feel much better if Morrigan were the one to dirty her hands, making me conclude she’d prefer if I did not drink it. As I made my final decision, their approval ratings ended up being the opposite from what I expected. I was already sweating pin balls for not having much of a relationship with the mage with a question mark inside my party and here the game was slapping me across the face for paying extra attention to the contextual dialogue. Gee, thanks.

At least when it set its cards on the table and pulled Flemeth out of a bag, Inquisition made up for it. Claudia Lee Black and Kate Mulgrew are two exceptional voice actors without whom Dragon Age would be a significantly poorer experience. It is largely because of these two that Morrigan and Flemeth’s reunion works like a one-two punch that knocks you right off your feet. I can think of no other scene in the entire game which can match the tension emanating from these two characters.

Oh, I see they decided to use a bit more fabric on that bikini.

By far my favorite part of the game waited for me at Skyhold once I got back from Halamshiral. After Divine Justinia got blew up at the Conclave, along with most of the higher priesthood, it should have been no surprise that the candidate for the new Divine would have to come from unconventional sources. Yet, when a revered mother approached me at my door and told me they were considering Leliana and Cassandra as possible candidates, it was as if someone had pulled a rug beneath my feet. In hindsight this was so blatantly obvious, I really should have seen it from the start. Both of these women where Justinia’s confidants and both were actively involved in keeping the Chantry afloat after the mage rebellion broke out.

Through my initial shock I started to form my own opinion on the matter. To hell with the Chantry and its business, why should I let either one of these two go? I was building up a non-Andrastian Inquisitor anyhow. So I went up the spire to Leliana’s office ostensibly resolute, only to be shaken up again. Although as surprised as I was, Leliana had some good points to make.

The Chantry’s role in society can not be overstated. It is one of the key pillars holding everything together. Without it things would fall into chaos. People would find themselves directionless. Rulers of major nations would have a harder time seeing eye to eye. Minorities would surely be exposed to more abuse. Most people are sheep, as Leliana put it bluntly, and need to be guided to their destination.

Well then, that’s it, I thought. Leliana might not yet have decided on the matter, but she also doesn’t seem opposed to it. Becoming Divine would serve as a great conclusion to her arc, considering it was the late Justinia who gave her shelter and repurposed her life in the name of the Chantry. Who better to navigate the dangerous waters of faith and politics than Leliana? Splendid! Now that that’s settled I can go over and catch up with Cassandra. It’s not like she’d ever be interested in this Divine business anyway…

Except she was. Very much so, might I add. The game shook my footing for the third time in a row. It turns out my girl had quite a few plans of her own. She too acknowledged the Chantry’s importance and the dire need to re-establish order. She seemed hell-bent on seeing the Chantry restored to its former glory, although in a manner different than what Leliana had in mind.

There I stood, completely caught off guard and with no idea what to do next. Could it be, Inquisition, that you actually put me in a conundrum? Here lie two opposing sides, both with valid points, both held by people I had grown to respect throughout the game. So which one do I pick? I started to deliberate, though I’m not sure the game intended for the little cogs in my head to get so overheated. Why don’t we start with Cassandra’s arguments?

Cassandra basically wants to restore the Circle, but a revised version of it. Magic is dangerous, no going about it, so there needs to be an institution which will educate mages. However we can’t keep people locked up in cages like we used to. That’s what pushed them into acts of desperation in the first place. We also have to stop making them the common folks’ bogeymen. We need to incorporate mages into society in a productive manner. Don’t keep them isolated in towers - assign them specific roles and send them out into the world. Likewise revise the Templar order so it not only polices, but also protects and supports the mages.

That said… I’d argue that the time for peaceful reform had long gone. Mages have been crying out for decades. Something certainly could have been done, but we let the oppression run rampant until the whole situation reached its boiling point. The Circles have been abolished by the very people who were subjected to them. It’s too late to offer a fairer system with better conditions. Neither mages nor Templars want to go back. Revolution simply doesn’t work that way - it only ever moves forward.

Leliana, on the other hand, had something else in mind. Indeed, the Circles are an outdated concept, so let’s tear them down completely. Let all mages free - no more oppression of any kind! While we’re at it, let’s get rid of the Chantry’s other misconceptions. Why should elves and dwarves and Qunari be excluded from the Chantry? Down with racism! We should create a whole new system which will harbor compassion and understanding, not fear and prejudice.

That said… Leliana, how exactly do you hope to achieve this? With pretty words? Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, she’s always been an idealist. The thing is, people are petty and prone to corruption. They can’t be trusted to be kind and accepting out of the goodness of their hearts. That’s why we built systems in the first place - to keep the abuse at a minimum.

I’d compliment the game for setting up such a wonderful dilemma if it didn’t hurt my head so much. On one hand, here’s Cassandra with her super orderly plans which would require bloody force to put into effect a reform a little too late. On the other hand, Leliana promises unicorns and rainbows at all cost, a cost I imagine as a reign of terror where the opposition gets dealt with swift knives in the back.

Am I watching Leliana descend into the dark side?

Sadly you’re not allowed to query either one of the candidates for further details. I spent more time than anyone should staring at the decision screen asking me if I wanted to support Leliana or not. I even reloaded a couple of times, burdened by indecisiveness as I was. In the end I rejected her, only because of the sinister undertones that started creeping into our conversations as of late. Even then I wasn’t entirely sure.

What surprised me more was the imbalance of your companions’ opinions on the matter. I couldn’t find anyone who would stand behind Leliana’s claims, not even Josephine. Mother Giselle, the sly snake that she is, wasted no time trying to convince Cassandra. Cullen never explicitly mentioned the Divine affair. However he did express views more or less identical to Cassandra’s when asked about his thoughts on the state of the world and how to fix it.

Vivienne was quick to pull me aside and tell me we must absolutely support Cassandra, my dear. No surprise there, Vivienne’s been outspoken about her desire to restore the Circles ever since she got here. When the dialogue wheel gave me an option to ask Vivienne if she herself wanted to be the new Divine, I ignored it. I suspected she would brush me off considering her unambiguous stance on Cassandra. What shocked me later was a mission on the war table which let me support Vivienne as the new Divine, even though I never discussed it with her explicitly. Seriously? How many outcomes does this quest line have? I would soon find out…

After defeating Corypheus, I walked into Skyhold’s main hall for my victory celebration. Vivienne was chilling in the corner and when approached was quick to inform me she hadn’t yet decided what to wear for her coronation. I laughed. I laughed some more. Then I went over to the official wiki to set matters straight.

Turns out all of the decisions you make during the main quests carry secret points which are added up behind the curtains. Certain dialogue options also have this quirk. So you might explicitly voice your support for a certain candidate, but the ultimate victory goes to the person with the most points. While I was tearing myself over Leliana and Cassandra, Vivienne amassed so many points she left the other two in the dust. The game trolled me so hard, I could do nothing but sit there and laugh.

In hindsight results make total sense. I consistently agreed with Vivienne about the need to restore order. I went to Redcliffe and conscripted the mages. Cassandra was left hanging because of my lack of support for the Templars and Leliana couldn’t get me on board with her more radical ideas. All of my indecision ended up pushing the 3rd party onto the throne and the more I think about it, the more I love it. This kind of natural role-playing is precisely what I want to see more of. The game let me shape the world with small decisions and then added up what I was doing all along. The only thing I would have wanted is a scene showcasing how my decisions led to the clerics’ final vote.

I later found out that Vivienne’s rule turned out much like I had predicted Cassandra’s would, with the notable exception of Vivienne being the first mage to receive the title. This is a striking detail I failed to include in my initial calculations. Either way, she dealt with her opposition without a shred of mercy. To quote Leliana: lady Vivienne’s views are a bit conservative.

I’m going to live to regret this, aren’t I?

The game lets you make all of those important story decisions by using the good old dialogue wheel. A naive observer might say Inquisition’s system works the same way it did in DA2, but they’d be wrong. I had quite a few complaints about how dialogue was handled in DA2, but I was ultimately intrigued to see where it was going. As if it was reading my mind, Inquisition decided to put some effort into it.

It works similarly as before. The right side of the dialogue wheel contains options which move the conversation forward, while the options on the left offer additional insight. The options on the right are separated into three categories: paragon, jokester and renegade, in that order from top to bottom. You’ll recognize this ordering from DA2, except Inquisition doesn’t always follow the rules.

See, in DA2 the center of the wheel displayed an icon indicating the type of the option you were currently hovering above. This made sure you knew exactly which option you were selecting even though the right side of the wheel always displayed them in the same order. Sometimes the icon would change to indicate a variation in the response type, e.g. the paragon response could switch between the Helpful angel wings and the Diplomatic olive branch. However such attempts at nuance in DA2 were pure bullshit.

In Inquisition the options on the right side do not have unique wheel icons. Instead they share the generic crossroads icon. The only way to figure out that they work the same as in DA2 is if you played the previous game or just deduced it by trial and error. This might seem like an obvious downgrade, but the strength of Inquisition’s dialogue system is precisely its willingness to play loose. The problem with DA2 was how it felt compelled to shoehorn every single decision into the triple personality mold. If DA2 were to have its filthy way, it would frame Inquisition’s most common question: “Are you really the Herald of Andraste?”, as a paragon vs. renegade thing.

Contrary to that, Inquisition makes you pick between its three personality types as long as it makes sense. If the decision at hand has nothing to do with being a paragon, renegade or jokester the game will ditch the categorizations altogether and offer you options which are purely contextual. These I like to classify as labelled and unlabelled ones.

Unlabelled responses are tagged with the same generic crossroads icon, which makes them hard to distinguish from the standard ones at first. What sets them apart is that they aren’t forced into the right side of the wheel, but spread across both sides. The different layout, as well as the blurbs, inform you that you’re making a contextual choice.

The labelled ones are also scattered around the wheel, but their intent is made much clearer with custom icons. Each labelled response corresponds to a specific emotion and thus has a unique icon attached to it. There are a dozen or so of these and they provide additional depth to the conversation. As much as I love the diversity, it’s sometimes hard to figure out the intended emotion based on icon alone. The Stoic, Mad and Anxious responses are all too easy to mix up.

Other than these options Inquisition also features the special sheriff’s badge which is, again, purely contextual and usually related to your companions. Your race and class give you access to specific dialogue options and even more can be unlocked by spending Inquisition perks to acquire knowledge about certain topics: politics, magic and such. All of this makes Inquisition’s repertoire quite formidable.

Need someone to hear your prayers?

The biggest weakness of the dialogue system is, as I mentioned, its lack of clarity. Besides not labeling the options in a clear enough manner, Inquisition also has problems with consistency. Depending on who you’re talking to, dialogue options can be scattered all over the place. Sometimes when you want to further question an NPC, the dialogue options will be labelled with a question mark and pushed to the left side of the wheel. However the crossroads label will sometimes replace the question mark, even though the dialogue option still serves the same purpose. Sometimes additional questions will open new sub-menus, but other times they’ll be jammed into the free slots on the wheel.

The dialogue wheel can also look wildly different depending on which companion you’re talking to. Some companions always let you ditch them from the party, while some are here with you for life. Some always have a dedicated part of the wheel for romance, while some do not. Since I mentioned romance…

Inquisition takes DA2’s lead and continues messing with the player even more. While the second game let you bang everyone, Inquisition decided to take a step back and wall off romances. Characters now have preferences and will not let you drag them to bed if they’re not interested. The one and only reason I dislike this decision is because the game wouldn’t let me wed Cass on the spot. Despite not letting you get into everyone’s pants, Inquisition still lets you court them. And then get dumped on your ass! I find this hilarious. Ever since DA2, I realized I don’t want games to pander to my emotions. Yes, make me fall for a character and then tell me the feeling isn’t mutual!

Of course, to have a chance with someone, you’ll have to get into their good graces. The approval/disapproval system is back, from what I can tell, the same as it was before. That’s with one notable exception. The approval scale is now not visible in the UI.

This is one messy decision. The “X slightly approves” messages are incredibly vague. According to the wiki, the same message might not carry the same amount of points based on the situation. That means I can’t even count the points in my head. The intended way to assess a companion’s feelings seems to be checking how they address you. Sure enough, I knew I messed up the moment Solas started being pissy with me. However you’re still not able to tell how close you are to crossing the line.

What I do like is how much the approval is contextual. Aside from major story decisions, you can amass points in all sorts of ways. E.g. you can get back into Solas’ good graces just by asking him questions. Maker knows that man likes to be probed. You can also get points from various actions within the world. Varric approves of you destroying red lyrium, Blackwall is always grateful when you uncover new Warden relics, etc.

One new change compared to DA2 is that companions react to your decision even if they are not currently present in the party. This always seemed like the rational way of addressing things. Of course word would spread about your actions. In DA2 if I wanted to join hands with some insurgent mages, but not get on Fenris’ bad side, I’d just leave him at home. He’ll never know!

Could I be your leg rest?

All of those social mechanics wouldn’t be any fun if your companions didn't pique your interest. Thankfully Inquisition continues the trend set by its predecessors. The game didn’t cut any expenses in this department. The roster is huge - 3 people per class plus the 3 of your advisors who basically also function as companions. That makes it a total of 12 people for you to interact with.

Personality wise they range all over the board: from religious to atheists, from nobles to commoners, from pragmatic to idealistic. No person amounts to the same set of traits, allowing them to see eye to eye or hate each other’s guts. Taking this into account, it’s no wonder companions play such vital roles in each other’s quest lines. Varric clashes with Cassandra over the importance of duty versus loyalty, Cassandra is the backbone of Cullen’s struggles and Solas guides Cole through his transition.

Inquisition also uses this diversity to craft unique romances. Usually games with multiple romance options tend to equalize the outcomes, i.e. you’ll always end up with a happy ever after no matter who you go for. Inquisition sees no reasons to do so. None of these people were taken out of the same mold, so why should they want the same things out of a relationship?

That’s how Dorian never really stops treating you as a fling, even if you lay your love down at his feet. The wedding scenes, usually reserved for the stereotypical hetero options, are handed out to the neuro-divergent jester and the drug addict with puppy eyes. Bull is there to check off BDSM and Solas continues the ever so important tradition of having the mage break your heart.

If I were to complain about your companions at least a little, I’d start off by saying that Dragon Age 2 ultimately did a better job. To me, its companions felt more consistent and somewhat richer. Advancing the game through acts let DA2 split the character development into chunks and use the passage of time as a more believable basis for prominent change. Contrary to that, most of Inquisition’s character arcs feel like they’ve been cut short before reaching any meaningful conclusion.

If I were to continue complaining, I’d say that some of the character initiations felt too forced. Origins (and DA2 for the most part) did a spectacular job with this. Each companion entered the story in a natural way that tied into your mission and their previous occupation in life. Inquisition kinda just throws people your way and hopes they will stick. Sera appears out of nowhere and her chaotic nature doesn’t really soften the impact. Vivienne and Bull have genuine political reasons for being there, but are thrust upon you without much exposition.

If I were allowed to complain even further, I’d throw my head back and wail in anguish. The scene where Varric gathers everyone to play cards must have been pulled out of the deepest pits of hell. The whole scene repeats itself with one person telling an awfully bland joke and the rest of them forcefully laughing in succession. There’s a few awkward seconds of silence after a character finishes laughing and before the next one begins. I guess they insisted on having every single person at the table join in with a clever remark, but could not for the life of them figure out how to record and edit it.

Make it stop, please.

Cassandra is the first person to greet you once you boot up Inquisition. Considering she was the one who opened and closed the previous game, this seems rather fitting. Dragon Age already made a habit of promoting side characters to full-fledged companions and Cassandra’s presence in DA2 was so imposing that it would have been weird not to include her.

My first impressions of her were an extension of the ones I carried over from DA2. Cassandra - a woman tough as nails, cold as steel and direct as hammer. I thought she was one of the few people I could throw in a ring with Aveline and call a worthy contender. I had no idea how wrong I was.

Little by little, scene by scene, I began to discern the true persona hiding behind those cheekbones. The woman I had previously regarded as stalwart and unflinching was now squealing over smutty romance novels, pondering the morality of her every decision and chasing Varric around a table (a scene that plays out in my head to circus music). Cassandra was no bastion of unwavering strength. She was the shounen protagonist and his tsundere girlfriend at the same time.

Weirdly enough none of this made me like her any less. On the contrary, I came to appreciate the contrast between her steady self and each over-the-top outburst. She’s by far the campiest of all of Dragon Age’s companions, yet still manages to be a well-rounded and believable character.

The only thing I regret is how the writers treated her and Varric. The two didn’t have much of a relationship back in DA2, but the fact that they both chose to be here says so much about them. Sadly, after that ridiculous novel scene, the two don’t really share many moments together. Even their banter doesn’t put a close on things.

Varric on his own holds a peculiar spot in Inquisition. His role in DA2 was very particular. He was not just a passive narrator, but also one of the main drivers of the plot. Even so, he remained steadfast throughout and served mostly as a foil to other characters. Jumping over to Inquisition, it seemed Varric’s days as a storyteller had long since gone to past. However here he was again as one of your loyal companions, a role only a handful of characters in the series have revisited. I wondered what plans the game had for him.

Figuring out his new purpose took some detective work. At first it seemed the game brought him back on board just for the fan service. The only thing you can pick his brain about in Haven is Hawk. Unless the Inquisitor was secretly Hawk’s fan girl, asking all of these specific questions that would only make sense to a DA2 player felt wildly out of place.

Fortunately the game just needed some time to find its footing. Varric’s main drive in Inquisition turned out to be guilt. Going through DA2 from Hawk’s perspective it’s easy to forget some of your companions’ complicity. Varric was one of the main actors who attributed to the discovery of red lyrium and thus the butterfly effect which led to the breaking of the Chantry.

It would have been hard for anyone in Kirkwall to grasp the consequences of these decisions, but in Inquisition the outcomes are clear as day. Varric might have been dodging responsibility for a very long time, but the full weight of his actions had finally caught up to him. Bartrand’s fate, the devastation caused by red lyrium, Kirkwall’s collapse - all of this is more than enough to make a hustler seek atonement.

What surprised me the most was an optional piece of dialogue I could have easily missed. Before you discover that it was the late Justinia who saved you and not Andraste, the touchy question of your divinity gets thrown around a lot. You can ask Varric about his opinion on the matter, as you can with many others. His response shocked me. He admitted sheepishly that he was full on board with you being the second incarnation of Christ. Varric, the unscrupulous businessman, turning to religion? I couldn’t even negate his reasoning. With all the insane stuff occurring around the Inquisitor on a daily basis what was a man to believe?

I’ll stitch these two back together, so help me god.

The writers must have wanted to squeeze more mileage out of Varric since they made the bizarre decision of putting him in opposition to Solas regarding Cole’s transformation. I’m sorry, but who thought this was a good idea? I get it in theory. Solas would naturally be the one to support Cole’s persistence as a spirit while someone else would need to fill the shoes of the devil’s advocate. Who better to see the humanity in someone than Varric, right? Right?

Well… There are a couple of issues. In order to push Cole to be more human, Varric tries to convince him to seek out revenge. Sure, giving in to intense emotions could be considered a more human response, but has the game forgotten about Anders? Solas doesn’t need to remind us that a spirit’s original nature can be twisted into something horrible. Varric already knows the consequences of justice morphing into vengeance. Why on earth would he get involved with a spirit again and urge for a violent resolution?

As for Solas… I mean, should I be surprised at this point? Dragon Age has taught me that as soon as a mage starts acting shady, you can set off a timer and wait for the knife to appear in you back. I knew something was off the moment we met. “Hello, I’m an expert in the Fade.” Cool, where did you learn your skills? “Oh, you know… Places…” Yeah, buddy, don’t be offended if I put you on my black list.

Still, I struggled to figure Solas out. No, I don’t mean the twist at the end, I mean him as a person. His predecessors didn’t exactly give me trouble with this. I didn’t know what Morrigan had in plan, but I still knew who she was - sharp and sarcastic, but ultimately insecure about her inexperience. Similarly, before he blew my mind and a few other things along the way, I knew Anders as a rascal whom mistreatment propelled to insurgency.

For the longest time Solas remained a blank slate for me. In hindsight I realize I have only myself to blame. The designers shaped the game’s major decisions so you couldn’t please all of your companions (easily) and Solas ended up being the weak link for me. A few wrong turns in Redcliffe and Adamant and our relationship plummeted quickly. It wasn’t until much later that I realized I needn’t have strained myself so hard. My man was just lonely as fuck. Talk about relating to a character.

The game does a very good job of foreshadow where things are going. For example, I decided to grant Brialla her long desired political power just so I could score some points with Solas. I was rather confused when the decision bore meager fruits. I went over to him to clear up the confusion, only for him to remark that he didn’t feel any kinship towards the Dalish. Pardon me, what? Is this the same guy who so stubbornly tried to teach Sera ancient elvish? What do you mean you don’t care about the Dalish? Explain yourself, sir. Alas, it all made sense in the end…

Who’s the angel and who the devil on Cole’s back?

Now prepare to hate on me in the comments. Ready for it? Three, two, one—I don’t like Bull. I really wish I did.

The Qun is a closed-off society that keeps a tight grip on its members. The Ben-Hassrath are just one of the tools it uses to maintain that grip. As regulated as they are, the Ben-Hassrath are also a faulty tool. Being the ones tasked with going out into the world and collecting information they spend a great deal of time surrounded by other cultures. Over time they can’t help but be assimilated by the very people they are spying on. Hence the need for subdivisions within the Qun dedicated to re-indoctrination.

This is a great setup for a character. Bull is not only someone who has intimate knowledge of a closed-off society, but also someone whose relationship with that society has been stretched to its utmost limits. It’s hard to notice how much your beliefs have strayed away your compatriots’ when you’ve been so far from home for so long. When my Qunari Inquisitor first met Bull, he was quick to remind me that I wasn’t really a Qunari, I would never be. Ouch! I was immediately hooked despite being handed such a low blow. However as things went on, I could not ignore the red flags.

Watching him interact with other people reminded me of an android trying to mimic the basics of human behavior. I have no idea if the writing or the performance are at fault. Maybe both. At first I was sure the writers were doing this on purpose. Look at this veteran spy trying to befriend everyone. Of course he’s faking it, it’s all a clever ruse! Except I really can’t say that’s the case.

There’s a scene where Bull dresses you up as a mercenary and takes you down to the camp to chat with the troops. I couldn’t stop my eyes from rolling into the back of my head. Yes, I’m sure no one is going to think this female Qunari has anything to do with that infamous Inquisitor. There’s just so many female Qunari running about, who could possibly keep track? Also hadn’t the intro said I used to be part of a mercenary group? Why is then Bull lecturing me about the life of a common soldier? His attempts at small talk make me think he got his skills from an interrogation room. Come to think of it…

It only gets worse with the Chargers. When you recruit him, Bull introduces them as this ultimate mercenary group, a band of no-nonsense professionals who always get the job done. Then you get to meet them in person and it’s a bunch of circus clowns, dull tropes used to tick boxes. Krem was the only likeable one, but the poor dude just can’t be taken seriously when put in line with the rest.

I don’t get how the game wanted me to shed a tear over them. The final decision in Bull’s loyalty mission has some genuinely interesting implications, but it didn’t help that it made no sense in context. It’s hard to sell me on the Chargers having to make a last stand when I don’t even understand the stakes at hand. Which positions are we defending and which are we assaulting? Exactly how many foes are we fighting? What exactly is the Qunari’s strategy here? Why can’t the Chargers retreat? Why can’t the dreadnought retreat? Why can’t we go and help them? Why does everything need to be so dramatic!? The decision became clear when I realized I’d have to hear more from the Chargers if I spared them.

And what’s up with Bull’s recruitment mission? If you’re playing a Qunari Inquisitor, the game makes a pretty big deal of it (as it should). All of your opposition is yapping at the Inquisition for trying to pose a Qunari as the disciple of Andraste. At first the Inquisition is dancing around these question, but then you get to Bull’s recruitment mission and all of a sudden we’re publicly working with the Ben-Hassrath.

What the actual hell? This should have been the equivalent of political suicide even if you weren’t playing as a Qunari Inquisitor. What’s the point of it all? So we could have the rest of the cast comment on it in the open? Come the heck on, this would have been such a better plot point if the Inquisition was trying to cover up its involvement with the Qun. You could have had missions about keeping that a secret and then maybe later serious implications if the truth got out. Instead we get a scene where Bull tells me he’s working for the KGB while Cassandra covers her ears and pretends she’s looking at the flowers.

Just so you know, I’m on to you.

If I could squeeze in a couple more words about the rest of the cast, you might have caught on to my love for Dorian by now. He is the type of man I’d kill for and was unsurprisingly the first one whose loyalty mission I completed. I couldn’t romance him with my female Inquisitor, as much as I wanted to. Still, I have too much respect for this virtual person to install a mod and bypass his preferences.

As for Sera, at first I thought I’d need two energy bars and a fizzy drink to keep up with her. Her fixation with pranks also didn’t help me warm up to her, as it only reminded me of an embarrassing era of YouTube I’d rather forget. However it turned out my sluggish brain just needed time to catch up to her train of thought. Once I was used to her tempo, I realized how utterly brilliant she is. Varric might be the master of words, but Sera is a treasure trove of one-liners that never dries up. There is something incredibly endearing about a person who unabashedly laughs at stupid jokes and tells it as it is.

Moving over to Blackwall, his reveal was much less elegantly handled than Solas’. The biggest hint gets dropped in a conversation with Alistair which was not an option for me since my bro was somewhere else on official state business. Adamant should have been the most revealing, but you barely get two words out of Blackwall the entire mission. If the game were more consistent in general, I might not have interpreted this as a lazy oversight. Even worse, after the reveal his story gets no resolution at all. Solas was clearly set up as a cliffhanger, but Blackwall feels like a book whose last third was torn out. Where’s the redemption arc? What exactly does this man do to make up for his mistakes? If the game bothered to retain any Grey Warden characters, Blackwall could have actually joined the Order.

At least I can’t argue with the man’s taste. Josephine was the one I ended up romancing partially because I wasn’t really sure of anyone else, but mostly because I thought the woman looked like a blast. I was spot on. I burst out laughing when she announced that she was engaged. Like that would pose a problem to the ambassador of the Inquisition. Sorry love, but pesky nobles don’t really bother me when Leliana is sharpening a knife behind my back in case I screw this up. The entire duel scene is comedic gold and your epilogue in Trespasser feels sweet and complete.

En garde, mother fucker.

This is part 2 of a multi-part review of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Click here for part 1 and part 3.

[icyschreviews]

A Review of Dragon Age: Inquisition

Part 1: Playing a Broken PC Port

This is part 1 of a multi-part review of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Click here for part 2 and part 3.

God, why do I keep doing this? I tell myself I’ll only play a game for fun and next thing you know I’m five pages and half a bottle of tequila down a review. It’s you, BioWare, isn’t it? We keep doing this with every other game you release. Andromeda was the reason I got into this futile hobby in the first place. Well shame on you, you and your nerdy DnD mechanics and your campy fantasy drama and your thirst traps you call companions. Yes, I’m going to trash Inquisition now. Consider yourselves responsible.

Where do I even begin with this game? It’s safe to say that I’m a fan of Origins through and throughout. There are many RPGs out there that call themselves old-school, but not one quite like Origins. Sure, I’m into action RPGs as well (I play Dark Souls just like any other hoe), but few games can match Origins’ juicy blend of stellar writing and complex combat.

So let’s not treasure that. Let’s piss all over it and burn it in a dumpster, eh EA? All the cool kids are doing open-worlds now, so we have to follow the trends. Cram as much content as you can in it. God forbid the next Assassin’s Creed has one more minute of gameplay than we do. Give us crafting. Can’t have a triple-A game without that. And bigger maps. I said bigger! Copy-paste the stuff we already have. More quest markers. So many quest markers that they overlap on the map. MOAR!

Oh dear, we got so worked up we forgot about the graphics. There’s no way we’re releasing this game if you can’t see every scale on a dragon’s ass. It’s called Dragon Age after all. Say what now, BioWare? Your engine can’t keep up with that level of detail? Hush baby, we’re not going to license someone else’s well documented and well tested engine. Mama’s got Unreal at home.

Goat’s blood all over you edifice, EA.

Listen, I don’t have anything against console players. People should play games wherever its the most convenient for them. I also have nothing against bringing games to more platforms. Sure, adapt Dragon Age for consoles. Why not make it available to a larger crowd? But why, oh why would you do that at the expense of the PC version? Tell me, BioWare, please.

I booted up Inquisition for the first time, took control after the initial cut-scene, pressed space on my keyboard and almost had a heart attack. Instead of pausing the game my character jumped. Jumped, I tell you! What is this blasphemy in my Dragon Age game? I quickly remapped the controls. Off with you, filthy jump button!

Next came pressing the tab button. Tab. Tab! Tab, goddamn, why is it not responding? Ok, back to the key bindings. How do I highlight items in the area? Right, by pressing the V key. Lets remap that real quick. Now press tab…

It echoed. The highlight is now an echo. Wha— Why? Why would you do that, BioWare? How is that more convenient than the way it was before? You used to hold down tab and all interactable items in the area would stay highlighted as long you had your finger on the button. The new echo only marks objects for a short while. You don’t even have enough time to make a full circle before the highlight starts fading. What am I supposed to do with this? If the highlight didn’t also flash on the mini-map, it’d be practically unusable.

I didn’t realize what caused this change until I switched over to a gamepad (spoiler alert). There the highlight is mapped to L3. Of course it fucking is. Who would want to hold down L3 for a prolonged period of time? Alright, BioWare, but why not have two separate implementations of this feature for different platforms? You can’t tell me the echo was the easier one to implement. At least it beeps differently when there aren’t any items around.

Ok, deep breaths. Remember what you learned in therapy. All of these are just minor inconveniences. I’m sure the rest of the game plays just fine. Look, what’s that item in the corner? Let’s check it out. Click on it. Click. Right click on it. Again. Click…

Oh my god, your character doesn’t automatically approach faraway items to interact with them any more. You have to walk over to them and then click. What’s worse the collision boxes went on a diet. Picking up a slim little elfroot requires a surgeon’s precision. I’d consistently walk over to one, only to overshoot it by a tiny bit. If this didn’t make me blow my brains out, nothing ever will.

Blasphemy!

And that’s not even half of it. The real war crimes were committed against the game’s combat. I can’t even begin to describe it. The combat was desecrated. Defiled. Abolished. Torn to pieces and processed through a meat grinder. The tactical mode is the stuff of which nightmares are made of. It feels finicky at best and rage inducing at worst.

I can’t believe Origins is the oldest Dragon Age game, yet the only one to have its shit together when it comes to the camera. Does regression count as some sort of progress? Dragon Age 2 trimmed the maximum zoom level, but Inquisition went one step further and let the camera clip into the ceiling. Visibility in closed spaces is miserable and it only gets worse in poorly lit dungeons.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the game randomly kicks you out of the tactical mode while adjusting the camera’s zoom level. There’s no pattern to this behavior. Sometimes it’ll do what it’s supposed to and sometimes it’ll slap you in the face and continue the action at top speed. And why don’t orders from the tactical mode carry over outside of it? Do I really have to keep smashing the attack button? Even when I go into the tactical mode and tell someone to do something, chances are they might just ignore me.

To go even further, when you hover over abilities in the quick bar nothing pops up. Am I seriously supposed to pause the game and open up the menu each time I want to check an ability’s description? Alright, Inquisition, I’ll do that. Just tell me, why are all of the UI elements flipping out? I can’t scroll down a simple list without the cursor losing its goddamn mind and jumping all over the place. Similarly there’s no information when you hover over your companions’ images, no health, no XP, no stats, no nothing. Status effect are presented as these small specks in the corner of your screen. I needed a magnifying glass to properly identify them.

Just checking for cobwebs up here.

But wait, humble reviewer, why are you using the tactical mode? Don’t you know it’s useless? No one plays Inquisition like that. Just get into the action and start smashing the buttons. Tactics - who needs them? I finished the game on Nightmare and only had to fire up like two brain cells. Trust me, you should forget about the tactical mode all toge—

No, you forget about the tactical mode! If I wanted to play an action RPG, I would have booted up The Witcher 3. I’m sick of triple-A games converging into this indistinguishable hodgepodge of recycled ideas. This is Dragon Age, goddammit. I won’t let EA trick me into believing this is where the franchise should be heading. I’ll get my share of tactical combat out of this game, so god help me!

…

Ok, but maybe I won’t be doing that with a mouse and keyboard. Once I realized my old approach wasn’t working any more, I decided to try my luck with a gamepad. Lo and behold things started falling into place. Suddenly I wasn’t playing a busted PC port, but a decent console exclusive.

Without a mouse and keyboard in my hands I wasn’t compelled to play the game the way I used to. The gamepad tricked my mind into approaching Inquisition with a fresh set of eyes. The menus started responding to my inputs. I wasn’t looking for overlays because I had nothing I could use for hovering. No more mouse, so no more futile clicking on objects in the distance. Just tilt the stick and press A. Feels good, don’t it?

If someone had told me I’d be playing a Dragon Age game with a gamepad, I would have urged them to take that filth elsewhere. Today if someone else were to put a gun to my head and order me to play Inquisition with a mouse and keyboard, I would tell them to shoot and end my misery. It’s like BioWare unironically developed a console exclusive and then smashed together a shabby port. To think this franchise was once home on the PC.

Well pardon me, but from now on I’ll be reviewing Dragon Age Inquisition, a spin-off from the main Dragon Age series. This time exclusively on consoles and totally not playable on PC. Don’t let Steam fool you, this thing don’t run with a mouse and keyboard.

You have to flip a switch and restart the game just to use a gamepad? Whaaat?

Once I was sure the simple act of picking up herbs wasn’t going to make me blow my brains out, I decided to give Inquisition another shot. The tactical mode was still waiting for me. Oh, you didn’t think I was done with it just because I switched over to a gamepad? Silly you.

The gamepad made me feel like I was playing a completely different game. In the PC version the tactical mode worked more or less the same way it did in the previous two games. Pardon me, it tried to work. In the console version time is stopped by default the moment you enter the tactical mode. You don’t press a button to unfreeze time, instead you hold down the trigger to make time move forward. The moment you release the trigger time stops again.

At first this didn’t seem like much of a change. You still issue commands the way you did before. However this gives an entirely new flavor to the combat. Applying different amounts of pressure on the trigger makes time move at different speeds. This means you can let little bits of time slip by if you want tight control over the combat, i.e. you can let it rip at top speed if you feel comfortable with the decisions you’ve made.

To boot some of the issues which were present in the PC version simply aren’t there any more. You don’t get thrown out of the tactical mode for changing the zoom level. Then why on earth was this a problem with a mouse and keyboard? I quickly grew accustomed to the new control scheme and was able to cruise through the tactical mode with ease. However the more time I spent with it, the more I realized just how many holes were drilled through the sides of this ship.

One of the first challenges was figuring out how to zoom in on a particular party member. When selecting the next person using the D-pad the game would reposition the camera onto that person. At least this is how it works outside of the tactical mode. Inside the mode the camera stays put regardless of your selection. This means switching over between ranged and melee units requires you to move the cursor back and forth across the battlefield. Or you could quickly exit the tactical mode, switch to the desired character and then dive back in. Talk about an ideal solution.

The problems don’t stop there. During combat you can open up a hot wheel with additional tactical options as well as access to potions. The potions work as you’d expect them to, but the special commands can only be applied to the entire party. Meaning if I wanted to move Sera to an advantageous position and tell her to stay put, that command would make the entire party stop dead in their tracks.

Orders that should be simple are thus a headache to execute—except, hold on a minute. It turns out you can tell only one party member to hold their ground. You just need to double tap the desired location. I’m going to give the game the benefit of a doubt and say I missed this information because I played the tutorial with a mouse and keyboard. Still, why does this command work differently when issued from the hot wheel?

At least telling your companions to smack someone on the head is easy enough. Have you seen that new warrior skill tree? It has an ability which lets you pull an enemy using a chain and then ceremoniously kick them in the face. Here, let me show you. Come on, Inquisitor, let it rattle. Wait… Why did my Inquisitor miss her shot? She turned 90 degrees away from her target and flipped the chain towards a rock. What a bizarre bug. Let’s try that one more time. It happened again! And again! Now Sera is also shooting at trees.

What’s going on here? My companions keep directing their shots in random directions at random times. Is it because they’re out of range? I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. Are obstacles a problem? No, my Inquisitor is able to chain-pull people through carts. Elevation maybe? No, then she flips her chain in the right direction, but it sinks through the terrain. What the heck then? Am I supposed to make peace with this as well? At lest the ability doesn’t go into cooldown when you miss.

Never mind, Cassandra, go defend that position. Cassandra? Where are you, girl? Why haven’t you moved at all? Are you stuck? Did someone apply some sort of status effect on you? Not that I’d know since the UI doesn’t tell me… Let me just exit the tactical mode and see if I can move you. Yes, I can. Another bizarre bug, I guess. Wait, why is my Inquisitor stuck now? And now Blackwall! And Bull! Stop it, it’s contagious!

Come to mama.

