When first seeing Flintlock: Siege of Dawn I wouldn't have called myself 'mightily impressed' with anything that was on offer. The game looked like another Souls-Like to throw on the pile, pistols to shake up the formula to be sure but that was about it. Thus I'll admit the only reason I actually sat down to play the thing was because it was available right there on Gamepass for me to give it a shot and I thought- "Eh, why not." It is on the back of a complete playthrough of the game that I can honestly reflect how I was unfair on this game, both in my initial disregard and my surly attitude going into the first hour or so. And I should have known better given the developers created the well regarded Ashen, but I guess it takes experience to teach the ignorant.
The best way I've heard the gameplay for Flintlock described is as the game being a 'Souls-Lite'. Which is to say- all the trappings of a traditional Souls game but minus a lot of the more intricate and complex systems such as full-blown RPG levelling stats to parse and navigate. Flintlock gives you a skill tree and a dream- further playing into my belief that Souls-gameplay has firmly replaced traditional Action Adventure game design wholesale. In many ways Flintlock is like the accessible Souls game that anyone can dip into in order to get a feel for what the genre is like. Simplified build's thanks to overt gear sets, typical smash and parry combat with a particularly generous parry window and a punishing counter move built into the combat- and a slew of fun but not exactly challenging bosses to cut through in this neatly paced- twenty hour adventure.
Of course, I wouldn't exactly call this game's biggest boon those beginning few hours. The underpowered scrambling of early Souls-games are legendary in their frustration, but for a game as gameplay rigid as Flintlock those early hours really allow the problems with the base gameplay design to show. Take the parry for instance. That parry is brutal and until you unlock withering, (this game's version of a stagger meter) this is pretty much how you end fights with smaller mobs exclusively. Knowing this, as well as how generous the team made their parry window, the developers decided to limit the amount of attacks you can parry. Glowing red warning attacks, unlike in other titles like Lies of P, cannot be parried and thus need to be dodged or interrupted with a quick pistol shot- put simply it's really that parriable attack you're on the lookout for. However, because of how valuable that parry is, enemies are built with movesets heavily weighted with glowing unparriable moves with rare non-indicated parriable attacks. Essentially creating a system where you are avoiding the big attacks that are visually telegraphed and seizing your opportunity with the plain attacks that get no telegraphing. It's just backwards on a design standpoint.
As the game progresses, however, and you start to unlock other ways to fight- Enki passive distractions, Withering build up meters, alternative long-weapons, regenerating grenades- the suite available really opens up with a kind of variety not typical to many other Souls-style games. Sure, you have an option to create an incredible amount of builds in the better souls-games, but few give you the arsenal to wield them all at the same time, or at the touch of a single button. It feels incredibly satisfying to get to a point of familiarity that permits that really aggressive playstyle where you dominate whole crowds of enemies with powder and magic. I really came to enjoy kicking ass in this game.
Flintlock's narrative isn't going to be winning any awards. Actually the game follows a rather straightforward tale of battling the forces of the dead and the gods who stand above them- none of the major characters stand out especially, but none drag down the rather simple narrative either. Some have marked the protagonist as 'boring' but I find that a common misnomer among criticism, Nor is a totally serviceable protagonist with an unambitious story- she is a fine hero for this story. But in our world of extremes - you're either captivating or a snoozefest- which totally precludes the deludes of inbetween therein. Aiden from Watch_Dogs suffered the same slander for years at the hands of the dismissive- but the man's fandom proved enough to bring him back to applause in both sequels.
Bosses are a bit more standout, not numbering very much but providing a decent enough spectacle bout on their own. I think there was an active effort to make sure none of the major bosses upped the ante too unbearably throughout Flintlock and instead fitted their purpose as stopgaps in a conventional story. We are supposedly killing gods, but I never felt a godlike struggle or even a godlike awe looking upon them. But underneath the somewhat lacking challenge- they are fun to fight, diverse in attacks, stuffed with tiny additive gimmicks and largely devoid of drawn out "run away and don't attack" sections- which other Souls-Likes still haven't learnt to avoid. (>cough<Lords of the Fallen>cough<)
My only real complaint would be the difficulty wall right at the very end of the game- the final boss can happily go 'do one'. Being just large enough to sit perpetually off-screen whenever you lock onto him- this encounter is a barrage of sweeping and absurdly powerful attacks which seem to have been pulled out of nowhere. Typically games like these are supposed to build up the challenge, but this was like drifting through DMC 2 and then suddenly being handed a mid-point DMC 3 out of nowhere! And it's not just the attacks themselves, this game features one of the most out of pocket second phases I've recently seen- split with an entire cutscene and breather moment without a checkpoint- meaning you are sent back to the start of the whole fight with each death. The team clearly leaned more into narrative aplomb with how they designed the fights, with some deeply predictable 'set piece' moments, but they didn't want to hold back on the violent unrelenting chaos which led to the worst of all worlds. I rarely go to sleep because a boss made me so frustrated. So well done for that, Flintlock.
Siege of Dawn is like the agnostic's Souls-Like, bridging together the potential of the risk-reward proposition this genre provides whilst feeding back into the power fantasy that seems to have been lost with the passing of traditional action adventure games. Whilst there may be games who do each vertical better individually, I can only think of one other series that deftly tackles this exact convergence and that would be the Jedi: Fallen Order series. Flintlock is a good game, not a great one, not a world burner, but a constrained and largely polished experience that doesn't even bloat itself out with an ill-thought out New Game + system. It's just a fun once-through. Recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment