HIGH Pranking monsters in hilariously lethal ways as the Trickster.

LOW Dropping below 30fps is borderline unacceptable at this point.

WTF Dragonsplague. Holy yikes.

The interesting thing about Dragon’s Dogma 2 is just how much like the original Dragon’s Dogma it is.

When crafting a follow-up to a cult classic like that one, there’s always the chance (and indeed, the fear) that a sequel will shed the things that made it unique in order to appeal to a wider audience. Hiring Hollywood screenwriters, shoehorning in online co-op, trying to tap into current political and pop culture climates… there are many ways for a unique identity to be lost along the way.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 makes none of these audience-grasping errors.

Instead of turning an eye towards whatever’s seen as the zeitgeist, DD2 basically ignores everything on the market and doubles down — hard — on what made its predecessor such a singular, endearing experience. Those who connected with it before can look forward to more faux-medieval fare such as a script full of aughts and naughts, an open and uncompromising world to get absorbed in, huge beasts to battle, astoundingly unpredictable encounters while traveling on the roads, and more. It’s the original Dragon’s Dogma spirit cranked up to eleven, and it’s excellent to see Capcom’s unbridled confidence in their previous work present in this sequel.

The story is boilerplate, but serviceable. In this third-person open world RPG adventure, the player takes on the role of the Arisen — a person who’s had the bad luck of fighting a Dragon and subsequently had their heart ripped out of their chest. This event marks them as a chosen warrior who can control supporting party members known as Pawns, and who will confront the Dragon once more to determine the fate of the world… only some other bastard’s sitting on the throne pretending to be the Arisen, while the real one’s stuck in a slave pit breaking rocks. Time to choose which kind of warrior they are and set things to rights!

It’s a classic setup, but an effective one. Players begin with little but the clothes on their back before setting out to reclaim their throne amidst a tale of skulduggery and opportunists, smacking down ferocious monsters along the way and having a rollicking good time finding treasure in secluded cul de sacs, clambering up massive mythical beasts to prise their eyeballs out, and getting yeeted off mountainsides by rampaging ogres. Living in this world with its breathtaking mountain ranges and dusty deserts is a treat for the senses, even when being knocked senseless by whatever nasties are trying to chow down on them.

This new world in Dragon’s Dogma 2 is well-suited to presenting the core theme of going on epic journeys. It’s approximately four times larger than the first’s land of Gransys, with gorgeous sprawling vistas, new weather mechanics and varied biomes to travel through.

The excellently-realized day/night cycle returns, meaning that a relatively safe jaunt into the wilderness can turn harrowing once the light dims and the undead start bursting out of the ground. While things are far from safe during daylight given the bandits and creatures, it’s always wise to pack for nightfall — but avoid it if possible. And if not avoidable, for God’s sake bring an adequately-fueled lantern. Attempting to survive a minotaur attack in pitch blackness with only a sputtering flame to see by is quite an experience.

The stakes of traveling are increased by the player now taking semi-permanent damage from bumps and scrapes along the way, which can only be recovered by resting at an inn or campsites in the wild. As someone who routinely takes on multiple tasks at once, I found it common to wind up staggering to safety with about ten percent of maximum life left while carrying an entire wagon’s worth of loot and upgrades. Just remember to keep a tent at hand if sleeping in the wild is likely and things will be fine. Survival in Dragon’s Dogma is stripped to its absolute basics, so metrics such as hunger and thirst aren’t going to intrude on the journey. A tent and a lantern is all anyone needs to become fighting fit once more.

Complementing this world full of peril and beauty, the options for choosing a class are just as developed. Fighters are well balanced, Mages are good at both healing allies and zapping foes, and Archers excel at making things dead from a distance. Sneaky players can zip around as a Thief, tripping enemies up and stabbing them as they writhe on the ground. Warriors smash massive weapons around and Sorcerers can blanket the field of battle with spells that blow enemies into the stratosphere.