I remembered somewhere along the way that this was a Dragon Age game and that I didn’t have to manage every single breath a companion takes. So I rolled up my sleeves and opened up the menus looking for the tactical settings. Except there wasn’t much to play around with. The only behavior you can change is potion consumption and the auto-usage of specific abilities.

Where are the in-depth settings that were part of the previous games? Where are the fine-grained conditions? What about behavioral presets? How do my companions act by default? Are they aggressive? Are they defensive? Does this vary based on class? How would I even know?

During this search, I stumbled across a menu letting me tweak various aspects of the gameplay. Among those was an option to toggle friendly fire. Since I was dearly missing the feature in Dragon Age 2, I decided to turn it on. Immediately after Varric blasted me and Cassandra out of Thedas. It did not last long before I relented and turned the feature back off. Some abilities are just to unpredictable to use, chain lightning for example. I let Vivienne zap some poor bastard thinking he was well out of range, only to have the entire party light up like Christmas candles.

The next thing that came to my attention was the cursor and how busted it is. Inside the tactical mode you can move it using a stick. However it can’t go through obstacles. If there’s a log standing between you and your target, you need to circle around it. Why on earth would the cursor be affected by collisions?

Elevations create a new set of problems. You literally have to walk the cursor up the goddamn stairs. But what if there aren’t any stairs? What if my target is perched upon a cliff? There’s absolutely no way to reach them without exiting the tactical mode. The cursor also disappears on slopes. This problem is the most prominent in the desert maps. There’s no way to select a target if it’s standing on the steep sides of a dune.

And don’t even get me started on the cursor’s range. You can’t move it far away from the currently selected character. What if my party members are spread apart? Because of this I couldn’t command my ranged units to attack a target next to my melee ones. So what if they need to move in closer before firing? Make them do that automatically.

Not the stairs again.

Left to their own devices companions can usually find their way. Usually. This is handled rather well during exploration. Even if a companion gets stuck and left behind, the game will teleport them behind you when you’re not looking. This is simple and seamless.

The same magic trick does not work in combat. Once you press the button launching you into the tactical mode, your companions are left standing wherever they were before that. I once slid down a hill straight into combat and left Vivienne and Sera staring down at me from the top. I powered my way through the encounter out of sheer spite while the ladies must have spent their time bickering.

The very worst example of this is a cave up on the Storm Coast. It’s your usual case of spider infestation, but it was the level’s geometry and not the enemies that my companions could not get their heads around. The first time I entered the cave I engaged in combat only to realize I was alone. Upon closer inspection I found my party stuck outside trying to burrow their way in through a solid wall. The entrance of the cave was 5 feet to the side.

On the second go I made sure everyone was lined up in front of the entrance, but only Solas successfully made it in. He then proceeded to climb up a ladder on his own incentive. I switched over to him, wanting to bring Mr elven supremacy down to earth, only for the entire party to be teleported somewhere outside of the cave. My Inquisitor retained their default combat pose and slid down a hill.

Even when I managed to get all of them inside, they constantly kept getting stuck on walls. The camera was losing its mind and entering and exiting the tactical mode teleported me to random corners of the cave. It’s safe to say I never entered that dungeon again.

How the hell did you get in here?

You could say I was perplexed the first time I opened up the skill trees. Dragon Age 2 did a good job of tidying up Origins’ level-up system, but on first glance Inquisition went a bit too far. I counted 4 trees per class which was a downgrade from the 6 you had in DA2. Lots of abilities seemed to be missing. Mages only had 3 elemental skill trees and 1 you could call defensive. What happened to entropy? Or blood magic? How am I supposed to create different builds with all these ability points coming in?

The game just stayed quiet and chuckled until I reached Skyhold. After receiving my first Fade ability I opened up the level-up screen and—wait, what’s this? New skill trees? There was a new one per character. I repeat per character, not per class. Dragon Age, I could kiss you right now.

This is hands down the best level-up system in all three games. Not only is it tidy, not only is it measured, but it also guarantees unique builds across different characters. The first thing I did was re-spec the entire party. Now every member has a specific role to play. Blackwall is my indestructible tank, Cassandra is an expert for handling demons and Cole is my precious little glass canon. The only flaw is that those unique skill trees are the exact same ones used for your Inquisitor’s specialization. This means that depending on your class and play-style someone in your party might become redundant. Since I reveled in ripping people to shreds this ended up being Bull for me.

I also like how they handled your stats. The previous two games worked like most traditional RPGs. After a level-up, you’d get a certain amount of points you could invest in your attributes. However Inquisition doesn’t grant these types of points. Instead unlocking certain abilities automatically increases some of your attributes. This is brilliant because it ensures that your character’s stats stay consistent with your desired play-style. So if you want to be a defensive warrior, the defensive skills will pump up your constitution for you.

Besides the skills you’re already familiar with Inquisition introduces some new ones. I admit, I couldn’t immediately see the use for all of them. Varric is a prime example of this. His unique skill tree is all about setting traps, but to what end? You’re rarely ever in the position to lure someone in. Either you stumble upon a pack enemies or you raid their camp. So what am I supposed to do with bear traps?

The game helped me change my mind during the boss fight against the Grand Duchess Florianne. The damn woman kept jumping behind my squishies, sending them to the Maker’s side and then escaping onto a banister where the pathing system said I couldn’t touch her. That’s when I remembered Varric.

Previously I invested points into an ability that let him scatter a bunch of mines. The catch is that each mine applies random elemental damage to anyone who steps on it. At first I didn’t know what to do with it. Enemies usually have one elemental weakness and it’s that particular one you want to exploit. However it turns out you can go to town with this ability as long as an enemy isn’t immune to a particular element or if you’re trying to cover a wider area. Once I let Varric do his thing, I sat back and watched the Duchess destroy her own health bar just by pouncing around the place. It was like an early birthday present.

Inquisition frequently rewards you for playing around like this. During the last fight in Haven I was tasked with holding out against multiple waves of Red Templars. This was by far the most grueling challenge in the game up to that point. Scouring for options, I noticed a convenient bottleneck in the terrain. A giant trebuchet was occupying a corner of the battlements and Solas just so happened to have his ice wall ability. What ensued might be called cheesing by some. I blocked off one side of the trebuchet forcing the Templars to trickle in the other way around. This let me pick them off at my own leisure.

To list one more example, I often had to deal with shadow warriors and harlequins. Rogues have a cloaking ability which makes them invisible long enough to come slash your tendons. You can sort of make out their silhouette, but it’s much better to flush them out as early as possible. So for example, Vivienne can throw Chain Lightning on the closest visible enemy which will then bounce off hidden ones as well.

Smash his face in, Cassandra!

All of those abilities wouldn’t be as impressive if you couldn’t put them to use. Luckily Inquisition has got you covered. The enemy variety is excellent across the board. For a game of this size it’s remarkable that I only started getting bored of beating people up after the 100+ hour mark. Even then, I’d blame the lack of fun on needless repetition and not on diminishing quality.

There’s a bit of something for everyone. Human opponents come in all shapes and sizes. There are the standard swordsman. There are the bulkier ones with shields whom you have to flank as best you can. Archers are able to knock your head off if you leave them be for too long. Mages are of course as deadly as ever, spawning lethal mines, teleporting out of the way and all in all making your life miserable. Each of the Red Templar variations has something new to offer. Knights are tasked with charging up other units, but they’re sturdy and not so easily taken out. Horrors are dangerous on their own, but instantaneously fatal if you let them get buffed.

There’s also the usual assortment of beasts: wolves, bears, spiders and such. There are a bunch of mini bosses scattered around the world who, unlike regular enemies, are large enough for you to target their individual body parts. This allows for shrewd tactics like crippling a giant’s legs to get access to its head. Overall the enemy variety is so abundant that Inquisition only needs to mix things up a little to keep you engaged long term.

You might have noticed I listed a bunch of things, but still haven’t mentioned the most interesting addition to the combat - the Fade rifts. Not only are they important from a story perspective, but they’re also elegantly designed. Each Fade rift is a perfect combination of known and unknown factors.

A rift usually has two rounds (though I seem to remember encountering ones with three). The first round welcomes you on arrival. It’s a done deal with a set number of enemies. You can gauge the danger from a far and choose to engage of your own accord. The fun starts after you’ve beaten the first round. The rift gives you time for a breather before marking the spots where the next wave of enemies will spawn. It only tells you the number of enemies, but their type and level is up to you to deduce based on the composition of the first round. You only know for certain that the second one will be harder than the first. This allows you to think strategically while also spicing things up with a little bit of randomness.

The game also lets you be cheeky and dispel the demons before they spawn. Only certain abilities can do this, so Cassandra quickly became one of my most valued allies. If you can grasp the opportunity, you can even disrupt the rift to further hinder your foes. Moreover Fade rifts feature enemies you don’t usually encounter outside of them, giving the fights a whole new dimension. You’re already familiar with shades and rages demons, but you’ll soon get acquainted with terrors and despair demons. The former will jump over to knock you on the ground while the latter coats you with a barrage of ice.

Andraste’s tits, what is that thing?

If there’s one major thing I’d like to criticize about the enemies, it’s the spawning algorithm. I usually like to clean out an area and not worry about it any more. However the designers seemed worried that my goldfish brain would wander off if not constantly massaged with stimuli. Random enemies keep spawning around you all of the time. It’s unbearable.

Every map is affected by this disease. Amidst the Hinterlands, bands of mages and Templars spawn in front of your eyes. Yes, I get it, I need to take care of their respected camps, but could you chill for just a sec? On another occasion I was clearing out a Venatori hideout. I decided to peek inside the next room, with most of my party still behind me. The game thought this would be the perfect opportunity to repopulate the room I had just cleared out while everyone was still standing there. Meanwhile in the desert, bloody hyenas keep appearing behind your back.

And don’t even get me started on the bears. There’s one particular area in the Hinterlands where these bastards spawn. Upon entering it they swarm you like freaking barracudas. I decided to run away except they kept spawning in front of me even after I’ve escaped their designated area. I thought reloading would get me to safety, but the game chose this moment to bug out and overflow me with bears wherever I went.

I think I reached the peak of my frustration in the Emerald Graves. I had just discovered the stag mounts and was instantly in love with them. My Qunari Inquisitor looked ridiculous on regular horses, yet the majestic red stag was just my size. I thought I’d have my Princess Mononoke moment riding through the imposing trees of the ancient forest. Except the game had other plans. I didn’t even get past the first curve in the road before two squads of Freemen sprung up in front of me. Why, hello there. Were you getting lonely?

The only upside is that different enemies don’t tolerate one another. If they cross paths, they’ll waste no time jumping at each other’s throats. So Templars will be kind enough to clear out mages and giants might stomp Red Behemoths on your behalf. Though on one occasion I encountered a group of mercenaries relaxing near a Fade rift. Maybe they were enjoying some afternoon tea with the wisps. Who am I to judge?

Run wild, my precious.

Concerning bosses, fighting dragons has become sort of a tradition in the series (rather fittingly I guess). The way Inquisition introduces you to the first one in the game is undoubtedly memorable. You walk through a mysterious cave in the Hinterlands and emerge onto a hidden valley. What’s this pretty place? What sort of things are here to explore, I wonder? Oh look, is that a bird in the sky? No, wait… Five seconds later your whole party is running ablaze, wailing in agony.

I love it when games mess with you like this. The things is, there isn’t just one or two dragons in the game. There are ten of these mother fuckers in Inquisition! This is not even counting the two tied to the main quest and the two found in the DLCs. Emprise du Lion (the second worst map in the game btw) has three, I repeat, THREE of them chained together in one corner of the map. Why on earth!?

This wouldn’t be a problem if each dragon wasn’t more of the same. It’s fine if you fight them once or twice, but it quickly starts loosing its charm after that. Their behavior consists of a couple of things. First, they have a phase where they fly over you and bombard you with their designated elemental attack. Second, they can spew out the same elemental attack while on the ground. Third, they have a couple of melee attacks, none too perilous considering you’re up against a dragon. Forth (now this one is interesting), they have a wing flapping attack.

If you’ve fought the dragons in the previous two games, you’ll know the best tactic is to hit them from a afar. Andraste’s dragon becomes a scared little salamander once you’ve spread out your archers and started harassing it from a distance. Inquisition thought of a neat counter to this strategy.

Once in a while the beast will flap its wings sucking in everyone who isn’t already glued to its ass, all the while doing damage with each flap. As far as I could tell this does nothing to the units at its feet, but it rains havoc on your squishies who thought they were safe at a distance. Running away does not work, so ironically the best strategy is to run towards it and then run back out once it finishes. It’s a good dynamic to break up the otherwise monotone fight against a bullet sponge.

The other notable exception are the electrical dragons. Most of the dragons’ elemental attack are easy enough to dodge. These bastards however have a static cage which they can use to infect everyone in your party no matter where they are standing. This thing will wreck your day. The first electrical dragon I came across was 4 levels bellow me and it still ended up being one of the trickiest fights I had in the game. My poor mage had to keep throwing a barrier over us to try to absorb as much damage as possible.

Hm, do I need a pet lizard?

Considering it regards itself as an open-world game, Inquisition's exploration left me somewhat polarized. There are a dozen of maps for you to explore, ranging from small to absolutely humongous (looking at you Hinterlands). The sheer number of maps is frankly overwhelming. The game sections off most of them until you’ve reached Skyhold, but just glancing at them on the war table made me sweat pin balls.

What’s surprising is that despite their quantity each map has its own thing going on. Crestwood is centered around the submerged settlement, the Fallow Mire’s shtick are its endless waves of undead and the Forbidden Oasis is a maze of arches and hidden passageways. Even the Hinterlands, being the default fantasy map, have a story to tell about the conflict between the mages and the Templar taking over the farmlands.

Despite the fact that each map was conceived with a good premise, some are spread out thinner than the rest. The best example of this might be the Exalted Plains. It’s a map of stark contradictions. The theme of the map is pretty simple: plains that suffered pogroms in the past are once again engulfed in war. Compelling, right?

Well, things get complicated once you start roaming about the place. The Plains’ main highlights are the leftover trenches infested with undead. The army losses were so great that their own fortifications got overrun by corpses of their fallen allies. They present quite a decent challenge and once cleared out are again populated with Orlesian troops. Except… These trenches are huge. There are three on them in the Plains and each takes up a sizeable chunk of the map. Once you’ve cleared them out, they’re teeming with NPCs, none of which you can interact with. They’re just a bunch of fancily dressed props.

The Exalted Plains have the potential to tell a gut wrenching story of war and anguish, but the game barely even tries. If it weren’t for mentions of the civil war in Halamshiral, I would have no idea what’s going on. Imagine coming here before doing the mission at the Winter Palace (although that seems to be the desired order of things). What’s going on in this map? Who’s fighting exactly? Were are these forces stationed? Ok, this guy Gaspard is holding the east bank of the river, but why are his trenches facing one another? Sure, the bridge across the river leading to the opposing force has been destroyed, but is no one guarding that crossing?

What about the local population? There are all these codex entries detailing how the Chantry purified the Plains from the heretic elves. What do these people think of the Orlesians once again torching their land? Where are they even? I came across burned villages, but no refugees scurrying about. There’s only one Dalish camp to the side and they’re chilling in their own bubble as if the war was not raging around them.

It’s even worse when you start filling in the gaps on the map. The designers must have been worried about leaving vast stretches of open terrain, so they copy-pasted the same rocky formation all over the Plains. Over and over and over again. It’s hard to imagine that this is the same map which tucked away ancient elven ruins covered in mist on one side and an abandoned citadel scorched by the literal eye of Sauron on the other.

So nice making all of your acquaintance.

God, I don’t want to do this, but I guess I have to. Spending time in the Exalted Plains just made me think of how much better The Witcher 3 did it. Velen is to The Witcher 3 what the Exalted Plains are to Inquisition - a land torn apart by war. Yet Velen breaths so much life it seems absurd comparing it to the Exalted Plains in the first place.

In Velen villages are filled with hungry and desperate people. Houses are burning or abandoned. The two opposing forces are clearly camped out on other sides of the Pontar river. Refuges are curled up next to army strongholds. Bandits are roaming around taking advantage of the chaos. A monster infestation is breaking out because of the increased number of corpses. You can speak to a whole bunch of people across the land. You can get involved in the little details that make up their day to day struggles. Famine, missing persons, war crimes - you name it. It’s an incredibly potent mix.

Inquisition is so lucky it came out a few months before The Witcher 3. The quality of the The Witcher 3’s open world is so vastly superior to any of its predecessor (and even most games that came after it) that it makes Inquisition feel like it came out of a different era. It’s hard not comparing it to its contemporary competitor and seeing the huge gap that exists in between. The Witcher 3 has quest markers, but it relies mainly on a form of natural exploration. It drops you onto a hill and then lets you guide yourself across the map using nothing by prominent landmarks. It never repeats itself, each small section of the map feels unique and every crossroad a familiarity I could maneuver around with certainty.

Inquisition on the other hand has its hits and misses. I could navigate the aforementioned Exalted Plains with ease, but I could not for the life of me find my way through the Storm Coast. The backbone of that map is a mountainous region covered in forests. There are hills, ravines, more trees and absolutely nothing in sight which could help you figure out your own location. It’s nice of the game to draw out the path you’ve taken across the map. Otherwise the Inquisitor might have forever been lost in the woods.

Come to think of it, Inquisition does have a lot of problems with the design of its terrain. I feel like one team of designers went into the level editor, imported a flat plain and then rustled it up a bit until it resembled mountains and hills and what not. The results often feel like they’re devoid of any real sense of topography. Then another team of designers would come in and try their best populating the maps with content. I imagine this is how you end up with dozens of castles out in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no roads leading up to them.

Where the fuck to now?

When you start counting up the tally it’s up and downs across all of the maps, though the good to bad ratio can vary drastically. For example, the Hinterlands is a hodgepodge of a bunch of different things. Its central area, where the mages and Templars clash on repeat, is a good core premise. I won’t forget the first time I went through the creepy tunnel connecting the Crossroads to the demolished village where the mages and the Templars were dueling it out. You step into this thing overgrown with ferns, cloaked in mist and silence, wondering where it will take you, only to emerge onto a hellish battlefield where everyone’s shooting at you from all sides.

Contrary to that I found a castle crammed in the corner of the map, almost as an afterthought. There’s absolutely nothing leading up to it or anything else of interest in the vicinity. You find a group of apostates held up inside. This particular group believes the apocalypse is nigh, so they’re just waiting for it to happen. There’s only one dude you can talk to in the entire keep. His girlfriend just died, but he’s mostly upset they couldn’t go out in a blaze together. For some reason you offer him to join the Inquisition and he says yes. Pardon me, he says yes? The guy who was determined to die a second ago changed his mind on a whim. This was before I gained the group’s trust by closing the breach in their backyard.

To view the glass as half-full again, you’ll see the remains of a decrepit castle perched upon a hill just outside of the Crossroads. You’ll find your way up to it and then beyond a lush lake hidden away from the atrocities of civil war. There are deer jumping around, a small waterfall overflowing into the valley where the mages and Templars are fighting bellow. Suddenly I noticed a red deer hopping through the forest. This one was nothing like the ones I’ve seen before. I chase it after. It must be some special breed, I think to myself. I catch up to it and strike. It turned into a rage demon. Lol, I did insist, didn’t I?

But again, contrary to that the game tasks you with finding a horse master to cater to the Inquisition’s need. I find the guy and his little commune peacefully going about their lives while the FREAKING TEMPLARS ARE BASHING EACH OTHER’S HEADS JUST ACROSS THE RIVER. Pardon me, I didn’t mean to shout. What were you saying, master Dennet? You want me to clear out some wolves for you? What, the angry Templars don’t bother you? You’re also cool with the Fade rift sitting in your backyard? Does it help the crops grow? Oh, I see you’ve got a copy of Hard in Hightown in your attic. Forgive my interruption. Do continue, sir.

The contradictions go on and on and on like this. It all culminates with the worst two maps in the game: Emprise du Lion and the Hissing Wastes. The former is meant to function as an endgame gauntlet. You’re supposed to fight your way up a mountain towards an abandoned castle on the top. The problem is the climb has no business being as long as it is. The aforementioned Suledin Keep is by far the largest fortification in the game, stretching room after room into infinity. The game quickly runs out of ideas, so it keeps throwing the same detachments of Red Templars at you. This is enough to make a woman go mad.

The latter map, Hissing Wastes, is best described by scout Harding’s words: “This space has nothing but… space.” It’s quite literally a desert wasteland. Nothing but vast unending dunes in sight. Playing through it felt like being smothered with a pillow. It was the first time in the game I had to unironically use my mount. Getting from point A to point B would have otherwise been excruciating.

Good boy, Roach.

All of this makes it seem like I hated Inquisition’s exploration down to its rotten core. It might then surprise you that its highlights were enough to push me through the questionable parts. Most of the time I was led through exploration by genuine curiosity and not some forced sense of obligation (except those last two maps). For all of the things it failed to put into place, Inquisition always had something cool tucked away for me to discover.

Quantity definitely ended up being its Achilles’ heel. I was satiated somewhere around the 100 hour mark and everything after that felt like I was stuffing myself with dessert just so it wouldn’t go to waste. Spoiler alert: I clocked around 140 hours for the base game alone. Inquisition is obscenely long in retrospect, souring up your experience the more you’re forced to spend time with it. It would have been miles better if it cut out half of its content and focused on enriching the essential stuff.

To give you an example, I thought all of the game’s dungeons were excellent. Valammar, Coracavus, Dirthamen, you name it. Coming across these places and realizing they’re completely unique content always put a smile on my face. Although I did stumble upon Valammar way, way before Varric’s loyalty mission became available. Varric, don’t tell poor Bianca we’ve been here before. She’s so keen on showing us around the place, we have to make her believe it’s our first time down here. Oh dear, I’ve even glitched through the secret door she was supposed to unlock for the quest.

While we’re on the subject, Inquisition spent no time at all thinking about progression. Sure, it locks out most maps until you’ve reached Shyhold, but after that it doesn’t bother telling you in what order to approach them or even the minimum level requirement. Unfortunately for the game I had enough points to unlock all of maps at once as soon as I got to Skyhold (the inevitable consequence of being diagnosed as a completionist).

Since the game gave me no guidance I picked a map at random. I went for the Hissing Wastes which, I soon discovered, contained end game content. Since I was clearly over my head I decided to try my luck with something else. That something else ended up being the Deep Roads mission which, even worse, is DLC. So I resorted to Google instead. It’s negligence like this that makes the game look stupid for trying to show me around Valammar. Of course I’ve already been here before - it’s right next to where I recruited Blackwall!

You could say the game directs you to some of the maps through the main quest, like telling you to go to Crestwood to investigate the Wardens, but it does no such thing for most. How are you supposed to know when to investigate the Fallow Mire or the Forbidden Oasis or the Exalted Plains for that matter? I went to the Plains after finishing Halamshiral because nothing else directed me to that area sooner. Upon entering the map I was greeted by level 11 tugs. I was level 18. Guess how that turned out for them.

What’s worse is that you don’t gain any XP by fighting enemies which are 3 or more levels beneath you. This made the entirety of the Exalted Plains a futile venture. The only tangible thing I got out of them are the companions’ quests. If I had been there sooner, I might have utilized the area better. Then again that might have made me over-leveled in some other map. Funny, it’s as if the game has too much content.

Say, Solas, what does that statue represent exactly?

This is part 1 of a multi-part review of Dragon Age: Inquisition. Click here for part 2 and part 3.

[icyschreviews]

A Review of Dragon Age 2

Sweet Home Kirkwall

Disclaimer: This review is colossal. Why don’t you put on a kettle in the background so it’ll stop you from trying to read this whole thing at once. Enjoy.

What is it with niche games trying to become more mainstream? I get why developers want more people to play their games. Game development is a rocky industry and building up a large fan base can cushion any bumps you might encounter down the road. However niches exist for a reason and going mainstream comes at a cost. A niche caters to some specific need of some specific audience and is tailor-made to deliver that experience. Usually when you try making a game for everyone, you end up with a game for no one.

This is a subject that comes up often with expanding franchises. Developers who steer into more mainstream waters quickly realize that it’s a polarizing endeavor. Your core audience will be pissed that you desecrated the original experience, while the general public will glance over your efforts with mild indifference. Specificity is what gets people hooked on things and mainstream games are only able to peek interest by flaunting fancy graphics or over-promising open-world shenanigans.

Somehow in the early 2010s, sequels to two franchises made this mistake: The Witcher 2 and Dragon Age 2. It’s eerie how many things these two games have in common. Both of their predecessors were old school RPGs. Both were trying to make themselves more approachable to a wider audience. And, most prominently, both yielded questionable results.

The comparisons end with the way these games went about achieving their goals. The Witcher 2 scrapped everything from the first game and re-envisioned itself as an action orientated Assassin’s Creed lookalike, while Dragon Age 2 tried to improve on the old formula. I.e. The Witcher 2 had the liberty of being bad on its own terms, while DA2 got crushed under the weight of its predecessor.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way, Dragon Age: Origins is a cult classic. Despite its limited resources, this was a game of enormous scope which delivered on absolutely everything it set out to do. It presented the peek of its genre at the time of its release. You don’t just follow up on something like that. You need time and space to flesh out were you want to take the franchise next.

In comes the Bioware magic. You say we’ve got only two years to develop a sequel to a genre defining game? Don’t worry, we’ll just crunch the developers’ bones a little harder this time. Everything wrong with DA2 starts and ends with this bullshit. This is a game that reaches some incredible heights while simultaneously being jam-packed with blank spaces where the devs just threw their hands up and collapsed under their desks.

Now, where do we being?

Why don’t we start at the same place the game does - the character creator.

The character creator in Origins was never mind blowing, but somehow seeing the exact same one in DA2 made it disappointing. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe because it offers the same hair cuts which are recognizable from prominent NPCs in Origins. Maybe because the interface tries (and fails) to be all slick and modern. Maybe because it’s been a few years and you’d expect so see some improvements.

Either way, I imported a hipster haircut (blessed be the mods) and chose a slightly darker skin tone. I knew from previous playthroughs that your family’s appearance changes to match yours. However when the game booted up, I was greeted to the default chalk white family preset. Maybe the mods confused it. I pondered whether I should start over, but then decided to roll with it.

My head cannon for the rest of the playthrough was that mama Hawk had an illegitimate firstborn. To my amusement, the game kept throwing me bones to support this theory. When I wondered how my character would have inherited the magic DNA if she didn’t share the same daddy as Bethany, mama Hawk told me that her side of the family was also plagued with mages. On one occasion, Aveline remarked to Carver: “I guess there’s a resemblance between the two of you after all.” When Carver told her that of course there’d be since I was his sister, Aveline was quick to correct him: “No, silly, I meant you uncle.” Splendid. Now if anyone asks, Varric made up the events of the Legacy DLC.

If you look at our family portrait, you’ll realize that mom had a thing for the mailman.

Once the prologue ends, the game excitedly drops you in the middle of Kirkwall, only for you to find… Nothing. The town is comprised of a bunch of rectangular squares that all look alike. Other than merchants, who aren’t selling anything thrilling, there are no NPCs to talk to, nothing in this entire maze of reshuffled assets that could tell you the story of the town you just entered. You walk into a stuffed brothel house and none of the patrons have anything interesting to say. Forget interesting, they don’t have anything to say at all! It’s a prime example of an empty game world if there ever was one.

Back in Origins, there were so many interesting people you could meet. Like the dwarf who wanted to study at the Circle. Or the lyrium smuggling mage who was hiding in a closet. Or the Dalish who needed help hooking up with his girlfriend. Or that one sister in the Denerim market who couldn’t get her chants right. Or Wade! God, just give me more Wade. In DA2, I have Hubert and… And?

Once you’ve spent your first hour wandering around empty hallways, you’ll realize how the game wants you to approach it - by following quest markers. At first I was glad I didn’t have to circle around desolate levels. I could spot a marker on the world map and jump straight there without being reminded of how boring Kirkwall is.

Even though the markers were helpful at first, I soon realized that click, click, clicking from one objective to another became a chore. Since I didn’t have to keep track of where quests were, I had no idea what I was signing up for whenever I selected a location with a marker on it. I stopped engaging with the world directly and started interacting with it solely through the UI. This kind of design defeats the whole exploratory nature of RPGs. Worst of all, the markers don’t even show up for some side quest. I had to look at the wiki to know where to go.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I miss the chance encounters from Origins. It made the illusion of traveling so much more compelling. You couldn’t just hop from one location to another, you had to prepare accordingly. What if bandits ambushed you? Or a pack of rabid wolves? Or a handsome assassin? My, I have to prepare for that one especially. Bodahn, fetch my finest piece of lingerie, quick! The encounters even changed to reflect the state of the world. As the darkspawn horde approached, you stumbled upon your allies defending the side of the rode. In DA2 you get intercepted only ones with Fenris. I completely forgot it was feature until then.

The most miserable failure at trying to populate this world with content are the automatic fetch quests. Every once in a while, you’ll loot a random sack and find someone’s dirty knickers. The game will add a new quest to your journal asking you to return the unmentionables to their rightful owner. You’ll immediately be told who the owner is and where to find them. There is absolutely no additional context to any of these. The NPC in question will spew out one of three stock lines thanking you for your kindness and then reward you with some gold and XP. They could have just lowered the XP requirements instead of padding the game with this nonsense.

I have no idea what half of these are referring to.

I’d argue that the locations themselves don’t look half bad (aside from the awful wet paper textures which are plastered all over the under city). This game clearly had some strong art direction. For all its faults, DA2 is the most visually striking out of all of the Dragon Age games. The cut scenes frequently frame the action from cinematic camera angles, the loading screens are beautifully stylized and you could take a bunch of selfies at Kirkwall’s more prominent locations.

I also love the design of your companions, so much so that I don’t mind that you can’t change their attire. Each one of them has a unique look which immediately sets them apart from the rest of the cast. The armor sets you get with the DLCs are impeccably designed and once put on justify Hawk’s MC status.

Where the art falls short is not its quality, but rather its quantity. Care and attention has been put into each of the game’s main actors, be that character or location, but not much else received the same treatment. Regular NPCs have a hard time matching the flare brought on by your companions and Kirkwall barely changes after the time skips. As far as I can tell, the only thing that differs across acts is the time of day - progressing from early morning to late afternoon. Do they want to put me asleep? They don’t even switch the textures to make the buildings look more weathered.

Origins had similar limitations with its assets, but it handled them much more gracefully. Yes, everyone and their grandmother wore the same pair of rogue skirts, but it didn’t catch the eye much since none of your companions was standing out in a flashy leotard. Similarly everyone in Ferelden was shopping at the same Ikea, but the designers cleverly offset this by crafting uniquely shaped levels and decorating them in different ways. Origins showed that reused assets don’t have to be a setback if you apply them in creative ways.

Contrary to that, DA2 is such a painfully obvious copypasta that it’s hard not to get aggravated. Its locations have been significantly scaled back compared to Origins, yet it somehow manages to accomplish even less with more assets at hand. Even when you are treated to one of its finer pieces of art, it’s like stumbling upon a flower in a desert.

If only the entire game was as stylish as its loading screens.

The most prominent rash which speaks of DA2’s condition are the codex entries. It might sound petty to complain about them, but they’re a perfect indication of unhealthy world design. In Origins, codex entries were used as optional bits of information that could boost the knowledge you already possessed. They were evenly distributed, as not to overwhelm you, and always relevant to the topic at hand. If I was heading into Orzammar for the first time, you bet an entry about the town’s history would wait for me in a convenient spot.

If Origins handled its codex entries like icing carefully spread across a cake, DA2 just splotched that icing onto an empty plate. You enter Kirkwall for the first time and it’s nothing but codex entries shoveled in your face. Instead of using them to enhance the experience, DA2 is leaning on its codex entries like a crutch to hold up the rest of the world building. It’s not enough that they’re still well written. Most of them are copy-pasted from Origins and once I realized that, I stopped paying them any attention.

Most often, you’ll find codex entries where they have no business being in the first place. I once stumbled upon a book about Orlesian court drama in a Tal-Vashoth camp. If the game wanted to make a point out of this, they could have turned it into a fun little NPC encounter. Imagine a Qunari who just became an outcast and wanted to learn more about the outside world. He gets his hands on this weird book about the French Game of Thrones and is completely enamored by it. He might even be into shoes if I could just get Leliana here.

So, what did Lady Cecilie do next?

Sadly the game’s troubles with exposition don’t stop there. Everyone trusts you way too easily in Act I. In Origins you were a Grey Warden and that title carried some weight. People were familiar with your mission and its importance and thus were more likely to entrust you with their problems.

In DA2 Hawk’s a mercenary who makes a living doing other people’s dirty work. However people don’t just hire you - they dump their entire psychiatrist’s report in your lap. It’s the most jarring with some of the companions’ introductions. Isabela doesn’t even finish flapping her little skirts, while remarking that she’s never met you, before she starts telling you about her naval accident. Similarly, Anders opens up to you about Justice before you’ve had the chance to properly introduce yourself. Like maybe wait a sec before telling me all about your nasty STD.

I wish the game took a little bit more time to built Hawk up. It’s all fine and dandy once you get to Act II, but your future status as a celebrity doesn’t justify the mental gymnastics you have to perform in the beginning. You can’t shoehorn Hawk into every situation and hope their MC status will justify them being there. What’s the point of having a story about building yourself up from the dirt if people are going to treat you as special right off the bat?

A good example of this is an incredibly stupid quest I stumbled upon along Kirkwall’s coastline. Do you remember Zathrian and the werewolves from Origins? Well, an elf from his clan was arguing with an ex-werewolf. The elf wanted to kill the human and the human was trying to come to a peacefully resolution. The game asked me to resolve the conflict. I beg your pardon? You want Hawk to do what? This is not the Warden we’re talking about. Who are these people to Hawk anyway? To stay in character, I let them both go without coming to a decision. Usually my companions react to these sort of things, but even they were confused.

Who could say no to this dashing face?

It all gets incredibly frustrating if you’re playing as a mage. You’re supposed to be this lifelong apostate who’s always been careful about concealing their magic, but the game has you doing fetch quests for the Templars like it’s no big deal. I know the game wants to build up the conflict between the mages and the Templars early on, but why on earth would an armed organization like the Templars entrust highly confidential matters to a Lowtown nobody?

Generally the game takes your magic into account very sparingly. One of the few good examples is during Fenris’ initialization. He confronts you about being a mage after seeing you in combat. This comes off very naturally since he’s just met you and you really were swirling your staff around like crazy. Sadly in most cases, your magic will go unnoticed as if everyone in the vicinity was having a seizure or thinking it’s just fireworks. At the peek of its absurdity, the game had me showing off in front of freaking knight commander Cullen. I even rubbed some Anders in his face, but sure enough he didn’t notice.

The worst example by far is when you meet Meredith for the first time. She walks over to you and whispers in your ear how she knows that you are a mage. The game drops this bombshell like it’s nothing. What do you mean she knows? How long has she known? How did she find out? Why has she been tolerating Hawk? Is she overlooking any other mages in town as well? How does this clash with her religious beliefs? What is she gaining out of this?

The game never answers any of these questions. It’s pretty obvious that these omissions are the result of trying to equalize the story across all 3 playable classes. I wish they only let you play as a mage as they did with restricting your race to human. In a story that’s already centered around mages and Templars, this would have allowed them to go into a lot more detail.

Yes, tell me all your dirty little Templar secrets.

Most of the aforementioned issues kinda fix themselves once you make it to Act II. I hate that phrase: get X hours into a game and it becomes good, but it’s really true in case of DA2. For all its emptiness, Kirkwall starts feeling like home and it only takes a few magic tricks to do it. Recurrence is key here.

Events keep moving forward and everyone’s issues escalate over time creating the feeling of an interconnected world which was missing from the start. Most quests you were doing in Act I extend themselves across the other two acts. Helping some random kid with his nightmares in Act I is fine, but seeing a letter from him in Act II immediately gets me invested. Although, callbacks would have been even grander if half of the NPCs were actually memorable.

E.g. the Bone Pit was a good quest on its own. It served to show what Kirkwall had in store for Hawk’s fellow Fereldens. Sure, slavery hasn’t been a thing in a while, but does it really matter if you still have to toil away under a rich prick? They could have ended it there, but my exploitative business partner and our unfortunate mine became like a sitcom plot. Which monster is plaguing my poor workers this week? Not to mention the moral conundrum of being an upstart amongst overworked and underpaid refugees.

Hawk might not yet be a hero in Act II (pardon me, Champion), but they are wealthy enough to engage in the town’s politics. Believably, might I add. At this point you’ve completed a major expedition, invested in a mine and possibly taken over from your old mercenary boss, to name a few. I can now enter the viscount’s office and talk business without it being awkward. Yeah, I just moved uptown, next to you. Don’t you know who I am?

Started from the bottom, now we’re here.

