The set-up involves the North, where you play as Arlo, the adopted son of the Warden of Winter’s Edge. After repelling the Dark Wings long ago, the region is at relative peace…until it isn’t. The bats make their somewhat expected return, possessing a powerful ancient beast, and burn Winter’s Edge to the ground. Arlo must now rebuild his home while simultaneously stepping up to new responsibilities.

"The path of vengeance is one laden with preparation, and Arlo is a busy rat, from building an arsenal of weaponry to restoring Winter’s Edge to its former beauty."

Tails of Iron 2 doesn’t feature any dialogue between characters – their intentions are laid bare through icons and symbols. It’s on the returning Doug Cockle, the voice of Geralt from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, to carry the narrative. And make no mistake – the stoic tones fit well enough, even with the occasional animal-focused jokes. Though the frequency can take some getting used to at the start, you eventually settle into the mood, especially with how seamlessly the narration transitions between events and levels.

Unfortunately, it can’t mask how dry some of the characterization is. Even with some of the more memorable NPCs like Ron the Blacksmith and Billy the Beaver, I’m hard-pressed to remember many others by name, much less care (death predictions aside). Arlo is developed enough – perks of the protagonist and whatnot. However, I’m not quite reconciling the character so vividly depicted in Cockle’s words with the one I’m playing.

The connection between narration and on-screen action also occasionally isn’t one-to-one, as Cockle’s narration lagged and came across as awkward during one pivotal point. Not that there was too much dramatic tension, but it certainly didn’t help.

The path of vengeance is one laden with preparation, and Arlo is a busy rat, from building an arsenal of weaponry to restoring Winter’s Edge to its former beauty. You’ll start by venturing to other regions and recruiting various NPCs to fulfil the roles of builder, blacksmith, and chef. Once your retinue is complete, you can build and upgrade their facilities, unlocking new benefits. The settlement-building isn’t the most robust, but it’s serviceable, neither bogging down the action nor requiring excessive material grinding.

"That Monster Hunter lite feeling further arises when taking on optional hunts against large monsters, some appearing during story quests and requiring multiple phases of stabbing to defeat later."

Despite the action RPG moniker, you won’t accrue levels, assigning stat points and attempting to scale off your weapon of choice. Tails of Iron 2 instead takes a pseudo-Monster Hunter approach where meals are key for bonuses like increased health, and your “build” leans most on the equipped armor and weapons. The Souls-like weight system of Light, Medium, and Heavy builds comes into play, affecting your dodge roll, but there’s no stamina. Arlo can parry with a weapon and shield bound to R1, smash enemies with a two-handed weapon to R2, and deliver ranged death with bows, firearms, and more with L1.

Combat is intriguing at first. Despite the cartoonish veneer, slices and strikes splatter blood on your surroundings and character, while executions add to the brutality. Yet the actual feel and responsiveness never quite match it, lacking that satisfying crunch at times. It also doesn’t help that swapping sides while guarding can feel awkward at first. Holding down R1 or R2 will unleash a charged attack after a short duration, which may seem ideal for closing the distance on a parried foe. The reality is that walking up and smacking them with normal attacks is better.

Almost every weapon has an elemental attribute, which is necessary to exploit lest you deal reduced damage to an enemy. You can also use whetstones to sharpen a weapon, exponentially increasing the damage dealt, but it eventually becomes unnecessary once you learn to match elements.

That Monster Hunter lite feeling further arises when taking on optional hunts against large monsters, some appearing during story quests and requiring multiple phases of stabbing to defeat later. You can even repeat them to farm certain materials, which is neat. Having them run around the region isn’t, especially since the environments don’t really mix up or add to the hunt in imaginative ways. At least the bosses have a decent range of attacks, keeping you guessing between the parryable and dodgeable.

"Even if you become comfortable with all the various quirks, most fights can be resolved by matching the right element. Your opponent spits fire? Switch to ice. Are they using lightning? Go for poison, maybe, and so on."

I’m a proponent of hunting, gathering and crafting your weapons and armor, but completing quests and hunts is usually enough to earn some free of charge. It’s not the first ARPG to try and balance between crafting and quest rewards, but Tails of Iron 2 can feel slightly skewed towards the latter. Higher rarities exist to strive towards, yet at times, it felt like I was sitting on all my gathered and carved materials as blueprints gathered dust at the smithy.

Even if you become comfortable with all the various quirks, most fights can be resolved by matching the right element. Your opponent spits fire? Switch to ice. Are they using lightning? Go for poison, maybe, and so on. Combat can thus become repetitive, even if there’s a decent variety of enemies to slay and multiple weapon types. The new elemental magic also sadly doesn’t do much to change this, long cooldown times notwithstanding.

A note on the difficulty: What is the first hour supposed to be? On Tails of Iron mode, the default “Medium” difficulty, you have few weapon or armor choices and almost no Whetstones to improve damage. Health recovery is gradual, requiring you to hold the button and hope the bar fills fast enough. On the one hand, it feels appropriately challenging, forcing you to read your opponent, know when to parry or dodge and utilize traps to gain an opening.