So far, so familiar. However, there are also new vocations to unlock and play around with, including the Mystic Archer which does a fine job of inflicting status effects and tracking airborne enemies, the Warfarer which can swap between classes at will, and my favorite new addition, the Trickster. Initially seeming borderline useless due to its lack of direct damage, its strengths lie in buffing the party’s Pawns and redirecting enemy attacks towards summoned shadows. Bonus points if said shadow is placed over a cliff with an illusory floor underneath it, but the pawn buff alone is more than enough to decimate most opponents.

Of course, the online Pawn system from the previous game — one of its most notable features — returns. Each player creates a custom Pawn to keep them company in their world. It’s basically a supporting NPC who acts as their closest companion, yet they will also be available to other real players who may choose to recruit them for their own party. An Arisen can recruit up to two other Pawns besides their own, and these additions offer the accrued knowledge of tasks, locations and enemies they’ve absorbed from their owner’s campaigns. They’ll offer to help lead the player around the map toward objectives, or offer up pertinent information as they see fit.

Not sure where to go in a quest? They’ll run out in front, start waving like they’re hailing a taxi, then lead players to the destination. Did they find a treasure chest in another player’s world? They’ll mention it, then ask if their own Arisen fancies cracking it open. It’s a shared, interconnected discovery system where pawns grow and learn any time they’re off cavorting with someone else.

While this adventure is marvelous, at the moment there is one absolute letdown that can’t be overlooked. In a world where players are used to smooth 60fps framerates on console being the norm rather than the exception, it’s an eye opener to witness the depths Dragon’s Dogma 2’s performance can plumb to when pushed.

I initially thought this would be a dealbreaker for me, with first impressions being very, very skewed by borderline unacceptable performance for an action-adventure title in 2024. However, Dragon’s Dogma 2‘s brilliance in so many other key areas won me over completely long before the credits had rolled. It’s a game that’s far greater than the sum of its individual parts, coalescing into something very special indeed.

Out in the open world it’s normally a fairly solid 30fps. Head into a busy town and it noticeably dips below that with uneven, juddering movement. Get attacked by fifteen monsters at once (two of which are often the size of a small house) and it can go lower, affecting the controls. Grappling onto monsters to stab them in the face or timing a charged up swing can become fairly chonky during these moments (it’s a scientific term) and in a realtime game like this, the sudden lack of precision can be an issue.

At the time of this writing, Capcom had already started work on fixing the performance issues detailed here. In the meantime, turning off the (previously mandatory) raytracing option massively boosts performance, but the devs were clear in saying that overall performance fixes are on their radar.

While the framerate is my biggest issue, there are various other chinks in the armor that could be pointed out — things like Pawns and NPCs occasionally suffering pathfinding issues, Pawn dialogue being strange and stilted, a single save slot might not be enough for some players, quests can be ticking down on hidden timers, some have strange completion conditions for a good outcome, and more. The developers are also, maybe, just a little too content to have players retread certain stretches of ground they’ve already covered many times before, and there are still bloody stealth and escort quests present.

However, every sin here is insignificant when compared to the overall experience of finding the Arisen and their party of Pawns trapped inside a mine with a rampaging Gorechimera trying to rip out their eyeballs after an arduous expedition to reclaim some old books, or having a Griffin spot the oxcart I was hitching a ride on and viewing it as a tasty snack from above. I often found myself playing all night during the review period, with ‘just one more quest’ frequently becoming ‘wait, what time is it?’ instead.

When all’s said and done, Dragon’s Dogma 2 is an outstanding refinement and expansion of every good thing the original — now an undisputed cult classic — brought us, and this sequel is more than welcome, especially since its formula still manages to stand alone when it comes to RPGs.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Capcom. It is currently available on XBX/S/PS5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBX. Approximately 105 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed with all achievements earned. There are no multiplayer modes, though there are online elements.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood and Gore, Language, Sexual Themes and Violence. The official description reads: “This is an action role-playing game in which players assume the role of a former prisoner trying to recall their past and save the world from an evil dragon. From a third-person perspective, players explore open-world environments while completing quests and battling various enemies. Players use swords, spears, arrows, and magic spells to kill human and monsters in frenetic combat. Battles are highlighted by cries of pain and frequent blood-splatter effects. A handful of cutscenes depict gore: a monster decapitated in slow-motion (the head can be carried/used as a weapon); a dragon pulling out a human character’s heart. Players’ character can interact with sex workers, exchanging currency for services; a brief sequence depicts the player sitting on a bed with a prostitute (both wearing underwear), before the camera fades to black. One cutscene briefly depicts characters kissing and rolling around in bed (no nudity). Two monsters are shown with bare breasts, though with no discernible details (i.e., no nipples). The word “sh*t” appears in the game.“