It’s also in Act II that DA2’s story finally starts taking shape. Most fantasy and sci-fi stories fall back on the tropes of their respective genres, one way or another. DA2 manages to swerve around them like cones on a racing track and it owes that debt to its predecessor. Despite being a story about saving the world from monsters, Origins was still superbly written, even compared to standards outside of games media. Instead of trying to one-up it with some greater crisis of worldly importance, DA2 decided to pick what Origins already planted in the backyard. This is a game that tackles some incredibly complex issues and none of its points feel outdated.

You have a widely spread religion which justifies imprisoning a group of people because, according to their holy text, they were born with a cardinal sin. But what if that group of people posed an actual threat? How would you mitigate that danger? Is the church really wrong for wanting to build a system to control that?

What about the system itself? How would you keep tabs on it? What would you do if those in power started abusing it? Could you really blame those subjected to it for rebelling against their oppressors? What it the oppressed went to extreme measures to gain their freedom? Would you judge them? What if in doing so they caused the exact harm the church wanted to prevent in the first place? Would that prove the church right? Were they correct in subduing this group of people or were the limitations set upon them the ones that caused them to lash out? How would you break that cycle?

What about class inequality? If you could snap your fingers and abolish slavery, would everyone’s lives be better in the morning? You might be a free man according to the law, but what is freedom if you don’t have the means to survive? How is living in poverty and not being able to escape from it any different from being a slave? The rich are still rich and, at the end of the day, you’re forced to work for the same people you were calling your masters yesterday.

Let’s not forget about the xenophobia. Where do you draw the line between being racist and fighting back against indoctrination? Were the people who accepted a new religion brainwashed or did they do it on their own volition? Should you value a more orderly society at the expense of individuality? Can a single person really be trusted to make decision which are in everyone’s best interest or do we all eventually fall prey to our own desires?

... No.

On top of that, there are family matters to attend to. You are the oldest sibling in a family that recently lost its father figure. You are entrusted with that role which would be a great responsibility on its own, but wait, here comes the war! How do you keep your family safe in such circumstances? How do you handle the inevitable failures? Do you blame yourself for not being able to protect your siblings? What do you do if your own brother becomes an extremist? Do you cave under the judgement in your mother’s eyes? Do you look at your alcoholic uncle and see a picture of yourself in the future?

This is a lot and I’m not even sure I covered half of it. I can’t decide if the game explored these topics in enough detail. It certainly could have, but maybe trying to come up with the moral of the story would have undermined the effect. None of its questions have simple answers and this is reflected in the myriad of conflicts which spring across the game. DA2 certainly left me thinking, which is much more than I can say for most games.

It does miss the landing in some of the more emotional scenes. Your other sibling’s departure is a prominent moment in the story, no matter how it plays out. For me Carver joined the Wardens. He shows up out of nowhere at the end of Act II and scurries off before you’ve had the chance to talk to him. Hawk’s trying to have this heart to heart conversation, but Carver’s like: I’m busy, TTL. It makes your final reconciliation with him in Act III quite hollow when it could have been one of the story’s more impactful scenes.

When it really rolls up its sleeves, the game can deliver some incredible moments. Aveline treats you to a story about her father after you try gifting her a shield, prompting you both to reminisce on the loss of your parents. Merrill’s entire quest line is a heartbreak and do I even need to bring up Anders?

Oh, sweet baby, it’s only going to get worse from here.

The framing device used to hold everything together is a brilliant little narrative technique that perfectly fits the kind of story DA2 is trying to tell. You play as a war refugee who slowly rises to power and gains influence within the city of Kirkwall. As your characters becomes famous, so are your achievements told and retold until its hard to distinguish fact from fiction. DA2 capitalizes on this by letting Varric, the person who brought most of the stories about Hawk to life, retell the events of the game.

This works great on so many levels. As Hawk, you stumble upon Varric multiple times during the game as he’s making stuff up on the fly in front of an engrossed crowd. You get to watch as Hawk’s public persona takes shape and then later as it spins out of control and becomes an entity of its own. You loose ownership of your won ethos just as you’re swept away by the ever more volatile situation in Kirkwall.

With Varric being such a professional liar, you can’t tell how many of the game’s events are free from embellishment. DA2 plants this seed of doubt before you’ve even had the chance to craft your own character, as Varric tries to serve his best rendition of the Champion of Kirkwall to an exasperated Cassandra. The game breaks the 4th wall like this a few more times, delivering some good gags and letting Varric remind you who’s telling this story.

Besides keeping you on your toes, the framing device also serves as a great hook. There’s no better way to engage your audience than giving them a riddle to solve. DA2 starts by telling you that something of importance has happened in the world and then proceeds to do its own thing while you wonder how the pieces fit together.

Oh, but none of that hard work would have been worth it if it weren’t for that ending. Lots of stories that wager the fate of the entire world end with a dud, but DA2 obliterates the status quo just as it does with one of Kirkwall’s landmarks. I absolutely love an ending that’s not afraid to rain havoc. If Origins left the world of Thedas mended and at peace, then DA2 slashed it open and let it bleed out on the floor.

Don’t mind us, Grand Cleric. We’re just setting up the fireworks for the festivities.

There are a lot of weird design decisions in this game, but the most bizarre one is without a doubt the appropriation of Mass Effect’s dialogue wheel. I have no idea what the creative leads at Bioware were smoking at the time. I guess a silent protagonist is not very appealing if you’re trying to edit a fancy trailer for E3. Either way, it meshes with the rest of Dragon Age’s mechanics like oil with water.

Origins’ dialogue system might not have been the most cinematic, but it was diverse, versatile and most of all precise. DA2’s dialogue wheel fails to deliver any of that. Your responses now come in strictly 3 categories: paragon, renegade and jokester (I’ll continue using Mass Effect’s lingo if you don’t mind). Unlike Origins, your responses are bucketed into these categories and there’s no way of escaping it. Sometimes one of the options will be redundant; sometimes none of the options will be able to convey what you want to say. By not bucketing its responses, Origins was able to fine tune every conversation for much greater effect.

What’s an even graver sin is that you can’t reliably predict what your character is going to say. Two previous Mass Effect games already had this issue, so I don’t understand why it was ignored in DA2 as well. Sometimes the response will match the blurb, sometimes you’ll come off as meek or ignorant and sometimes Hawk will spew out an incredibly stupid joke. For better or for worse, NPCs will correctly react to Hawk’s actual response which will leave you quite bewildered if you had something else in mind.

I tried out a mod which replaces the dialogue wheel with Origins’ numbered list, but that didn’t really work out for me. I had a couple of issues with it. First, it’s not always clear which option fits into which bucket. It’s even harder to distinguish the optional responses which appear on the left side of the wheel from those on the right. Also, reading out what your character is going to say and then having to listen to the entire thing again gets tiresome pretty quickly.

Where’s the option to tell Meredith to “go back to the Gallows like a good girl”?

If I had to compliment one aspect of the dialogue system, I’d tentatively go for the new personality mechanics. Each time you pick a response, the game keeps tracks of how many responses of that type you already chose. If you stack enough responses of a certain type, Hawk’s personality will change to match it. Meaning that if you were being consistently nice, Hawk will continue being nice on autopilot for pieces of the conversation you are not in direct control of.

This is a more nuanced system than Mass Effect’s paragon/renegade scheme, although not by much. I’d love to see a more fleshed out version of it, but not necessarily in a Dragon Age game. Combined with the dialogue wheel, the system is not transparent nor flexible enough to allow for precise role-playing.

As for the personalities themselves, I have to commend the renegade one. In Mass Effect renegade options were either cartoonishly evil or needlessly cruel. Most people went with that route on second playthroughs just for the lolz. In DA2 a renegade Hawk is determined, consistent and brutally honest if need be. They never came off as a closet psychopath, but someone with unwavering convictions who is prepared to make tough decisions.

The personality I disliked the most ended up being the jokester, although this was my preferred play style in Origins. The jokes veered on the funny side, but the personality itself was mostly useless. The dialogue options rarely advanced the conversation and only benefited you if you were stacking friendship points with Varric or Isabela. I mostly used it as the neutral response (and neutrality in DA2 is the devil) or when I felt particularly cheeky. It felt wildly out of place in dire situations and is also the hardest one to predict since humor is so subjective.

Yeah, you tell them, Hawk.

Together with the 3 types of responses, additional options are offered on the left side of the wheel similar to how it was done in Mass Effect. Besides inquiring further, you’ll occasionally be given a special dialogue choice depending on your personality, à la let the renegade throw someone out the window. These special choices are great and usually lead to more beneficial outcomes. Alas, after glancing at the wiki, I realized that they are few and far between. What a complete waste of a promising system.

You’re also able to call on one of your companions if the situation at hand is somehow related to them. From what I can tell, this is a completely new feature and I absolutely love it. It lends itself to some of the best interactions. Aveline can help you shake up some of her unruly deputies in the Hanged Man, Fenris lends you his knowledge about the Qunari while speaking with the Arishok and Anders is absolutely essential if you’re bringing your sibling into the Deep Roads.

Other than that, the dialogue wheel’s sufficiency varies greatly from scene to scene. E.g. at the end of Act II, you get the option to storm the Qunari held up in the Keep or to make a distraction in order to save the hostages. Pardon me, but what? Hasn’t anyone been paying attention? Qunari don’t take hostages. If they thought someone was useless, they would have killed them by now. Otherwise they wouldn’t hold potential converts as bargaining chips. Wasteful thinking is against their creed. If I have been mindful of their religion, why not give me a third dialogue option? Forget me, Fenris is standing right there in the background. Let him overrule this.

Best dialogue option in the entire game, hands down.

I’m not sure how I feel about the companion’s friendship and rivalry system. It’s basically the same one from Origins just beefed up a bit. Since the companions are well fleshed out, it’s easy to guess how they’d react to a certain situation making the system very transparent. This never comes at the expense of the writing and the mechanic never feels gamified.

The writers did a great job of distributing your companions beliefs. Most conflicts offer binary solutions (for better or for worse) and your companions tend to be split 50-50. No matter how they may be divided in a certain situation, each companion ends up being a different combination of things. You can’t possibly make friends or rivals with everyone, so you have to pick and choose who to align with. This keeps the tension in your party high from start to finish. Companions also have topics they are indifferent to, which is a touch I greatly appreciate.

Besides talking to them directly, you can also find out about a companion’s beliefs from their inputs in group conversations. They never butt in, rather engage in a way that feels natural and that keeps the conversation flowing. I’m reminded of Carver gritting through his teeth whenever I provoked the Templars or Isabela just being a savage on Aveline’s date. I always felt like I was fully informed about my companions’ preferences and that I could guess their reaction with near perfect certainty.

Only these two can manage disagreeing while agreeing on something at the same time.

The companions’ preferences might be transparent, but the quests themselves sure as hell aren’t. It’s not always apparent from a quest’s introduction what it’ll be about. Therefore you can’t reliably tell which companion’s points will be up for grabs, i.e. which one of them to take along. There are a limited number of opportunities to get these points and the companions’ personal quests are walled off behind certain thresholds. I found myself skimming the wiki before each quest so I could maximize my profits by choosing the best party layout. This is not the ideal way to play, especially if you don’t want to get spoiled.

It’s also harder to progress your relationship with some companions than with others. Let me whip up my cheat sheet real quick cause where in god’s name are you supposed to get points for Isabela? From my time perusing the wiki, I could barely find anything miss pirate has a reaction to. Begging for coin in Lowtown yields more profit then fishing for her affection. For comparison’s sake, you can get an easy 50 points with Merrill from evil tomes alone.

To add insult to injury, Isabela is the one companion you really don’t want to stay neutral with. I remember being able to scrounge 50% friendship on my first ever playthrough before knowing the twist. I guess ignorance is bliss because this time around I barely got some rivalry points in. I decided to give her a gift, hoping it would drive the scale further to the right, only for the game to apply friendship points instead. Gee, thanks DA2.

If I was hostile to someone, I wouldn’t expect them to be likelier to stick around than if I was neutral instead. I wish the game made that clearer from the start. Having to meet a quota to unlock further interactions with a companion really knocks the subtlety out of the system. What if I think Isabela is a genuinely fun and accepting person, but would also like if she stopped acting so selfish and started taking responsibility for her actions? If you go by your instincts, you’ll only swing around the scale and won’t ever leave ground zero. Similarly, I want to condemn Merrill’s clan for ostracizing her, but that comes packaged with support for her blood magic. It’s like the writers created these compelling people, but the designers couldn’t come up with a system that let you interact with them naturally.

Do try to explain yourself, Isabela.

While we’re on the subject of companions, was there ever a minefield as deadly as the romances in DA2? The devs must have known that a lot of fans played Origins like it was a dating sim. Origins’ romanceable characters were perfectly divided into categories you could find on any fan fiction website: the sweet attentive guy, the sarcastic not-like-other-girls goth, the flamboyant ladies man and the weird chick. The game was comfortable with letting you live out your fantasies while never compromising the quality of its writing in any way.

Conversely, DA2 is here to fuck with you.

Now, I’m not implying that the romances in DA2 are bad. Quite the opposite - I think they’re brilliant. The characters are just as well written and not a sliver less compelling than their Origins’ counterparts. Sure, you could still squeeze them into recognizable tropes, but the main difference comes from how DA2 lets you interact with them.

In most RPGs, selecting a romantic dialogue option leads to a favorable outcome. This is purely contextual in DA2. Try flirting with someone while they are distraught and witness the outcome. You might be fooled into drooling over one of your companions, but you’ll only miss the fact that these people have issues. They’re in no emotional state to date you, yet date them you shall.

Watch the bad boy with the anime hair as he walks in to ruin your life. It’s like seeing a car crash in slow motion. I told myself I wasn’t going to fall for it again, but oopsie-daisy. You know what they say: trick me ones, shame on you, trick me twice, shame on Isabela for making moves in my territory. If Sebastian doesn’t come in quickly to swoop me off my feet, we might have a problem on our hands.

Say you stop deluding yourself into thinking you could fix Fenris and actually go for Seb. What’s that like? Well, my choir boy is as sweet as sugar cane, but he gets more and more bewildered with each decision you make contradicting the Bible. If you try to get up and personal with him, he’ll wave his hand and throw you a Beyonce. You better put a ring on it before you get any filthy thoughts in your head.

Maybe you can’t wait for Bioware to release Sebastian’s honeymoon DLC. Then a bite of the cherry perhaps? Why not try Isabela if you’re missing some of Zevran’s laid back energy? She’s completely chill, not someone that would freak out and leave you hanging. Right, Isabela? Isabela?

Ok, ok, then you could take out the shy girl and show her around town. I’m sure she doesn’t have any dangerous hobbies. Or what about the sweet guy with the sad puppy dog eyes? I’m sure nothing could go wrong if you just… No, Anders, what are you doing? Stop!

You get the idea. DA2 doesn’t give a damn about your feelings. It’s not here to cater to your fantasies. It’ll trample all over your emotions and I love it for it. It knows you can’t be lovey-dovey with broken people and it doesn’t shy away from letting things get very messy. For all the satisfaction it denies you, it makes your companions even more believable and your ties to them even stronger.

Stop trying to seduce me!

Most of the heavy lifting needed to bring this world to life is done by your companions. Their interactions are wonderfully diverse and they behave as if they’ve built relationships free of Hawk’s involvement. They don’t just comment on each other’s current situation, but also visit one another at their homes. Varric will try to get favors from Aveline as soon as she moves into her new office. Aveline will complain to Fenris about having to change patrols around his house. Fenris will be burning through his wine collection with Isabela and she will be teaching Merrill some of her dirty card tricks. This makes your companions feel like an interwoven group of people rather than a bunch of isolated individuals who are just tagging along. If Hawk went away tomorrow, they’d continue frolicking uninterrupted.

The banter continues the tradition of being absolutely amazing. There are so many brilliant moments, I don’t know which one I’d rather quote. Although, if I were to make a top ten, Isabela would be featured in all of them. As hilarious as it is, the banter is more than just witty one-liners. It’s about how Aveline and Isabela turn from rivals to best friends. It’s how Sebastian helps Fenris rediscover his faith. It’s how Varric breaks his back to get Merrill home safely every night and so much more.

On a side note, can we just acknowledge what an absolute boss Aveline is? The woman gets skyrocketed into a position of power and doesn’t even bat an eyelid. She knows she’s gonna own it, so why bother being humble about it? If you try to come on to her, she’ll shoot you down like a bucket of ice water. You, the player character! This woman’s not gonna be just another notch on Hawk’s bed. She’s got her own line of suitors to worry about.

So, Donnic, what’s your take on redheads?

Wow, we’ve covered so much, we should be proud of ourselves! Lets see, did we miss anything? World design - check. Story - check. Art style -check. Companions - check. Co— Oh… Oh, no.

The combat was one of the main highlights in Origins despite being far from perfect. Stun-locking was a serious problem if you entered a room full of archers or golems. Enemies could perform melee attacks from across the room if they managed to successfully lock on to you (to be fair, this worked vice versa). Parts of the skill tree were severely bloated, especially for mages. By the end of the game, you couldn’t fit your entire arsenal into the quick bar, let alone keep it in mind in combat.

If you start DA2 right after Origins, it might feel like a palette cleanser. You’ll find only one ability waiting for you in the quick bar. What a relief! Once you get your first level up, you’ll see that the skill trees have been extensively groomed. Superfluous abilities have been removed and everything’s been repackaged to make a little bit more sense. This could have been a perfect place to start, expect it doesn’t ever build to much.

Difficulty in Origins didn’t just come from how much health enemies had and how much damage they dealt. It also varied based on the type of enemies you encountered. No room was ever randomly populated with foes. Each enemy was placed strategically, so you’d have to think about your positioning too. Where to put my warrior, where to put my mage? What if I have a rouge in my party? What if the enemy also has rogues? What if there are ranged units with a clear line of sight? All of this and more had to be taken into account.

DA2 throws any semblance of strategy out the window. Sure, you could still see enemies waiting for you as you entered a room (most of the time), but that’s where your power of foresight ends. Once you beat the first batch of enemies, at least one more will spawn out of tin air. Sometimes it’ll be only a few more chumps. Sometimes it’ll be an elite enemy. Sometimes two. Sometimes it’ll be a whole load of mother fuckers. I once watched as 10 shades spawned in front of me in a space no bigger than a broom closet.

How you’re supposed to plan ahead is beyond me. You have no idea of knowing what might come next. How should you manage your health and stamina? Should you hold off on using a potion? Will it be too late if you do? Will it be a waste if you don’t? What about firing abilities with a long cooldown?

There they come again, descending from the ceiling.

The enemy variety has also been desecrated. In Origins any enemy you encountered could have any combination of abilities found in your skill trees. This rewarded players who were familiar with their arsenal and who experimented with different builds. In DA2 all mages have the same two punch combination - magic barrier plus long ranged AOE. For some reason, the vanishing ability which was previously only available to rogues is now unlocked for every single class. Warriors can use it. Mages can use it. Rage demons can use it. Rage demons?!

To make matters worse, on harder difficulties everyone’s a bullet sponge. The only tactic you need to master is holding out longer than the other guy. Some mages have constitutions of tanks. Did they forget what the point of a mage was? In Origins if you saw a pack of blood mages coming at you from a distance, you’d soil your pants, but if you managed to close that gap the tides could turn very quickly. In DA2 not only do blood mages drain your health, they also have gigantic health bars of their own.

Starting from Act II, you’ll frequently stumble upon more challenging enemy encounters. They’re all optional, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re absolutely dreadful. It’s endless arcane horrors, upon golems, upon shadow warriors. I started despising Sundermount because of this. It all just reminds me of Amgarrak. Ugh, don’t remind me of Amgarrak.

Each act also has nightly gangs you need to wipe out. They’re not even challenging, just the same boring rinse and repeat. You have to visit the same area multiple times in order to weed them out completely. Even so, they keep reappearing in each subsequent act. The game just switches up the names of the gangs. It’s the bloodthirsty sisters or the super shady dragon cult or the yet more generic slave drivers.

DA2 is one of those games where I don’t mind turning down the difficulty. Victory in combat isn’t given out to the smartest opponent, but to the one who manages to grit their teeth longer. I like my teeth just fine, so no thank you. Maybe the tactics screen could’ve sufficiently automated things for me, but the UI is so dreadful that I really couldn’t be bothered to fine tune it. Oh, did I mention that the UI is garbage? There you go, don’t say I forgot about it.

Yeah, you’re getting nerfed.

Oh, did you think I was done with the combat? Here’s a bullet list with a bunch more grievances:

Friendly fire is not a thing any more. When a Walking Bomb explodes, it annihilates all of the opponents in the vicinity, but doesn’t even scratch my comrades.

The camera has been ridiculously clipped. The maximum zoom is barely useful. Why can’t we have a top-down view like before?

Manual target selection is broken. It doesn’t reliably work if the target is at a different elevation than you. Shades are impossible to select while they are moving.

Likewise, AOE abilities are incredibly finicky to use when elevation enters the equation.

I like that they let you chain abilities. If my character is busy pulling off a more demanding spell, I can issue the next command without it being lost. Would have been nice if they also let me cancel animations. I’m a sitting duck for blood mages each time I want to conjure a storm.

They scrapped trap making, which was quite useless to begin with, but still let enemies set traps for you. This wouldn’t be a problem if the rogues in my party were kind enough to warn me in advance. Varric’s usually pretty chatty, but he barely opens his mouth before my foot steps down on a pressure plate.

Why can’t I control Britney? I mean my mabari. Couldn’t you control summons in Origins?

If you have your summon activated, it will disappear and go on cooldown as soon as you enter a new map. What’s the points of this? Each time I have to stand around and stare at the tapestries until it becomes available again.

Your summon can sometimes get locked out of boss rooms.

Does taunting even work? I couldn’t seem to get people off my fragile little mage ass.

Golems can still slam me from across the room. God forbid they removed that feature.

Is there any status effect that can be successfully applied to the god damn shadow warriors? I swear, not even the Maker’s wrath could touch them. Their barrier ability emits this horrible sound - the first time I heard it, I was convinced the game was glitching.

Not really a combat thing, but why can’t I see how many potions I have in my inventory when crafting new ones? I can’t even craft multiple potions at once, I have to click for every single one.

What’s the point of injury kits? In Origins once you embarked on a mission, you couldn’t back away from it easily. Therefore you had to prepare accordingly. In DA2 quests are short, so you can easily hop back home and heal your injuries. The kits only make sense in the DLCs where you can’t make a pit stop anytime you want.

What use is Mythal’s Favor if I can’t see exactly where my companions fell? I wasted a bunch of these trying to spot Fenris in a pile of corpses on the floor.

To go further into the matter, are Mythal’s Favors glitched or what? They just don’t work in some fights. Is there an ability that cancels them? Anders was able to revive companions just fine.

Sometimes when you tell your character to throw a grenade, they won’t reposition themselves for a clear shot. Instead, they’ll lob the damn thing at a wall. If I loose one more Mythal’s Favor like this, I swear to god…

To be fair, the bones for a good combat system are still here. DA2 becomes a lot more interesting once you’ve unlocked enough abilities to create your own combos. The brand new skill trees offer a bunch of interesting stuff and the companions’ unique abilities were the once I always invested in first. For example, the Force Mage skill tree is a blast. Its Pull of the Abyss ability knocks down enemies in a specified range and drags them all to one spot. This should be illegal. The skill trees are overflowing with abilities that blast your enemies away, but I haven’t found another one which lets you to pull them together. You can follow that up with anything you like: Cyclone, Walking Bomb, Chain Lighting, take your pick.

It’s a shame that the combos get stale pretty quickly. Since enemy encounters follow the same pattern throughout the entire game, you’ll be applying the same tactics over and over and over again. Just like Origins, DA2’s combat peaks around mid-game, but where Origins burned itself out from excessiveness, DA2 met its end by sheer monotony.

On to the dog pile with you.

DA2 has two DLCs which offer a couple more hours of quality content to break up the main story. They represent what the game could have been on a micro scale. Funnily enough, they excel at completely different things.

The Legacy DLC is where the combat really clicked into place. It introduces a variety of new enemy types mixed up with the old. The enemies are placed purposefully and combined in different ways across different arenas. The highlight goes to the big boys with the shields. They are only vulnerable from behind and they move around constantly, so you have to keep track of them along with all the other foes. The game also lets you utilize traps, giving you one more incentive to think about your positioning. It’s almost a miracle how the same combat system can feel completely different when dropped into hand-crafted dungeons. Even the boss is half decent, if not a bit gimmicky.

Likewise, the Warden’s Prison is an excellently crafted level which soothes the eyes after Kirkwall’s drabness. I especially like how they handled the codex entries. When you find one, your companions comment on it as if it was an actual piece of paper lying around in the world. It made me want to read them just so I could be part of the conversation.

This DLC is a bit thin when it comes to the story. The lore implications are huge, but Legacy never goes much into detail. I would have appreciated more interactions between my companions. I brought Anders and a Warden Carver with me and, despite them having more ties to the dilemma at hand than most, they rarely ever provided any additional thoughts.

Oh, hey there, little bro. The new uniform looks good on you.

Contrary to that, Mark of the Assassin doesn’t have much to add in terms of combat. It suffers from the same gameplay nuisances as the main game. There are a couple of annoying bullet sponge bosses - the Sky Horror being the first to come to mind. It’s one of those fights where I just laughed and dialed back the difficulty to Casual. Yes, give me all of the loot with none of the hair pulling.

The DLC even tries to sneak in a stealth section (pun intended). I appreciate the diversity, but Dragon Age please don’t. It’s half baked at best. It’s not entirely clear how easily the guards can spot you and they don’t react to simple things like opened doors.

You won’t be playing Mark of the Assassin for the combat anyway. No, this DLC is having itself a blast with the story alone. Hawk has never been this hilarious before. It’s like whoever was writing the companions’ banter finally realized the main character could join in on the fun. From imitating the Orlesian accent to going elbow deep in a dung pile, it never ends.

The newcomer Tallis is like Merrill if she got invited to more parties. When you’re done gossiping with servants and trying out the canapés, you’ll realize that she’s an excellent addition to the franchise. Besides covering herself with blood and squealing like a madman, she also provides a much needed perspective into the Qunari way of life.

And don’t think I didn’t notice my girl Leliana chilling in the corner. You can kick a bard out of Orlais, but you can’t ever kick the Orlesian court drama out of the bard, amirite? We were even treated to a little bit of “Teagan!” Chef’s kiss, mwah!

Just look at how much fun we’re having.

If I could circle back to The Witcher 2 again, there’s one more aspect where these two games differ entirely. You could take a hatchet and cleanly cut off the rotten flesh of The Witcher 2’s gameplay, while preserving the absolute jewel of its story. I have no conflicting feelings about that game, I know exactly what’s good and what’s not.

Contrary to that, DA2 is such a tangled mess, it’s impossible to sort it out. Some of the franchise’s best moments sit right around the corner from some of its worst. Whenever the writers blew me away with their social commentary, the dialogue system would box me into black and white decisions. Whenever I got giddy at the thought of slamming people into the ground, I’d stumble upon a hastily thrown together dungeon. Whenever I got excited by an act’s finale, the tedious side quests which surround the game’s few bright moments like a hungry void would lull me back into apathy. It’s enough to drive a person mad or make them write a 10k word review.

The game pours salt over my wounds each time it makes me think of Origins. So many of DA2’s design decision are in direct conflict with how old-school RPGs are meant to be played. Sure, there are lite RPGs out there and you could argue that DA2 falls into this category, but this is not a change I’m willing to accept easily. Origins was all about tweaking every little aspect of the game and watching as the dominoes fall into place. Not only does DA2 cut you short on that end, it doesn’t even commit to being a proper action RPG. It’s not nearly pompous enough to carry Mass Effect’s loose RPG framework, so it sits in this weird limbo of not really being anything definitive.

I shudder thinking what could have been had this game been given just one more year in development. Or two. Or, if I could be so bold, three. There’s so much passion on display here, but the artists’ feathers got plucked way too early. Origins might have taken a long time to complete, but the results can speak for themselves. Games with flashier graphics and huger levels will keep coming out, but none of them will be able to take the shine out of Origins. Contrary to that, DA2 doesn’t need any help tripping itself up and falling on its face.

Oh well, on to Inquisition, I guess. I’m sure none of DA2’s problem will carry over. Cheers, everyone.

Until next time, Hawk.

[icyschreviews]

A Review of Prince of Persia (2008)

What injury have I done to you, Ubisoft?

Ha, ha, let’s all laugh because the developers named a donkey after Farah. Some of you might find this joke offensive, but to me it’s genuinely hilarious. It’s precisely this kind of playful self-awareness which allows the reboot to re-examine the franchise in a new light. The scene where the Prince first bumps into Elika might have been snatched from a high school drama, but that’s where the tropes end. Elika is no damsel in distress and while you’re still playing as the Prince, you’re very much the sidekick in this adventure. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

2008’s Prince of Persia is the self-titled reboot of the series. Much like Sands of Time, it introduces a new set of characters and a new world for them to explore. Also much like SoT, it re-envisions the franchise’s gameplay mechanics. It’s a bold and innovative experience, further propelled by its fresh ideas and beautiful presentation. It’s a game for whose sequel I’d swallow my disdain, get down on my knees before Ubisoft’s worst vile and beg. It’s also a game that’s not perfect by any account.

There is a very clear vision towards which the reboot was striving for. After Warrior Within came out, the series made itself a reputation for catering only to h a r d c o r e gamers. Instead of pushing the franchise in that direction, the developers decided to switch course. The reboot is a game you’re meant to play laid back on your couch, without a single worry in the world.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this in itself. There’s no rule which says games need to be challenging. There’s no evidence which implies that more challenging games are better than less challenging ones. And the developers certainly didn’t make any lifetime commitment to keep churning out WW clones.

What ultimately degrades this game’s quality is not the fact that it’s as easy as dipping your toes in the sand and taking a sip of a piña colada. No, as with most games it’s tied to the design decisions and how they were implemented. In this case, it’s how the existing mechanics were modified to achieve a more lenient experience.

I can already feel most of you jumping out of your seats and raising your hand. No, I’m not talking about how Elika saves you from death. Sorry to disappoint. I’m actually quite in favor of this mechanic. The Prince of Persia series has always been based around trial and error. These games don’t expect you to nail everything on the first go and they’re designed with that in mind.

In the SoT trilogy, you were given the ability to rewind time. When you made a mistake, you could rewind back to a moment before that mistake was initiated. This commodity was limited, so once you run out of sands, your next mistake would be fatal. The developers were fully aware of how the previous games worked, so they decided to mask the rewind mechanic as something else that makes sense within the new universe. That is to say, with Elika.

Make no mistake, being rescued by Elika is no different than rewinding time. Both mechanics avoid the game over screen and give you an instant chance to try again. The only difference is that the rewind mechanic has a limit to its graciousness, while Elika does not. You might object that it’s precisely this difference which makes the reboot such a crime, but I’d have to disagree. Forcing you to see a game over screen, making you reload and repeat the parts you’ve previously beaten is not what constitutes as challenge. Challenge is when obstacles are hard to overcome. The reboot just lets players make another attempt a little bit quicker than its predecessors. Now as for the challenges themselves…

Props to my girl Elika for hurling this man around the entire game.

Let’s start dissecting this game with the platforming. Playing the reboot right after beating the other PoP titles is weird. I do not recommend it, especially not if you’re coming out of Forgotten Sands. FoS’ platforming made me manage up to 5 different buttons at a time in order to complete sets of tight and gripping challenges. Compared to that, the reboot’s platforming feels like it’s missing something from the equation.

It’s not just that the control scheme is different, it’s that significantly less input is required from the player. The jump button became a placebo for everything. It’s used to perform most of the actions, with some occasional inputs from the dedicated gauntlet and Elika buttons. Of those two I largely prefer the latter, as being pulled up by Elika somewhat mimics that dipping feeling you get on a roller coaster.

Even those few button prompts are scarcely needed. It took me ages to accept that some of the game’s stunts are performed on auto-pilot. Running along the ceiling is such a ridiculously powerful move I can’t believe it doesn’t require more input from the player. Sometimes I would accidentally press the jump button when the Prince was about to pull himself up a wall, because that animation looks like it’s begging for another prompt. Alas, that just sends you flying in the opposite direction. Later I thought my mind was blown when I realized you don’t need to hold down the jump button while wall running. Little did I know that you don’t even need to keep tilting the stick.

I got into the flow of things eventually, but while I understand how these design decisions play into the couch potato mindset, I can’t say I’m particularly fond of the simplified control scheme. Elika is already here to save me from the shame of ever seeing a game over screen, so why not use her to add a little bit of oomph to the platforming? I didn’t feel relived because there were less buttons to press, I felt robbed. My fingers were yearning for more engagement, but the game just told me to relax and crack a beer.

Well, I might just do that, game! Though my beer would go down a lot easier if the platforming was as immaculate as the game thought it was. The mistake you’ll most often make is jumping towards a wall at the wrong angle. If your aiming is a bit off, the Prince will initiate a wall run bellow the necessary height, making him miss his target and fall down the cliff side.

The game’s also not the greatest when it comes to registering inputs. This is a lot more prominent in combat, but more on that later. It’s less of an eyesore during platforming, but can get on your nerves eventually. So for example, the game sometimes won’t respond to the jump button when you’re trying to hop from one pole to another. Also if you start sliding down a vine, the Prince will stop himself just before he reaches the end of the shrubbery. There’s an annoying pause before the game registers another input to drop down.

Our Persian boy began his career by hopping over pits, but look how far he's gotten.

Although I nag, these instances are cracks on a seemingly perfect cake. Saying a PoP game has great animations is as novel as claiming that water is wet, but I’d like to point it out none the less. Each time platforming rubbed me the wrong way, there were ten other occasions where the game made it up to me. Generally, movement is as smooth as butter and there are a dozen of little details sprinkled in for the keen-eyed. My personal favorite touch is how there are two variations for the mundane act of pulling yourself up a ledge. If you release all buttons before grabbing onto one, the Prince will just keep hanging. However if you keep tilting up the stick, the Prince will quickly scramble on top without loosing momentum.

There is one more aspect that further enriches the platforming and it’s completely unique to the reboot. It’s hard to notice at first, but the levels have a sort of curvature to them. Many of the traversal mechanics are designed with this in mind. To initiate a wall run you have to jump towards it at a 45 degree angle, so to make bouncing off and landing convenient ledges are hexagonally shaped. Brass rings are often placed at corners of buildings, letting the Prince smoothly switch from one side to the other. The green plates let you spiral along the insides and outsides of towers. Polls are stringed circularly, pillars are skewed and you can prolong your wall run by jumping towards a perpendicular wall. All of this gives the reboot a significant amount of depth which makes the platforming in the SoT trilogy feel almost 2-dimensional.

What makes the platforming even more satisfying in the long run is that it’s a vehicle for some unscrupulous eye candy. Yes, this game is drop-dead gorgeous. Serious game critics don’t get hung up on a game’s graphics, but I just started drinking midway through a review, so who the hell cares any more? The reboot is the best looking PoP game by far. Scratch that, it’s one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played, period. The presentation is so distinct, it’s instantly recognizable even to people who’ve never been near a PoP game before. Not to mention that it still looks amazing more than 10 years after it originally came out.

It’s hard to put into words why this game feels so mesmerizing. The story is set in a desert which bears marks of the Middle East, but most of this world feels new and fresh and alien. You’ll encounter citadels garnished by windmills, balloon held plateaus, golden domes emerging from the clouds and a ruined city surrounded by water lilies. I personally love the bottom-less hallway which connects the Spire of Dreams to the Coronation Hall. There’s something magical about how the sun shines through the stained-glass windows to cast light on rows of desecrated pillars.

The game’s atmosphere wouldn’t be nearly as alluring if it weren’t for the soundtrack. And, oh, what a soundtrack it is! Stuart Chatwood, you dastardly man, how dare you do this to me again? Chatwood’s work on other PoP titles is nothing short of iconic, but he really outdid himself with the reboot. The title track alone will send shivers down your spine, not to mention the rest of the OST which is packed with memorable numbers from start to finish.

This place is due for renovation, but it still looks amazing.

While the mystical feeling emanating from the world closely resembles the one found in Sands of Time, the reboot’s non-linear level design actually hearkens back to Warrior Within. You can explore the world and tackle its challenges in any order you like, limited only by the traversal powers you’ve acquired so far. Even though each area of the map is a simple node with no more than 3 exits, the levels’ unique layout tricks you into thinking that the world is a lot more intricate than it actually is. The game lets you mark way-points and teleport between fertile grounds, but I found it a lot more satisfying to explore without the assistance of the map.

The world is split into 4 areas, each one with 6 fertile grounds. What makes the overall number even more impressive is the distinctiveness at display. While all fertile grounds within an area share the same theme, each one has some sort of trick up their sleeve, making the act of reaching the top that more exciting. The standouts would be the perplexity of the Machinery Grounds, the intense swirl inside the Royal Spire and that insane run along the arches of the Queen’s Tower.

What’s sad about this world, despite how dazzling it looks, is that it’s completely barren. Once you’ve reached a fertile ground and beaten its boss, there’s barely anything left to do. The emptiness of the world will feel eerily familiar to anyone who’s played the first Assassin’s Creed, and it’s no wonder considering these games came out at a similar time. These were still Ubisoft’s early attempts at open-world games and they hadn’t yet figured out how to populate their worlds with content. Though, to be honest, I don’t think they ever did.