On the other hand, enemies can nearly one-shot you, adding to the frustration of the initially clunky movement, and they seemingly take little damage. The first two real boss fights feel massively overtuned in this regard, leading me to drop the difficulty to Fairy Tail.

The next few hours were then a stomp, through and through. Changing it back resulted in bosses two or two-and-a-half-shotting me, which felt much more manageable. Even then, however, most of the encounters were easy-breezy. If this is what the balance on Tails of Iron difficulty is supposed to be, I can’t fathom the point of making the first hour so frustrating.

"If you enjoyed the first game and want more, it may be worth diving into it, but everyone else should think carefully before following the rats."

At least Odd Bug Studio’s environmental art is gorgeous, with immense amounts of hand-drawn details. From the massive skeletons of the Whale Boneyard to the parliament of Owls, it’s awe-inspiring. I also liked the little details while traversing, like a queen spider who later became a hunting target skulking by in the background or the Owls peeking from trees as you entered their realm for the first time. A few animations can feel stilted at times, like the one odd enemy which went from standing upright to on the floor in a frame, but they’re otherwise fine.

The exploration is a whole other rat’s nest. There are some hidden areas and grapple points with very light platforming, but it’s otherwise very straightforward, resulting in tedium when backtracking. Fast travel alleviates this later, though you must have the resources and gold available to build the points. Subsequent regions open up a bit and offer more winding paths, but they’re still dull to traverse with only NPC conversations and save benches occasionally breaking up the flow. Something more could have been done, especially for the side hunts, yet it feels like you’re going through the motions.

Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter starts as a brutal medieval fantasy rooted in the fantastical with its various anthropomorphic races. The awkward combat offers many weapon choices, but the overall loop eventually becomes repetitive. With unimaginative and dull exploration, it’s up to the story to drive you forward, and the Butcher of Blaviken can only do so much. If you enjoyed the first game and want more, it may be worth diving into it, but everyone else should think carefully before following the rats.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

As outlined on Steam, there are four types of Elementa: Fire, Ice, Electric, and Poison. Fire can scorch enemies, and Ice temporarily halts them. Electric will stun threats, while Poison causes damage over time that spreads to nearby threats. Of course, discovering other shrines will further upgrade these Elementa, though in what ways remains to be seen.

Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter launches on January 28th for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch. The Standard Edition retails for $24.99, while the Deluxe Edition costs $29.99. The latter includes two DLC packs with armor sets, shields, axes, and cosmetic customization.

The former retails for $24.99, while the latter costs $29.99 and features the Augur of the Draugr and Hair to the Throne Packs. Together, they offer new helms, axes, shields, pauldrons, and armor sets alongside six beards and hairstyles to customize the protagonist Arlo.

Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter follows up on the 2021 action RPG, with Doug Cockle of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt fame returning to provide narration. While retaining the first game’s visceral combat, players can look forward to six new biomes, elemental effects in combat, monster hunting, and a new day/night system. Stay tuned for more gameplay, and check out the previous trailer here.

Tails of iron 2 is now available to preorder! Welcome back to the Ratdom! 🐀⚔️🦇 pic.twitter.com/2amfJe6j1t

— OddBugStudio 🐀🐁 (@OddBugStudio) December 5, 2024

With a new trailer showcased at Xbox’s day 3 Gamescom livestream, it was announced that Tails of Iron 2 has been delayed, and is now set to launch sometime in February of next year. A more specific release date wasn’t announced. Of course, the trailer also showcased some new gameplay footage, showing off several different locations, enemy types, glimpses of combat, and more. You can view the trailer below. 

Upon its release in February, Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter will be available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Check out more combat-focused gameplay footage through here.

"Limiting gameplay to 2.5D was both helpful from a design perspective, but also lent itself to really interesting gameplay opportunities."

Beyond Galaxyland’s semi-retro 2.5D aesthetic is one that instantly catches the eye. How did you land on this look for the game?

The main reason it’s primarily 2.5D is because I wanted to tell a giant story and thought an entirely 3D world would be biting off more than I could chew as a solo developer. Beyond that, I felt pixel art would convey the amount of detail I was looking to target while still being manageable for such a large-scale world. Also, I love the pixel art aesthetic (and grew up with it: aka that sweet, sweet nostalgia).

Beyond Galaxyland’s retro-futuristic sci-fi setting is one of its more eye-catching elements. What can you tell us about the role it will play in the game and its larger story, and how much the game emphasizes things such as worldbuilding?

This game has a huge emphasis on world building. I want players to feel completely immersed in the strange world of Galaxyland (and beyond). I strongly believe narrative is what keeps players coming back to games years later, so building an awesome world to tell an epic story in was a major priority. I hope players will appreciate the unique ‘brand’ of the world, funny but also serious, silly but also grand and lived in. I tried to strike a precise chord between offering something humorous but that can also be taken seriously. A quick example: Most names in the game, and some side characters are really silly and not to be taken seriously (such as many NPC robots are named OtherBot), but lots of main characters and villains are not to be messed with and treated with further layers of gravitas and precision.