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized, though the background opacity for them can be changed. Most of the game is playable without sound, but there are hidden Seeker Tokens littered around the game world that are incredibly hard to find. One vocation has an augment which plays a chiming sound when these are in the vicinity and without the ability to hear this it would be significantly more difficult to hunt them down, as there is no accompanying visual cue. This game is therefore not fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

HIGH Combat, quests and core gameplay.

LOW Enemy variety, difficulty, and lack of story co-op.

WTF Why can’t I play the campaign with my friends in a co-op focused game?

I’ve been anticipating Granblue Fantasy: Relink (Relink for short) since I first got my hands on it for a preview last year. It’s the new realtime Action RPG game by Cygames and it feels like a mix of Final Fantasy XIV and Monster Hunter — yet as much as I want it to, in its current state it doesn’t surpass either. The director, Tetsuya Fukuhara, has worked on several Platinum titles and has nailed the combat that makes each character a joy to play... The fast-paced, yet tactical action kept me engaged well into the endgame hours of questing with friends. However, while GBF:R was a ride I loved, it ultimately left me wanting more of what it could be.

The game’s (short) story picks up suddenly and places the player in the role of Gran or Djeeta as captain of the Grandcypher airship. As a successor to Granblue Fantasy, Relink expected me to be familiar with the cast and story of the original mobile title which has yet to be released outside of Asia. There is an anime – available on Cygames’s YouTube channel for free – for those who want to know the preceding story and characters, though. Having watched part of it myself, it did help somewhat, but isn’t necessary as one can understand the characters and their motivations relatively quickly thanks to Relink’s standard plot.

Frankly, there was barely a single breath of character development throughout the story, and nearly all character beats were relegated to text-based “Fate Episodes”, which I feel should have been seamlessly integrated into the plot. Not having actual conversations between characters during the story was disappointing. Some localization choices made in the style of a Saturday morning cartoon was odd, and didn’t help engage me either.

While Relink’s story never surprised or felt deep, it was charming enough and did entertain until the end of its 10-hour run. At that point, it turns to its real focus — questing. Questing and action setpieces are where Relink shines, and playing with friends felt like how the content was meant to be experienced. Once I realized what the actual goal was, I was more okay with the scant script. The misstep, though, is that the narrative is not co-op. This meant that I was forced to have my friends rush through their own story modes to join me in the ‘postgame’ of Relink, as most content unlocks upon completion.

Each character controls in a snappy and polished way, though I was disappointed that I couldn’t change or remap the controller, and it somehow only shows Xbox controls. This is a small gripe, though, as Relink’s character roster and gameplay gave me enough fast-paced action to last another ten or twenty hours after the credits rolled.

Quests function similarly to Monster Hunter in that they revolve around the player undertaking increasingly powerful foes and boss fights to gain XP and materials to upgrade characters. The game currently hosts 20 playable characters, and more are already planned. Thankfully, the developers skip out on gacha-like random draws to unlock more characters despite its gacha roots. After over 30 hours in, I was able to unlock almost all of them and could have earned the last one had I tried harder to obtain him in my endgame grind.

Speaking of endgame, the quests here are both the best and worst part of Relink. The best because they’re legitimately enjoyable, and fighting bosses with friends was something I wanted more of. The worst, because the enemy variety is severely limited. I only encountered one unique boss that wasn’t in the campaign, and many encounters felt like recycled palette swaps. This trend continued throughout the “difficulty” modes I unlocked in multiplayer, though they never felt like they got harder.

Technically, Relink ran well for me on PC. Outside of crashes while loading endgame quests, I never had any issues, and with some tweaks it ran great, even on my Steamdeck. 