They try to keep you busy by making you collect light seeds which are spread throughout the world. And I mean, making environments more interesting by gathering collectibles, like seriously? The light seeds unlock abilities which are necessary to complete the game, but you’ll need significantly less than the maximum amount to progress. The designers don’t want you and don’t need you to spend hours upon hours finding that last light seed in an area. Collecting them is supposed to be spontaneous and something you do along the way. However my OCD would like to have a word with you. If there’s a box to be ticked inside the game, you know full well some us are going to pursue it, be it optional or not. And don’t even get me started on tying achievements to this nonsense.

Stop to take in the view.

Despite the lack of content, the designers did a surprisingly good job of adapting the difficulty curve to match the non-linear level design. E.g. after beating the Alchemist, the poisonous clouds which you first encounter in the Vale start appearing in other areas as well. The same goes for that annoying swarm which follows you around in the Concubine’s levels.

While non-linearity might have paired itself nicely with the progression, it certainly took a toll on the story. The relationship between the Prince and Elika cannot evolve in response to the current circumstances if the game doesn’t know in what order you’ll tackle its challenges. Sections with the Concubine explore our protagonists’ motivations and those with the Warrior question the lack of Ormazd’s divine intervention, but none of those dilemmas actually affect the plot or the characters.

Despite that, these two are one of the most fleshed out and likeable duos I’ve encountered in any game. You know exactly how things are going to play out the first time you see them interact. Elika is trying to manage the greatest crisis of her life while the Prince is wondering if there’s gold to be looted in the temple. It’s a textbook trope - she is responsible and compassionate while he is an unscrupulous opportunist, but it works perfectly.

What emphasizes their relationship even more is the insane amount of conversations they have throughout the game. They speak a fair bit during cut-scenes, but the bulk of their interactions come from optional dialogue. You can press a designated button and the Prince and Elika will discuss pressing matters or whatever crosses their minds. The dialogue options are refreshed each time you visit a new fertile ground. Other than dripping bits and pieces of exposition, these conversations go a long way to establish our protagonists’ relationship. Their chemistry evolves slowly over time and, by the end of the game, you really get the impressions that they grew close during this whole ordeal.

Besides the dialogue, their dynamic is further enhanced by the animations. Elika is the best video game sidekicks you could hope for. She’ll run along after the Prince and each time she catches up to him, they’ll interact in some small way. The Prince will extend his hand to her on ledges, he’ll sometimes catch her after a drop and, possibly the cutest thing ever, they’ll do a little twirl each time they switch places on a beam. They occasionally exchange sly remarks, like when the Prince is carrying Elika over a stretch vines or when she saves him from a fatal fall. It makes Elika feel like a living breathing being who’s there with you in every moment and not some poorly scripted drone.

Do the twirl!

And now we’ve come to the part of the game I’d like to avoid the most. God, the combat! The fights in the reboot are strictly one-on-one affairs. You’ll engage only one enemy at a time in dedicated arenas, turning each encounter into a boss battle. The game wants you to perceive the fights as duels, a dynamic exchange of blows, with the way it encourages you to parry and how the Prince postures himself sword up and gauntlet ready to strike. Sounds good in theory, right?

Well, the problems start off with the way the Prince moves. He is terribly slow and dodging doesn’t make him much faster. Things would be delightful if this were the only aspect of the Prince’s life which needed fast-forwarding. Alas, the time it takes the Prince to register an input and act upon it makes a sloth seem like a speed runner. It can take almost up to 2 seconds for him to lower his guard and perform the requested action. In that time, enemies are able to change their stance, walk up to you and smack you in the face. Before you ask, I don’t think any of this is tied to performance issues. To my perception the game was running just fine, yet most of the Prince’s combat animations had this annoying wind-up which might suggest he got caught having a nap.

Usually, you’ve got an enemy by the jewels once you’ve initiated a combo, but getting there is an uphill battle. Your reflexes might be sharp as a knife, but they won’t mean much since the Prince can’t keep up. Enemies will often land a hit before you’ve had the chance to sneeze, rendering your plans useless. To make matters even worse, they constantly parry your attacks and turn the tide against you, making the few times you do manage to go on the offensive ineffective.

The combat becomes bearable once you’ve realized that attacking is a viable option only when enemies take pity and give you enough downtime to act. For the most part, you’ll be missing opportunities and holding off against a barrage of the enemy’s own attacks. Parrying should solve these problems on paper, but it’s not very reliable when the Prince tries to use it. Enemies are lightning fast and barely telegraph their moves. I landed most parries when I was reacting in anticipation of an attack and not in response to one. You can end a lot of the encounters early by pushing enemies off cliffs, which is a bliss, especially for generic mini bosses which are even more aggressive than their big counterparts.

Oh, wait, did I mention the quick time events? Please repeat after me, kids. Quick time events are baaad. This game utilizes not just the regular type, where you have to press a button fast enough, but also the accursed kind which asks you to smash a button repeatedly. I had to readjust my hands on the gamepad each time one of these came up because my thumb couldn't keep up with the required pace. I love that you have to block immediately after a quick time event ends because enemies don’t waste any time kicking you in the face.

I hate this guy so much.

Thankfully, the combo system is an interesting experiment. It boils down to four buttons, and when you open up the combo list, you’ll see that they amount to a fair number of combinations. However I don’t think you’re meant to memorize them. Instead, the combo system leans heavily on improvisation.

Once you’ve initiated a certain attack, you’ll often be able to guess which action can be performed next. Is Elika suddenly in view? Launch her at the enemy. Is the enemy standing still in one place? Hoist them up with the gauntlet. Is the Prince standing by with his sword? Smack the bastard before they get a chance to blink. It’s much more fun than memorizing a combo list and makes you feel like the originator of your own cocktail.

You’ll fight each of the 4 bosses ones per fertile ground and the game does a decent job of not letting it get repetitive. No matter in what order you tackle the areas, after beating a boss the next time you see them they’ll upgrade their repertoire. These changes will be reflected not just on the main bosses, but also on the generic enemies you fight along the way. So the Hunter will spit on you (ew!), permanently unlocking this option for all other foes. Similarly, enemies will start utilizing different power stances which you’ll have to counter with specific attacks.

The boss which is the most varied is the Warrior, but he is sadly the most rotten apple from the bunch. Each time you fight him, you’re supposed to drive him to a specific spot in the arena, but getting him where you want and baiting a suitable attack is slow and painful. At least the other 3 bosses provide a decent amount of back and forth with minor differences.

I guess it’s worth mentioning that the tutorials are horrendous. They smother you with instructions right out of the gate, trying to make you memorize each combo, like that even matters. The game insistently keeps pausing to tell you what to do and even repeats the tips it already gave you. I turned the tutorials off pretty early on and had much more fun figuring things out on my own. There aren’t that many buttons when you think about it and, due to Elika, making fatal mistakes is cheap.

Well, hello there.

You know what? After a few drinks this game starts to make perfect sense. I trudged back and forth so many times collecting light seeds that the world became like my backyard. See that plateau over there? That’s where I discovered some hidden light seeds by sliding down an edge, grabbing onto a brass ring, waltzing along the ceiling and then dropping down to a beam. And that fertile ground with a killer view? That’s where the Prince and Elika played I spy with my little eye.

Oh, and that’s where I fought the Alchemist that one time. The Alchemist, what a lad! We’d start each fight with a little bit of foreplay. He’d belittle my attempts to stop Ahriman and hint at his machinations, but would always get pushed down a cliff less than a third into his health bar.

And why did I ever complain about video game characters whose armor had cleavage? Damn, girls, does the Prince look fine or what? I guess the developers were on to something when they invented the metal thong. Please, don’t let my lack of sophistication hold you back any more.

Ah, and that ending! It’s as bittersweet as this game’s fate. There's something poignant about how the game makes you undo everything you've worked for without a single word. It doesn't shower you with lengthy cut-scenes or sad violins. Instead, it trusts that you'll understand the full gravity of its message. The silence to Elika's final "Why?" speaks much more than any piece of dialogue ever could.

Despite its many flaws, the reboot is a triumph on multiple fronts. It’s one of the purest visions in gaming, a unique experience which offers so much and teases even more. Yet Ubisoft cut it down in its roots, completely oblivious to the fact that they were on to something new. It hurts when creative minds are hampered by financial reports and even more when you consider that the developers had a whole trilogy in mind. The promised sequel will probably never see the light of day and Ubisoft doesn’t even care enough to make the Epilogue available on modern platforms.

Play the soundtrack and let me wallow in my heartache.

[icyschreviews]

A Review of Prince of Persia: Two Thrones

I Don’t Like Sand

Does anyone really want to talk about this game? There’s no fun to be had. Even as a die-hard Prince of Persia fan, I only played Two Thrones once when it first came out. Booting it up now after all this time, I was trying to remember why that was the case. I couldn’t recall having a bad time with it (other than those cursed quick time events), but it didn’t take long for the memories to come rushing back in.

Two Thrones misunderstands nearly everything that made the franchise work so far. When you look at how these games were developed, Warrior Within should have been the one ruined by corporate greed. I guess Warrior Within’s outlandish nature fueled enough creative minds to produce a good game, despite the insane deadlines the devs must have been facing. Alas, creative minds were not enough to keep Two Thrones floating above all of the external pressure.

Warrior Within was the result of executive geniuses thinking fans wanted a more mature game. To double down on that brilliance, they defined maturity as a Monica Bellucci look-alike with barely any clothes on. Yes, this game was made by adults. On the other hand, Two Thrones is the result of those same bastards freaking out about the critical response to Warrior Within and pretending the game never happened.

Here’s the deal, while the good majority of WW’s criticism is rock solid, WW is still a darn good game. The cult status it collected over the years speaks to this. Instead of building up on WW in a meaningful way, Ubisoft decided to take a sharp turn away from their venture into hard rock. However, while you can make the transition from steamy bathhouses to butchering arenas once and get away with it, there’s no way you’re pulling that off twice. Thus the resulting game is caught somewhere between its two predecessors - a horrendous Frankenstein with no real sense of identity.

Look, Kaileena, we're burning down the franchise.

Just imagine poor Yuri Lowenthal. The Prince defined Yuri’s carrier as much as Yuri defined the Prince himself. It must have been heartbreaking when he found out they were going to replace him for WW. Now, I love Yuri Lowenthal and all, but bringing him back for TT makes no sense at all. Whatever you think of Robin Atkin Downes’ performance (I’m actually quite fond of it), at least that switch made in-game sense. Seven years have passed between the events of Sands of Time and Warrior Within, and in that time the Prince transitioned from a teenager to a fully grown man. Therefore we got a rougher Prince.

In contrast to that, only a couple of weeks pass between WW and TT. The character Yuri Lowenthal originally portrayed in SoT underwent some radical changes, to put it mildly. As a result, Yuri sounds confused most of the time, like he’s trying to recreate that SoT magic, but is missing the core of what made the Prince in WW so compelling. It’s like a cinder block fell on his head right at the gates of Babylon and reverted the several past years of trauma.

Just think where we left off at the end of WW. This is a Prince who’s been trying to shake off his destiny for seven years. This is a man who couldn’t get a good night’s sleep because a restless beast was after him. This is a man who pulled a woman out from her timeline and convinced her to trust him, only to sentence her to death. This is a man who became ruthless just to survive. He’s been on an endless quest to rectify his first mistake, only for the consequences of his actions to build up to the ultimate doom - the fall of Babylon.

Oh no, but how will the Prince engage in witty dialogue if he’s burdened by all this trauma? The fans want a chipper Prince and also apparently Farah. So see to it, said Ubisoft executives as they cracked a whip over the devs curled up in their cubicles.

Speaking of Farah, I can’t say I’m a huge fan of her in this game. The conversations you shared in SoT not only moved the plot, but were also significant drivers for the Prince’s development. Here they’re merely filler. The two have no rapport whatsoever. Their conversations consist of one-liners pulled straight out of a lazy rom-com. The “I hate pomegranates” line is so bad, I can’t tell if it’s meant to be a jab at Star Wars. Then again, you actually need to write a half-decent romance before you get to mock anyone else. And you can’t seriously expect me to believe the Prince’s favorite color is blue. My boy’s been draped in red ever since the Dahaka came knocking on his front door.

Regarding the other female character… While I wouldn’t have initially approved of Kaileena’s design, since the damage was already done in WW I don’t see much point in toning her down for TT. Most of her character (if you could call it that) came from her ruthless nature, her outfit and that goofy accent Monica Bellucci brought to the table. Stripped of all of these, Kaileena is as interesting as a piece of styrofoam. Poor Yuri Lowenthal didn’t even get to share a boot with Monica (not that I think Robin Atkin Downes actually did).

Let's settle that bathhouse debate once and for all.

The game does go a bit in the direction I would have wanted with the introduction of the Dark Prince. Story wise, he’s the impersonation of the Prince’s inner torment. However he doesn't quite hit the mark. His interactions with the Prince are a bit corny and the Prince easily dismisses him on the basis of love and friendship and, oh, because Farah said so. You’re supposed to feel conflicted, but it doesn’t help that the Dark Prince is a bit of a misogynist and that his tips aren’t all that helpful. Shame they couldn’t get Robin Atkin Downes to voice him.

Gameplay wise, the Dark Prince is the resurrection of the Wraith from WW. I liked the Wraith. It was a neat spin on the original concept that let you abuse your sands powers to do some cool tricks which would otherwise be frustrating. It smartly traded that power by taking away your health - essentially transforming you into a glass cannon.

The Dark Prince does weird things with this. You still loose your health, but you don’t get compensated by regenerating sand tanks. Instead, you gain your health back by absorbing sands. This changes the way you play more than you think. The Wraith allowed for unlimited trial and error. The world was basically your playground. Yeah, your health is going down, but sands are plenty so why not jump off that ledge and see what happens? On the contrary, the Dark Prince is a frantic run.

You regain health in combat by killing enemies, so kill them quickly. Meanwhile you regain health in platforming by reaching the next stash of jars, so swoosh, swoosh past those spinning saws if you will. It really doesn’t give you much room for exploration or experimentation. It also drastically undermined any wish I might have had for the Prince to permanently go Dark. What, is he going to need a sand smoothie every 5 min for the rest of his life now?

The two portions of the gameplay also don’t feel equally balanced. If I made a mistake in combat and lost too much health, the next enemy that spawned would quickly give me a chance to correct that. So I’m basically gaining both health and sands. However if I hit a spiked wall before reaching the next respite between traps, there’s nothing to do but rewind. So I’m basically losing both health and sands. This made some of the platforming sequences infuriating.

Combat is where playing as the Dark Prince feels the most empowering. The chain is the most powerful weapon in the game and not just because of the damage it deals. Most of the time if you just keep swinging, no enemy will come near enough to put a dent in you. Sadly, the novelty quickly wears off. Once you realize that you only need to stand in one place and keep pressing the same button, the Dark Prince turns from a formidable force to a spiky carousel.

You spin me right 'round, baby, right 'round...

It doesn’t bode well for the game’s combat that I enjoyed it the most when playing as the Dark Prince, despite all of the aforementioned issues. On the surface, TT imports WW’s combo system as is. However, while there was significant room for improvement, TT decided to pull in with a dumpster truck and empty it on top of WW’s combo system, before setting it on fire and taking a piss afterwards.

Imagine all those cool combos WW let you do. Now imagine if every enemy in the game could block them. Even the finishers. Yes, even those. Congratulations Ubisoft, you get an award for best game design. What a ground breaking way to increase the game’s difficulty. Yes, make every attack in your character’s move-set ineffective. Slow clapping is in procedure.

And they didn’t even fix any of the muck they dragged in from WW. The camera is even more broken. You still don’t have iframes while performing finishers. Enemies still rush you from off screen. The lock-on system is drunk. The directional inputs are all over the place. You can roll two laps around an enemy before the game realizes you’re actually trying to jump over it. You cannot dodge arrows, just block them. The timing on the grab attack seems broken. I’m convinced enemies of the same type don’t have an equal amount of health. And on top of all of that, the Prince somehow feels less responsive, like he has to drag his ass across the floor each time he dodges. He’ll also stutter before performing counter-attacks, as if he suddenly remembered he left the iron on in one of his other Babylonian apartments.

You can tell the game is at least a little embarrassed about this since it’s pushing you to do stealth as much as possible. This is a nice idea I would have liked to see explored more, but it feels like we got an alpha version of it. The game’s platforming could easily serve as a foundation for a complex stealth system. Sadly TT just doesn’t deliver on that.

Usually there’s only one way per room to clear all of the enemies using stealth, which doesn’t leave much room for creativity. It’ll take you less than a minute to figure out the critical path and dispatching your foes with quick time events soon becomes repetitive. Also it’s a bit unclear which railings can serve as cover and exactly how much gets caught by the enemies’ eyesight. I’m not sure why they bothered putting pigeons and breakable objects in your way since they don’t enter much into the equation.

Better act quick before the sweat starts dripping.

TT can’t boast about its bosses either. To be honest, none of the games in the trilogy know how to do boss fights right. The Griffin might be the best one in the series, but he is too easily forgotten. Shahdee and Kaileena were pretty meh. Neither one of the fights against the Vizier was good and the golems only server to prove how broken the camera is. For a long time, I thought the Dahaka would remain my number one worst boss of the series, but I always love when games surprise me. The fight in TT against the two dudes easily takes first place.

Guides will tell you there’s only one way to beat this boss, but the best approach is to uninstall the game and go to therapy. None of your combos mean anything against these guys. Both of them are spam bots, so they’ll keep rushing you insistently while you’re busy trying to perform a key action with the other one. After death skipping their cut-scene doesn’t work. You don’t get a save point before the fight, so you’ll have to redo the chariot ride if you decide to exit the game and take a swig. And Farah comes back at the end of it. What a joy.

Allow me one more lightning round of complaints about the combat.

Quick time events are the bane of my existence. Why have engaging and rewarding gameplay mechanics when we can replace them with gimmicks? Oh boy, do I feel accomplished when I finish off a boss with a quick time event. Want more? Here’s a chariot with piss poor handling. The giant boss in the arena is an embarrassment. The camera is a horror show and the boss clips through the walls when you drive him too close to the sides of the arena. I hate the sand dogs. Their hedgehog counterparts were the most annoying enemies in WW and in TT they aren’t any better. One of their attacks goes at full speed even when you’ve slowed down time.

Buddy, I think you might have dropped something there.

There, done. Don’t tell me you don’t feel better having taken all of that off your chest. But would you like to know one more area where TT massively drops the ball? It’s the level design.

Linearity is not necessarily the problem. SoT was as linear as it gets, but each of its levels was carefully crafted into a picturesque Rubik's cube. The real problem with TT’s environments is that they are painfully dull. Imagine setting a game in freaking Babylon and somehow making every level boring. No matter if you’re in the streets or in the palace, you’ll be served endless streams of copy-pasted alleys and corridors that look identical to each other. The game’s not nearly as imaginative with its portrayal of the Middle East and if it weren’t for the occasional cut-scene showing the Tower of Babylon, I would’ve forgotten where I was in the first place.

Platforming wise, TT introduces a bunch of new traps and obstacles. The dagger holes and spring boards are the most notable additions since their more complex button mappings help further evolve the mechanics. Despite that, there are very few platforming sequences that stand out and I think WW is the one to blame. In that game I had to perform pitch perfect moves with the Dahaka’s tendrils constantly gaining on my buttocks. Contrary to that, most of TT saw me hopping from one ledge to the other without much incentive. The closest I got to excitement was when I was frantically racing to replenish the Dark Prince’s health.

The exception to this is the final climb up the Tower of Babylon which I really, really like. Not only is it a nice throwback to the Tower of Dawn, but it also perfectly builds up the game’s climax. After the Prince looses Farah and is thrown into the depths of the city, the climb up the tower is exactly the ordeal you’d expect it to be. The platforming in these sections is superb, making it by far the most memorable and commendable part of Two Thrones. And please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks the theme for this area sounds like it was ripped straight out of a Bond movie.

If you squint hard enough, you can almost make out the "Welcome to Babylon" sign.

I was originally going to write how the soundtrack didn’t leave much of an impression on me, but I ended listening to it so much while writing this that I’ll gladly go back on my words. There are some straight up bangers on here, like the Dark Prince’s and the speed-kill themes. I’m particularly fond of the little pieces Stuart Chatwood sneaked in from SoT and WW. It really helps to tie all of these games together. The only thing I actively dislike is the end credits song which is blatantly trying to mimic Time Only Knows, but is not even close to that caliber.

Now give me a chance to list some miscellaneous grievances.

You can tell how rushed this game was just by looking at the little details. Have you noticed how in these games when you jump to a ledge, the camera automatically rotates to point in the direction you should be heading in next? When done right, this feature is unnoticeable. Well in TT it doesn’t quite work. Sometimes it does, but more often than not you’ll land on a ledge and find the camera facing a long blank piece of wall going up to nowhere. After the confusion settles, you’ll realize you need to survey the area on your own to figure out where you’re supposed to go.

Likewise, the save points are few and far between. When I’ve finished a platforming section, killed some invisible assassins, cleared out a sand beacon, finished another platforming section and solved a puzzle, a save point is the least I expect. Instead I get more sand dogs. On other occasions, I’d find two save points separated by a short walk down an empty hallway. It really makes you think about the insane circumstances these levels must have been put together.

And that’s all I have to say about Two Thrones. People say the franchise sank with Forgotten Sands or even 2008’s reboot, but I’d argue that both those games were surprisingly well executed leaps in innovation. No, TT was the first sign of the Ubisoft we see today - a money hungry corporation which doesn’t give a damn about the artists, their creativity or pushing the medium forward in any way. My only hope is that if Ubisoft ever decides to fund a remake of this game, the designers will get the chance to properly go over their past decisions and deliver the game they originally hoped for.

Might want to lay off the sands for a while.

[icyschreviews]

A Review of Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

The Bloody Mary of the Franchise

Yes, I often lie awake at night wondering how this game came to be. Imagine you’re some creative director at Ubisoft and Sands of Time just came out. It’s a commercial and critical success and you think to yourself: wow, let’s make a sequel.

The game you just created could serve as a strong foundation for an upcoming franchise. Stories set in the Middle East are a rare treat and you’ve barely scratched the surface. You established a complex and well-liked protagonist and it’s only natural to continue his journey. So where do we go next from maharaja’s palaces and the sound of Oriental music?

Enter Godsmack. Yes, Godsmack. I mean, if someone only played the prison sequence from SoT, I guess they might come to the conclusion the franchise was all about hard rock and bloody walls. For everyone else the shift in direction is seizure inducing.

From a cynic’s point of view none of this is surprising. It’s a dumb corporate move to cash in on the recent success, while also fixing the issues of the first game and making it more mature (and let’s interpret maturity as more blood and nudity while we’re at it). You know what is surprising? It’s that this game actually turned out good.

It’s crazy to think that Warrior Within came out only a year after Sands of Time was released. Even back in the day, when games were smaller, this was insane. You’ll realize the two games share the same DNA as soon as you pick up the wooden branch in WW’s first level. A keen ear will notice that hitting a rock with it will produce the same metallic sound effect it does in SoT when you hit a wall with your sword. I’d normally call this an absurd oversight, but in a game which suffers from an identity crisis hearing the old sound effects helps ground WW within the same franchise.

Watch me beat the Dahaka with this piece of wood.

The Holy Trinity which SoT was composed of were the story, the platforming and the combat. What’s interesting is that each of these aspects got handled differently in WW. The story (which I’ll couple with the presentation) experienced a full 180, the platforming remained the same and the combat was added onto like toppings are layered over a waffle. Let’s break each one of them down starting from the story.

Coming back to WW after some time, I was worried I’d find the game’s edginess a bit juvenile. I first played WW when I was a kid and the Prince’s acts of defiance always resonated with my own refusals to do my homework or clean my room. A part of my concerns proved to be justified, but for the most part I was surprised to see that the game is a lot cooler than I ever gave it credit for. The moment that intro hits you and the Prince stands up to the Dahaka with his swords up, you know the game means business. I think that despite the tacky rock music, the over-saturated blood effects and the fact that the Prince sounds more like Kratos than a posh Brit, the game still manages to resonate because of its strong emotional core.

The story picks up a couple of years after SoT, with the Prince being chased by death itself, the Dahaka. Most games try to convey the characters’ emotional struggles through cut-scenes, but WW does it right through gameplay. You know exactly what drove the Prince to fight for survival like a cornered animal because you’re forced to fight for survival throughout the entire game. The enemies are blood thirsty, the traps are unforgiving and the Dahaka is constantly breathing down your neck. You have to become a savage to get through this game and there’s no wonder there’s nothing left of the naive youth we got to know in SoT. Nowadays I wouldn’t be caught dead listening to Godsmack, but no other music better reflects the despair and rage which fuels the Prince in battle.

If I could turn back time...

In a lot of ways WW’s story is more than the sum of its parts, but there are parts that still stick out. First off, the women in this game are absolutely ridiculous. I don’t know who’s worse: the metal thong pirate or the empress with her vague Italian accent (totally not a stand-in for Monica Bellucci). Kaileena sort of has an arc, but I just can’t take Shahdee seriously. Some of the game’s attempts to sound more mature, like the Prince calling Shahdee a bitch, just made be burst into laughter.

Likewise, the time travel in SoT required some suspension of disbelief, but in WW that is stretched to the maximum. The game has no idea if cause and effect apply to any of its scenarios, let alone how to make sense of the convoluted plot. The Mask of the Wraith is a shameless MacGuffin and if it weren’t for the emotional pay off in the end, the whole plot would just cave in.

The pre-rendered cut-scenes still look sick by today’s standards and are probably the main source of inspiration for the mountains of fan art dedicated to the game. On the contrary, the in-game ones are hilariously clumsy. The dialogue is wooden and awkward and the cuts are often unexpected and jarring. Thankfully the story is told through more than just cut-scenes. While I’ll always hold SoT as the superior game, there is one aspect of WW which surpasses its predecessor and that’s the level design.

I think I'm just gonna stand back and let you ladies settle your differences.

Don’t get me wrong. I think SoT’s level design is superb. Each level was beautiful and instantly memorable. The platforming sequences were masterfully laid out to allow for exciting combos and each level told a unique story of this once mesmerizing, but now devastated palace. While in SoT the levels were stringed together and after completing one you’d move straight onto the other, in WW everything is connected. The Island of Time feels like a living breathing ecosystem which you get to explore in a significantly less linear fashion.

I simply adore the idea of jumping between the past and the present and experiencing the levels in different ways. I feel WW got the chance to be a lot more contemplative with the design of its obstacles. Observing a room and how it used to operate in the past and then witnessing the way it fell apart in the present gives the world of WW a whole new dimension. The levels don’t only play, but also feel different. The past makes you an intruder in this alien world of ancient mystery and the present cruelly reminds you of the imminent doom that awaits both you and the Island of Time.

I’m amazed at how confidently the game lets you retread levels. The moment that really impressed me was when I missed the health upgrade in Shahdee’s boss room. I decided to try to go back for it much later and was surprised that the game actually let me do it. It had to account for both the ruined staircase leading up to the boss room and the collapsed hallways from a previous Dahaka chase, yet it still put in the effort. This immense sense of inter-connectivity becomes even greater once you put on the Mask of the Wraith. That’s when the game takes you by the hand and leads you behind the curtains of each level.

Welcome to the Island of Time! The throne room is up ahead, lavatories to the left.

This strange world is presented in much different colors than the ones you found in SoT. Gone are the bright yellows and calming blues of the Orient, replaced by murky greys and browns and lots and lots of red. The contrast within the palette is nothing revolutionary, but it does the trick. Inside combat music fiercely pounds in your ears and blood sprays from each enemy you slay. Outside of combat more melancholic tracks accompany your exploration of the ruined citadel and the slow sinister darkening of your screen signals the dreaded arrival of the Dahaka. The atmosphere couldn’t be more oppressive, yet the environments are still as captivating as ever.

The one thing that fell pray to the game’s art style is the visibility of its obstacles. WW’s palette is pretty bleak and while I get this is brought on by the themes of the game, I don’t think you should let your art style degrade your gameplay. Some things like the red drapes are properly accentuated, but I often died or got stuck because the next ledge or beam just didn’t pop out of the background. The bird’s eye and first person view don’t help much and potentially exhilarating sequences are transformed into guess work.

But none of this excellent level design could be appreciated if traversing the world of WW wasn’t satisfying, which gives me a great segue to talk about the platforming in the game. As I mentioned earlier, WW imports SoT’s platforming mechanics. Instead of modifying them, it just utilized them even more. While SoT’s platforming sequences could be challenging, WW really pushes the limit putting all of your skills to the test.

There are new traps along with the old ones - the ropes and the extruding blocks being the first to come to mind. But new obstacles aren’t the sole reason why the platforming is so good in the sequel. The first reason are the later parts of the game when you put on the Mask of the Wraith. This is when the platforming sequences becoming devilishly difficult and would be frustrating if it weren’t for the regenerating sand tanks. I felt that some of the ideas presented in these sequences, like the tilted walls you had to jump off, had enormous amounts of potential.

Some poor chump is putting in the effort to wash the curtains even after the plaster has fallen off.

The second reason, and you’ve guessed it, are the Dahaka chase sequences. In WW the Dahaka is the main driver of the plot. It’s the main source of tension and the reason behind the Prince’s emotional state. Usually games let you fight your antagonist, but I think it’s so much more effective that the only thing you can do against the Dahaka is run. Each time you travel back to the present, there’s a looming fear of when the beast will appear next and each time it does, your adrenaline spikes through the roof. Not only that, but the Dahaka puts all of your platforming skills to the test. You’re asked to perform the same stunts you practiced earlier in the game, but this time with flawless precision and no time left to spare on the clock.

As much as I praise the Dahaka’s every appearance, the final boss fight against it is abysmal. The worst kind of difficulty is the one that’s a product of bad game design and you could easily fill a bingo card with just this fight. A good boss builds up on all of the skills you’ve learnt so far, but none of the advanced combos or techniques you’ve been perfecting during the game are viable against the Dahaka. Its attacks aren’t properly telegraphed, your dodges don’t provide consistent iframes and you can’t block or counter-attack it. The only option you have is to spam roll + attack until your fingers give out or you’ve chipped enough of its health bar to be able to finish it off with the Cyclones of Fate. It’s a test of your good will and patience and certainly not of any skill you've acquired while playing the game.

And here comes another perfect segue to talk about the final aspect of WW - the combat. You can tell that Ubisoft is proud of WW’s combat system since they called it something as stupid as “Free Form Fighting”. To put in plainly, Ubisoft decided to take SoT’s combat and use it as a foundation. On top of that foundation they build a house which is WW’s combo system.

Run, you fool!

The promo materials sure like to brag about all the possibilities this system has to offer and for the most part they are not exaggerating. The sheer amount of combos is impressive to say the least. I guess you could button smash your way through most fights, but the game is the most satisfying when you perform a deliberate set of actions and see heads flying as a result. Combos are broken down into categories and while its impossible to memorize all of them in a single playthrough, you’re sure to use a wide variety to get you through different encounters. The system offers a lot of room for creativity, so while you’ll perform a lavish move like the Angel Drop in one room, you might feel inclined to steal an enemies axe and chop its head off in another.

Having said all of that, while WW’s combat is its most marketed and talked about feature, I think it’s also one of the game’s most flawed elements. SoT’s combat was far from ideal and left a lot to be desired. However when deciding to use it as WW’s foundation, Ubisoft didn’t fix a single one of those issues before neatly stacking a combo tree on top of it. As a result the whole house is shaking.

One of SoT’s most critiqued features was its camera. It had a tendency to go bonkers whether that was in the platforming sections or in combat. SoT did some simple tricks to circumvent this. Mainly, the levels in that game are wide and spacious, not giving the camera many chances to get stuck on random objects.

Contrary to that, the Island of Time is a labyrinth of tightly weaved corridors which invites a whole new set of issues. More often then not you won’t be able to turn the camera because it’s smashing against one of the nearby walls. Getting it to do what you want is like trying to tame a stallion. The prime example of this are the golem fights where the camera’s main objective must have been to induce motion sickness.

The tight corridors also narrow your field of view, which spells disaster for a lot of the enemy encounters. The enemies are much more aggressive, so while in SoT you could just wait for them to come to you, in WW you constantly need to be on your guard. They’ll rush you from off screen without any prior indications and usually while you’re in the middle of performing another move. I’m having war movie flashbacks just thinking about the bloody hedgehog dogs.

I almost regret the fixed camera angles from the tutorial section. Almost.

Speaking of combos, the biggest sin this game commits by far is not giving you any iframes during your finishers. This is such a huge and glaring misstep that I honestly don’t know how it made it into the final product. If I perform a complex button combination and initiate a high damage combo, shouldn’t I be rewarded for it? You could say that initiating a combo in the wrong moment should punish the player, but that’s not what I’m arguing against.

In WW you might assess the situation and determine that it’s the right time to perform a certain move. However while your in the combo’s animation the status quo can drastically change. I’d be fine with this if the game let you break out of combos, but once the animation starts rolling you’re stuck in it until the end. What’s worse is that some enemies can break you out of your own combos, even though you yourself don’t have that power. The assassin ladies are the worst since their jump attack can not only break you out of an animation, but also lock you in their own.

The hit boxes don’t abide to fairness either, so sometimes enemies can stand far enough not to be hit by you, but also somehow close enough to do damage to you with their own attacks. So while you’re stuck in an animation, some cheeky bastard could happily chip away at your health. Mix that in with enemies rushing you from off screen and you’ll soon find yourself smashing you head against the desk.

You could always play more defensive, but then what’s the point of the combo system? Shouldn’t you be encouraged to charge into crowds like a blood thirsty beast and unleash all hell around you? The promo materials show off all of these fancy moves, but outside the sterile testing environments fights can get extremely messy.

Which one of you smart asses would like to smack me over the head first?

I’d honestly like to attribute all of this to my shortcomings as a player, but having beat the game on the hardest difficulty multiple times I’m beginning to see a clear line over which my combat prowess gets subjected to chance. A game shouldn’t base its difficulty on unpredictable attacks and mechanical hiccups, but on mastering its systems and learning how to spot and take advantage of enemies’ weaknesses.

Environmental combos, while some of the best looking, aren’t the most joyous to perform either. Some of the controls for platforming and combat overlap and the game can have a hard time determining which action you want to perform. E.g. wall running and blocking occupy the same button, as well as attacking and doing stunts with pillars. It’s insanely annoying when there’s an enemy waiting for you on the other side of a pit and you can’t initiate a wall run because the Prince keeps blocking instead. Though I do love that you can swing your secondary weapon and wipe the smile of their face (die hedgehog dogs, die).

Having criticized the game’s combat so much, I have to admit that when the cards are just right WW can provide some of the most satisfying scrumptious carnage there is. Seeing your carefully executed moves in glorious slow motion, ending with an enemies last whimper, will leave you gloating every single time.

I also like that the game encourages you to use sand more often. In SoT, my tanks were usually half full, while in WW I was constantly begging for more. This is certainly the result of the higher difficulty, but I don’t condone it. However the game can get itself into trouble when it forgets to take into account your sand consumption. There are certain environmental obstacles which you can only overcome by slowing down time, but sometimes you’ll get to them with no sands left in your pockets. This wouldn’t be a problem if the game remembered to put one or two jars in the vicinity, which it doesn’t always do.

Buddy, you're done for.

On the technical side of things, I encountered some minor issues (though they might be exclusive to the Steam version). The save system is pretty buggy. After a reload, enemies that should be dead reappear and enemies that should be alive are nowhere to be found. The secondary weapon you’ve been carrying can disappear after death. This seems like a nitpick, but it’s especially aggravating when you’re fighting the Dahaka for the fifth time and need your Light Sword. The game can sometimes freeze during loading screens and you’ll have to close it by force. Also, skipping cut-scenes only works after you’ve seen them for the first time and the game completely forgets about this if you decide to reload your save or, God forbid, exit the game.

If I were to give one final note, it’s that Stuart Chatwood is probably the best investment Ubisoft made with the entire franchise. Lots of tracks in that game had a hint of hard rock and Chatwood masterfully flipped them inside-out to get what we now know as WW’s OST. You might have thought that the sound of WW is pure rock, but the Oriental roots of the franchise are interwoven with the guitar riffs in a lot more tracks than you’d think. It makes the two OSTs perfect mirror images.

Warrior Within is probably the best PoP game to bring up over a beer. It’s a game based on numerous contradictions and seeing how each of those manifested itself in the final product is fascinating. It was scrutinized upon launch, but amassed a cult status over the years and is now remarked as a diamond in the rough by many. Time took off my rose-tinted glasses and made me see Warrior Within as the flawed ride it truly is, but even so I’m taken aback each time I boot it. I know only a few games that take this many risks and even fewer that manage to pull it off this well.

Right to retcon the sequel or left to cash in from the movie tie-in? Oh, man.