Flintlock: The Siege Of Dawn Review

Summary

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn attempts to set itself apart from the soulslikes it's inspired by, and largely succeeds with its unique combat multiplier and rhythmic boss fights.
Optional tasks are littered across the world, and a great amount of effort has gone into rewarding exploration with side quests, upgrades, and collectibles.
Watching Nor and Enki's relationship flourish is another big plus, but Flintlock is also dragged down by a fairly artificial world and some unpolished and frustrating traversal mechanics.

It can be difficult to make a mark as a soulslike these days, with almost every studio that makes one defaulting to wrapping a slightly tweaked Dark Souls/Sekiro combat system around a unique setting to try and make theirs stand out from the pack. Thankfully, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn manages to forge its o🅷wn identity thanks to developer A▨44’s willingness to push aside the brutal difficulty of the genre and draw elements from other influential titles.

Still, if you’re a fan of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:FromSoftware’s work, you’ll feel right at home in Flintlock. Defeating enemies gives you a resource called Reputation, which you can use to buy skills and items. You’ll lose all of your Reputation should you fall in battle, but you can retrieve it again if you can get back to the spot in which you died. So f𝓡ar, so soulslike.

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However, Flintlock mixes things up with a combat multiplier, which increases with the special abilities and weapons you use during a fight. Once you’ve taken down your foes, you can apply this multiplier to the Reputation that they drop for greater gains, but the multiplier completely resets whenever you take dama♔ge. It’s a simple tweak to the average soulslike formula, but it’s a clever risk and reward system that is constantly working to keep you on your toes and give you a pat on the back for playing well.

Flintlock - Nor shooting a zombie with a pistol

You have a dodge, a parry, and a pistol to counter enemy attacks, but while these are mechanics vital to the likes of Sekiro and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bloodborne, Flintlock adds a splash of God of War to make them feel part of a bigger system. You’ll chain together standard♐ attacks before parrying your enemy’s attempt to strike back, quickly followed by a magical spell, then a pistol counter, a🃏nd then repeat. Once you get in the groove and learn patterns, fights can feel very rhythmic.

It’s possible to get throug🅰h almost every fight without do൩dging at all, and putting together a perfect combo of attacks, parries, and counters to defeat a strong enemy - and then cashing in your massive multiplier for a big chunk of Reputation - feels extremely satisfying.

Flintlock manages to do this without being overly difficult either, another way it differs from its inspirations. That can be a strength or weakness depending on how you feel about the genre, but I never got the sense that the gam𒁃e was too easy. You’ll gradually increase in power as you upgrade your equipment and unlock more skills, but there is always a boss fight waiting in the wings to put you in your place.

There's also the possibility for every enemy you encounter to wreck your combat multiplier, so you can almost never get too complacent.

You can make Flintlock much easier or harder foღr yourself depending on how much you explore off the beaten path, and it’s a game that gives you plenty of incentives to do so. Huge areas of the game’s two major open-world zones are dedicated to optional tasks, whether that be clearing out a bandit encampment, taking on a side quest, or a tough to test yourself against. You’ll almost always be awarded with a useful item or upgrade for exploring something interesting in the distance, and just getting there is enjoyable in itself.

There&rꦅsquo;s an impressive amount of verticality in each location you visit, which perfectly complements Flintlock’s traversal mechanics. You can reach elevated areas and cross large distances with a nifty double jump and midair dash, while chaining them together lets you glide across the map. There are also rifts you can zip to with your magical powers that help you chain jumps together, and Flintlock often combines all of its traversal mechanics to create entertaining climbing sections that act as a refreshing break between fighting off the undead.

Unfortunately, Flintlock never makes full use of its traversal mechanics, and most of the climb🍒ing is very simple. There’s no real sense of danger when you’re scaling cliffs or flying over large chasms. You can sit in a rift as long♒ as you like while you weigh up your next move, and rarely does the game stretch your abilities with traversal in the same way it does with combat. It would have been great to see trickier traversal sections dotted across the entire game rather than just one during its final hour.

It also doesn’t help that climbing can be very slippery at times, as it often feels like bars of soap are attached to your feet during more precise platforming. Flying across wide open spaces, landing with a slide, and then zipping to another rift in the distance feels amazing and dynamic, but it also makes jumping across narrow rooftops and small platf🐽orms frustrating. I slipped from a platform on more than one occasion thanks to the little slide that comes after you stop sprinting.

Flintlock - Enki on a rock outside a cave

Narratively, Flintlock isn&rsqu♓o;t much to write home about either. The focus is very much on main protagonist Nor and her newly acquired fox friend Enki as they work together to take down the ruthless gods of The Great Below to save the land of Kian from total annihilation. Nor and Enki’s growing relationship is definitely the highlight of the story, very reminiscent of Freya and Cuff from Forspoken or Kainé and Weiss from Nier Replicant. I often found myself walking through areas or delaying a fight in the distance so Nor and Enki could finish their conversation before I jumped into the fray.

However, the world itself feels a little artificial. You’ll come across interesting locat🀅ions, sometimes containing a couple of notes that provide a bit of information, but they’re also full of NPCs who repeat dialogue, and rarely have unique characters to interact with. It makes every area feel the same despite being on opposite sides of the world, and that lowers the stakes of the world-ending cataclysm you’ve set out to stop. You have your little party of friends, but you’ll meet no one of substance outside of them.

It’s still a serviceable enough story to keep you invested until the credits roll though, and while some twists and turns may not be as impactful as you’d like them to be, Flintlock is still definitely worth playing for its combat and focus on exploration. I had a blast, and while it’s not as polished as other soulslikes, it deserves to sit up there with the likes of Nioh and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Lies of P as valiant attempts that just fall short of FromSoftware&rsquo𒁃;s masterpieces.