The player base seems to be growing quickly on Steam, but for it to succeed in the long term, I believe it needs to focus on expanding the endgame considerably, with harder difficulty settings and a wider variety of monsters and bosses. I can see some potential as a long term co-op multiplayer experience with raid groups and serious challenges, but whether it will receive that content remains to be seen.

As a nine-year-long passion project of its developers, Granblue Fantasy: Relink oozes promise and style boosted by addictive action gameplay, a large cast and engaging mechanics. However, without more to offer endgame players and perhaps a bit of buffing in the narrative side, it’s likely to fizzle out and be eclipsed by larger titles. I can only hope the developer shows the same labor of love in supporting it, as they have in crafting it.

Addendum: After the original text of this review was written but before it was published, many people — myself included — have found that Granblue Fantasy: Relink has been corrupting, overwriting or otherwise deleting save files. This happened to me after almost 40 hours — suddenly all my saves were simply gone. I contacted support and also attempted to restore the files, but it wasn’t possible from my end. The devs said that they would have no information to share with me, and that they would not make any efforts to restore saves. Losing so much time invested without recourse or support from the dev side just isn’t acceptable.

Until the issue is solved I absolutely can’t recommend this game.

Rating (prior to losing my data) : 7.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Cygames, Platinum Games Inc. and published by Cygames, XSEED Games, and Plaion. It is currently available on PS4/5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 37 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. 26 hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Language, Mild Suggestive Themes, and Violence. The official description reads: This is an action role-playing game in which players assume the role of an airship captain battling monsters across a fantasy realm. From a third-person perspective, players control their character and other party members through melee-style fights against various enemies (e.g., wolves, goblins, robots, boss characters). Characters use swords, magic, and guns to kill enemies in fast-paced combat; fighting is highlighted by light and slow-motion effects. Some sequences allow players to control mechanized armor suits in battle; these scenes depict frequent gunfire and explosions. Some female characters are designed with revealing outfits (e.g., deep cleavage); camera angles can focus on characters’ revealing outfits and/or anatomy (i.e., upskirt detailing). The words “sh*t” and “a*shole” appear in the game.           

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. The game can be played entirely without sound, and everything relevant is conveyed through visual cues. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Mouse and keyboard are remappable, the controller layout is not.

HIGH Hyper-crunchy team-based tactics. Lesbian cowgirls.

LOW Playing 3/4ths of the boat level without knowing I could swim.

WTF Why can’t I pick up ammo and give it to a teammate?

The first two Desperados games never blipped on my radar since they didn’t come to console, but I surely do remember Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun. That unassuming title from the same team seemed to come out of nowhere (appropriate, given the ninjas?) and set my tactics brain on fire – complex, nuanced, detailed and intricate, it was one of the best experiences I had in 2017, and I was ravenous for more. Now, in 2020, Mimimi Productions has delivered.

Desperados III is a semi-realtime team tactics title seen from an overhead isometric perspective. The player is in charge of five characters, each with a predefined personality and skillset. Cooper’s the cowboy with a throwing knife and revolvers. Doc is handy with bandages and a sniper pistol. Hector’s the strongman with a giant bear trap. Kate dazzles guards with her good looks, and Isabelle practices Voodoo that can dominate an enemy’s will.  

The premise is classic Western – Cooper’s after the man who killed his Pa, and he gathers a ragtag group of skilled misfits who can help him get the job done, upending a dirty railroad company’s underhanded deeds along the way. Although cutscenes are minimal, the crew often talks to each other during missions to build camaraderie. They’re a solid bunch, and the chatter is appreciated. That said, story is not the draw here.  

Most levels in Desperados III are massive, sprawling affairs set in the West (and beyond) filled with dusty roads, construction sites, stables, saloons, and, of course, plenty of enemies. Hostile troops come in various flavors and roles — some are stationed at specific places to keep watch, while others have predetermined patrol routes. It’s up to the player to study enemy patterns and their surroundings to figure out how the team’s talents can crack the challenges that lie before them.

Each area is incredibly detailed, offering multiple paths towards victory. Cautious players can use Cooper and Isabelle’s agility to climb and sneak along rooftops. Hector might lay his trap down and whistle for a guard to come investigate, while Doc is perfectly content to pop heads from the safety of being a hundred yards away.

