Leo Faierman
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Could this surprise spinoff of a long-running beat ‘em up MMO be one of the best non-FromSoftware Souls-likes ever made? I certainly think so. Developed by Neople and published by Nexon, The First Berserker: Khazan is the year's best surprise thus far, a deliciously challenging dark fantasy action-adventure stacked with grueling bossfights and style to spare. The sharper focus on combat outweighs its exploration gameplay, but don’t mistake that for weakness; The First Berserker: Khazan exceeds expectations and honors its genre heritage with an exquisite presentation and juicy action-RPG fundamentals.
After a well-received demo two years ago, some reasonable concerns manifested over how a kick-oriented action game might maintain its momentum for the long haul. Luckily, Anger Foot sticks to its strengths for most of its substantive runtime and, even with firearms apparently overshadowed in its title, the vibrant gunplay succeeds as well. Still, the lack of a reload leaves the almighty foot as the primary method of engagement, handling everything from returning lobbed grenades to activating levers, and the addictive intensity of the game’s best encounters carry it merrily through 60+ busy levels of carnage.
For a seemingly dour art game excoriating religion, Indika is pretty funny. With its publishing duties handled by 11 bit studios, the small team at the now-Kazakhstan-based studio Odd Meter have devised a discomfiting surrealist dirge of an adventure game, one which matches exquisite moments and inventive visuals with jagged third-person exploration controls. Centered on a nun within the Russian Orthodox Church of the late 19th century, Indika presents a bleak tale stuffed with black humor. Amid the developing political reality surrounding Russia in the present day, the quest feels poignant, even while much of its messaging relies on subjective interpretation.
However, many of those games are strengthened by their creative randomness, with a rotation of armaments, boons, and permanent upgrades to support individualized builds. In Lysfanga, it’s entirely possible to beat the game with the equipment found in its first hour. Runes and spells are not built equally, the majority of them are hardly worth the swap, and they don’t scale or evolve over time. Aside from the three weapons which unlock at key points in the story, no equipment can be hot-swapped once combat has begun, so players always need to commit to a strict loadout for each fight. It’s easy enough to restart, but being unable to switch - or even combine the effects of more than one rune or spell - causes the action to feel inescapably shallow.
Individual heroes have their own loosely readable class affinities (like tank/healer/scout) and loot-dropped heavy guns or handguns are restricted to certain characters for use. They also each wield a unique passive ability, can equip up to two weapons at a time, and use a special move and an ultimate, but any hero can install turrets in designated slots throughout each map. Most any group of heroes can typically hold their own against small waves, but those turrets quickly become a necessity. There are a few different elemental damage turrets, as well as buffing turrets, which can affect things like critical damage or overall DPS in a given room. Shoving a turret repairs it and, after it’s destroyed enough monsters, will upgrade it to be even more efficient.
Most of the game features excellent English voice-acting, performances which help sell the narrative and add poignancy to the script. A naughty or childish joke is usually close at hand, but there’s enough eventual depth revealed in the cast and their actors to outshine their clichéd trappings. Everything is further helped along by Eternights’ striking visual style, which alternates between relatively simplistic 3D designs and some superb but lightly animated hand-drawn cutscenes. Many enemies and city scenes are effectively nightmarish, including several twisted Cronenbergian horrors wielding swords made of fused limbs, and one distressing set piece sees a massive wall of smartphones blare out the final social media posts of the plague’s unwitting victims.
Monster Train persists as the most readily available comparison and inspiration; that contemporary classic deckbuilder shares Wildfrost’s prioritization of hero cards, leaders, boss fights, and lane positioning, but there’s much more in-battle flexibility here. Two lanes afford space for a maximum of twelve cards on the battlefield – six for each side – but, in an ingenious stroke, players can hustle around their active cards in between turns without penalty, opening up new tactics at every step and infusing the card-based gameplay with a refreshing feeling of agency. Injured cards can even be shuffled back into the deck to be healed at no cost.
Wild Hearts should thrive in its post-launch life as new updates accrue, while players devise and trade loadout strategies and boss techniques. Additionally, Koei Tecmo has stated that no microtransactions are planned, with new karakuri, weapons, kemono, and quests expected in the coming months. Our review encompassed single player only, and the game is a completely reasonable and satisfying challenge in offline mode, with an engaging story that builds to some gratifying peaks. Wild Hearts is a class act and an impressive first step at a franchise that feels entirely original, in spite of its direct Monster Hunter competition looming large.