I personally didn’t mind this honestly, as it felt like I could get the upper hand in a fight if I was clever about my approach. You can run up to them from behind, smash into them and still not have them notice you. Enemies seem to only have a 180-degree cone of vision in front of them and are also completely deaf. This is counterbalanced in Shattered thanks to it being a bit more forgiving with action timings, as well as with the AI being uh, let’s say, pretty basic. Frustration is thankfully kept to a minimum due to this design philosophy.Ĭombat itself is still somewhat similar to Souls, in that your character commits to animations when attacking, which is usually where the difficulties of a Souls-like lie. It took me upward of 20 tries to beat some bosses, but that time spent was counted in minutes, rather than hours. There’s always one inside a boss chamber, so you’re never clambering ten minutes across a field to get stomped on again. The bonfire equivalents – Limbo Wells – are placed around the world in such a way as to not cause you too much heartache. Shattered can still be hard at times, but it’s importantly not punishing. The most important of which, in my mind, is found in the famed difficulty of these types of experiences. But where Shattered is most interesting is in where it deviates from Souls. It’s a collection of known qualities that are a surefire way of designing a world. These elements could be taken or left in my book, but they function well enough. You generally don’t have much of an idea about what’s going on, unless you actively try to understand it. You collect a Souls adjacent currency that is lost upon death, but you have one chance to get them back if you defeat the enemy that slew you. You have a healing item you can only use a number of times before refilling at said resting place. This game pulls on so many Souls tropes it ain’t funny. I lay this all out for you here, dear reader, so you understand what perspective I’m coming at Shattered with. Give me a complicated brain teaser I can mull over for days and I’ll relish it – make me perform a series of flawless combos and reactive moves in quick succession, and that controller is going out the window. If I’d managed to score a PS5, I just know I would have been all over Demon’s Souls – for about five minutes anyway, before remembering that hey, difficult twitch-based games are so not my style. Don’t get me wrong, so many of them look so damn cool. Souls style games are… not what I would usually go for. “… wait, it’s a Souls-like? Crap, I’ve already asked for a code from the developer…” “Oh cool, an indie RPG with a cool aesthetic and music! I have to play this!” I’ll be straight with you, my reaction to this game was a little bit of a rollercoaster. Both in the “this is different,” and the “ok damn, this is pretty cool, ” ways. But nearly everything about it is interesting. It’s ambition far outsizes its budget and team experience. Shattered – Tale of a Forgotten King, a recently released out of early access open world Souls-like action RPG, is not hyper polished or ultra focus tested. Have you ever spent countless hours playing a hyper polished, ultra focus tested AAA open-world action game with a budget the size of a small country’s GPD and thought, “I know I’m having fun, but why does this feel off somehow?” Shattered – Tale of the Forgotten King – Nier-ly An Indie Souls Like PC
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