This crew is capable of handling any situation, but there’s a twist – since every level has multiple enemies covering each other and tiny windows of opportunity to operate unseen, the player will often have to coordinate actions between two (or more) characters at once via “Showdown Mode”.

With the press of a button, everything onscreen stops and the actions of every character can be planned out in advance. For example, Cooper can be told to spring from behind a corner to silence a guard while Hector prepares to blast three stationed nearby who would have come to his aid. At the same time, Kate can plan to coldcock the goon she’s been sweet-talking to stop him from sounding the alarm. Once plans are laid, all three actions are triggered simultaneously to take out an entire group of foes that would have been impossible to do in sequence.

Even better, there’s no one correct answer for any scenario. Sometimes Showdown is the way to go, other times the direct approach works, and sometimes being quiet wins the day. In addition to this freedom of approach, I loved that the devs have story events that affect team composition – some characters aren’t available in some levels, and these forced changeups keep things fresh. Instead of constantly relying on the same abilities, the player is asked to make do with what they have — something easily solved with one teammate becomes a new challenge with another, and vice versa. It’s wonderful.

Smartly, the devs let the player save at any time with no limits, and thanks to this, the willingness to experiment comes without penalty. It’s absolutely the right call, not only to encourage new strategies, but because Desperados III can often be quite difficult, requiring a thorough, systematic approach to every area — running and gunning almost never works.

No, success comes from meticulously scrutinizing each map and figuring out which guards need to be taken out in which order, and then how to take them out without causing a ruckus. I saved and reloaded dozens of times in each map because even the best plan can (and will) fail repeatedly thanks to unexpected guards popping up, lookouts that go unnoticed until too late, or just plain poor timing on the player’s part – half a second’s delay can mean the difference between sneaking away or getting a bullet in the head.

While I absolutely love Desperado III’s formula, I will say that many levels are too long. It’s common to spend an hour or two on a single mission, and even longer if things don’t go well. The devs make clear that speedruns are possible by setting them as in-game achievements, but the first time through a location is usually overwhelming. Being faced with one huge job after another can feel grueling, so for this review I limited myself to one level per day to prevent burnout. A few smaller levels sprinkled throughout the campaign would have been welcome.

I’d also like to see more dramatic punctuation during the campaign. The giant levels take a significant amount of time and effort to get through, but the payoffs are rarely showstoppers — there aren’t many emotional high points or ‘wow!’ events that feel commensurate to the challenge. After taking two hours to systematically remove an overlapping series of guards covering each other with airtight sightlines, getting a low-key “we did it.” and moving on to the next one feels a bit flat.

Those complaints are minor ones, though. Like Shadow Tactics before it, Desperados III is one of the best tactics games available, and certainly one of the most satisfying titles I’ve played this year. It’s a finely-tuned masterpiece of Swiss-watch construction, polished in every respect and delivering the kind of tuned cerebral action that isn’t easily found. For fans of complex strategic gameplay, they just don’t come better than this.  

Disclosures: This game is developed by Mimimi Productions and published by THQ Nordic. It is currently available on PS4, XBO, PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PS4. Approximately 28 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed (still playing!) There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes and Violence. The official ESRB description reads as follows: This is a strategy game in which players assume the role of a cowboy (John Cooper) on a quest for revenge in the Wild West. From a top-down perspective, players traverse the wilderness and frontier towns to battle enemy bandits and rival gangs in turn-based combat. Players use pistols, shotguns, and stealth attacks (knives, traps) to kill enemies; players can also employ indirect kills (e.g., poison) to dispatch enemies. Combat is accompanied by realistic gunfire, screams of pain, and blood-splatter effects; fallen enemies can be seen lying in large pools of blood. Cutscenes depict additional acts of violence: a man shot in the head; a man executed at close range by a villain. The game contains references to suggestive material: dialogue referencing brothels (e.g., “She on the first floor of the Flagstone brothel, drinking whiskey and watching the girls dance”; “Fanciest whorehouse in the quarter. Girls there will make your dreams come true.”) and allusions to sex (e.g., “That was one hell of a night…What’s wrong darling? Lost something in the heat of the night?”). The words “f**k,” “sh*t,” and “a*shole” are heard in the game.

Colorblind Modes: There is one colorblind mode available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue can be subtitled, including ambient conversations from NPCs if the player is close enough in the game for their character to ‘hear’ them. Text cannot be resized or altered. No audio cues are necessary for gameplay, as there is ample visual feedback onscreen at all times for nearly every situation – how much noise a character makes, when enemies spot the player, and more. It’s all visual. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The controls are fully remappable.

HIGH The art style.

LOW The UI.

WTF The love of pumpkins.

Wartile is a strategy title attempting to do something different with the turn-based template by looking like something that should be turn based, while not actually being that thing, and also including a card-based element to boot. The approach is refreshing in a certain sense, but the end result isn’t as engaging as it might appear at first glance.

Wartile tells the story of a Viking village worried that they’ve fallen out of favor with the gods, so they send two warriors to sacrifice a goat. From there the two encounter aggressive Norse men, demons, witches and the like as they dig deeper into why their people have been forsaken.

Each level is beautifully rendered as a hex-based boardgame. When not in combat, moving characters (which look like miniatures mounted on bases) and performing actions is more or less a standard turn-based affair. However, once characters enter combat, a timer appears and controls how often a character can move. The pieces auto-attack enemies near them, and it’s up to the player to manage special abilities. Visually, it’s like watching a match of speed chess as the pieces trundle around and engage with each other in quasi-real time.

As in most miniature games of the kind that Wartile resembles, height differences and positioning matters, so there’s often a fair bit of jostling on the player’s part to find the most advantageous spot for each figurine, and higher ground is usually the wisest place to be. There are also a few other elements that allow the player to sway the game in their favor.

Each unit has a choice of special abilities that can be used regularly — things like stunning an opponent, drawing all units’ attention, or buffing all allies. And, as mentioned, there’s a card-based system as well — temporary cards can boost abilities, and in addition, there are other cards that can be bought with in-game currency and used to provide even more variety in support. On top of all this, there’s a leveling-up system for the units, gear to be bought or found, and higher-level challenges as the player’s group increases in capability.

So far, all the boxes necessary to create a solid game seem to be ticked, but Wartile just never comes together.

In large part, the combat struggles to find its own identity in a way that feels meaningful. Although it tries to incorporate a realtime element, it lacks the ‘plate spinning’ urgency of a true Real-Time Strategy while also sacrificing the measured, tense thoughtfulness of a deeper Turn-Based Strat. 

It can occasionally be exciting to see units scramble for position and hit anything that goes near them — they auto-attack, remember — but for a lot of the time, it was just me waiting for my pieces to cut through enemies while I occasionally popped a buff. There was one interesting horde-inspired map where my team was holding out against waves of enemies that had me moving back and forth trying to hold the best position, but that was a rare one-off when the mechanics were working in tandem with the level design to create something interesting. The majority of play, however, is walking along a linear path, triggering an encounter and then waiting to win.

Wartile also extends its length by reusing maps, which didn’t help the feeling that I was just drumming my fingers waiting for each encounter to be over.

Finally (and this might  seem to be a bit nitpicky) the UI design isn’t up to the standard set by the rest of the presentation. The text and box cut-outs look like placeholders, and text is often quite small. It might look alright played close to a computer screen, but when sitting on a couch several feet away, it’s hard to read.

It is a massive shame to feel like I can’t enthusiastically endorse Wartile — it has a winning visual style and the seed of a novel idea, but that seed doesn’t bear a fully-formed fruit.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Playwood Project and published by DECK13 Spotlight. It is currently available on PC, PS4, and XBO. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher, reviewed on the XBO-X. Approximately 9 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E10+ and contains Fantasy Violence. This game features characters portrayed as miniature figurines. Animation is minimal and there’s no gore, salty language or sexual content.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game is fully playable without sound. Text cannot be resized (it’s small!) nor can the color be changed.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. For a bit I thought there was no controls screen (don’t hide it in one specific menu guys!).

HIGH After all this time, it’s here!

LOW One-hit-kills from traps that are too tough to see.

WTF This feels more like an endurance test than a game.

I first saw Below in 2013, when it was on display at a games expo in Seattle. I was immediately intrigued by the visual style and the idea of a next-gen (at the time) roguelike dungeon crawler made by a studio whose work I was already a huge fan of. I was immediately sold. I bought an Xbox One soon afterwards, eagerly anticipating the adventure.

Five years later, Below has finally been released, I have it downloaded to the console I bought to play it, and after all this time I can say that the wait… wasn’t worth it.

Below is a real-time top-down roguelike which starts off mysteriously – an unnamed person travels across the sea to an unnamed island and then enters a dungeon carved out of rock that extends to unknown depths. There’s no explanation, premise or backstory given. There’s not even a tutorial to explain the mechanics. Things simply begin, and it’s up to the player to figure things out.

Initially, I was fine with this. It didn’t seem too complex at first – one button drew my sword and shield, another switched me to using a bow. Killing anything that moved and searching the environment awarded various items that can be crafted with simple recipes via an easy-to-understand menu. Within a few minutes I had a jug of life-restoring soup, a torch, and extra arrows.

Once inside the dungeon proper, each randomly-generated floor is choked with a thick fog that hides everything from sight until the player pushes through and clears it. A simple map showing where the player’s been is available with the push of a button. A key is hidden away somewhere on each floor, and once found, opens the stairs to the next section.

The point of Below is ostensibly to get to the bottom of the dungeon although that was never clearly stated, and I have no idea what’s down there. I don’t think I’ll ever find out, either… Frankly speaking, Below feels hostile, tedious, and like a chore to play. I’m definitely no stranger to roguelikes or dungeon crawlers, but this experience asks too much of the player without giving enough in return.

For example, the graphics are tiny. They do a fine job of expressing a sense of scale since the character is miniscule in comparison to the huge caverns and vast expanses of stone that make up the island, but the side effect is that it’s tough to see details and situational awareness is low. Complicating things is that the dungeons are dark. The player eventually finds a magical lantern and can use torches, but even with these sources of limited illumination, it’s challenging to make out details or to see much of anything — a problem since Below is absolutely filthy with instant-kill traps and monsters that can take the player’s life in a swipe or two.

While Below eventually unlocks a few shortcut options and a magical room where players can stash some goods, none of those things make up for the fact that getting killed in the blink of an eye by something that’s hard to see feels cheap and punishing. The player doesn’t always start absolutely from scratch depending on how their last run went, but they might as well be, and there’s not enough different on each attempt to make covering the same ground multiple times interesting or rewarding.

Being on constant guard from traps and monsters is exhausting, and requires more than the usual amount of patience and vigilance. It’s made worse by the fact that going slowly and cautiously isn’t always possible since the player must also contend with survival elements in addition to immediate physical dangers – constantly-dwindling meters for hunger, thirst, fuel for the torch and eventually warmth force them to constantly be on the hunt for more resources. Below won’t let players go slow and steady, and it’s also quick to spank those who rush ahead.

Playing Below feels like more like a cruel test of endurance than a well-balanced game. How much can a player take before they tap out? For me, it was just a few hours. I have no problem with challenge, but Below is draining to play and the idea of fighting tooth-and-nail for every inch of easily-lost progress isn’t a welcome prospect.

I’m genuinely sad that the little indie I found so enamoring many years ago turned out to be something that I can’t stand playing, but that’s the truth of it, and here we are. Masochists looking for something to test their mettle might think a trip Below worthwhile, but I suspect that most will find a harsh, unforgiving experience that’s outdone by other, less brutal titles. Rating: 4 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Capy Games. It is currently available on Xbox One and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBO. Approximately 8 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes. 

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Violence and Blood. Besides the fact that this game will be miles too hard for most kids, there’s nothing to be alarmed with here. The graphics are miniscule and nothing is more graphic than the character getting stabbed and falling over. There’s no sexual content or salty language.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is no dialogue in this game and the only text is found in menus. There are no audio cues necessary for successful play. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.