"This game has a huge emphasis on world building. I want players to feel completely immersed in the strange world of Galaxyland (and beyond). I strongly believe narrative is what keeps players coming back to games years later, so building an awesome world to tell an epic story in was a major priority."

How much variety can players expect from the locations that they will visit across the entirety of the experience?

Oh man, a huge variety! That is one of Beyond Galaxyland’s stronger suits. I’m something of a minimalist, so I try to keep each planet to mostly one theme. This refers to the graphics, stories told there, and also importantly the music. It’s key for me to make each location feel different from the last, and serve its own purpose. One of the goals with each planet was to deliver a unique biome, often referencing classic tropes, i.e.: There’s a desert planet, jungle planet, an ice planet, etc… But each one has unique twists to take advantage of the freedom of the setting of space/Galaxyland. Just a fun example of how stories differ: One planet in particular mimics a classic fantasy RPG setting, where the villagers believe in a sort of magic and fairytale… not the sort of adventure you’d typically expect to have lightyears from Earth!

Beyond Galaxyland also features a mechanic for capturing enemies and using them in combat. How extensive will this aspect of the experience be? How large is the roster of capturable creatures available in the game, and how significantly can they affect the flow of combat?

There’s a total of 29 capturable enemies/bosses. The cast of creatures extends to most basic enemies throughout the game, and more bosses can be captured than cannot (I wasn’t about to add a capture mechanic and not let you capture giant, optional side quest bosses).

Once caught, you can equip and level up captured enemies in order to use their abilities, which functionally replace spells in this game. You can, for example, capture an Ice Elemental to cast Ice, or a Baby Raptor which can boost the party’s strength. Once the Ice Elemental is at level 3, you may use Ice All against all enemies at once. I always say that captured summons are functionally similar to Materia from Final Fantasy 7 (OG), for those familiar.

"I hope, like many aspects of Beyond Galaxyland, players will find the mechanics streamlined and easily accessible, while also offering a satisfying feeling of depth."

Roughly how long will an average playthrough of the game be?

Players can expect the main story to take around 14 hours, 18 hours if you include all side quests, and 20 hours for completionist players (all hidden tokens found, monster arena conquered, etc… and perhaps even a hidden development museum? Who knows?) I think this is also a good place to note that this game features zero “fluff”, something I’m quite proud of. No fetch quests, no backtracking, no tedious grinding, no extremely lengthy dungeons, and lots of other deviations from the standard “formula” like that.

Also regarding side quests: Some planets are entirely optional and function like their own individual story (there’s some neat ones in there I’m so incredibly excited for players to discover). In other words, the side quests are robust and treated just as thoughtfully as the main story. I like to think Beyond Galaxyland is paced closer to a movie than a video game, and I hope that will show while playing. It has all the heart of a major 50-hour RPG but condensed into a tightly packed, blazingly fast adventure.

Players have quite a range of options in pursuing their quest. They can take on the Dark Wings’ leaders, hunt down powerful monsters and use their remains to craft powerful items, customize their character with various armor sets and weapons, upgrade their settlement and even take on some side-hunts for extra coin.

If that weren’t enough, Doug Cockle, the voice of Geralt from The Witcher series, narrates the story. Though it doesn’t have a release date, Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter is confirmed to launch this year for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS4, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.

Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter picks up its story where the first Tails of Iron left off. Players will take on the role of Arlo as he sets off on a violent quest to get revenge against the Dark Wings. The game will also feature new monster-hunting side quests against massive enemies.

To help on his journey, Arlo will be able to apply elemental effects to his weapons, as well as make use of other abilities to take down enemies that might stand in his way. Along the way, Arlo will have to aid the northern garrison of Winter’s Edge in rebuilding.

Much like the original, Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter will also feature Souls-inspired combat described by the developer as “hardcore”. The base building will also be improved, allowing players to construct and upgrade different buildings in Winter’s Edge.

As explained on the PlayStation Blog, the expansion takes players behind the locked door in the Enchanted Forest, traveling to the depths below the Citadel. It’s here that you’ll discover The Rejected Daughter, a creature once meant to be Eksyll’s next heir; Zylad, Lord of Steel, a powerful general exiled to the depths; and King Otto, who remains ever-lasting. You’ll also meet Orenai the Watcher who will provide some details.

There are also four new weapons to unlock like The Executioner which increases damage significantly but reduces your movement speed and defense. A new Shard, Empire’s Wrath, can also be unlocked though you’ll have to figure out how. For more details on the base game, check out our review here.

Tails of Iron starts off at the peak of a long-fought rivalry between two kingdoms; the frogs and the rats. After a sustained period of tranquility, the rat kingdom once again finds itself in peril as the aging king can no longer protect it. Of course, the heir to the throne is his son, who you control throughout the treacherous journey of rescuing and re-establishing the rat kingdom to its former glory. This won’t come easy though, as legions of warty frogs revel at the chance to stand in your way. The story is about as cookie-cutter as it gets for RPGs, and you shouldn’t go into it expecting any interesting twists outside of the archetypal characters that you normally see in games like this replaced with rats and frogs. It does set itself up well despite unabashedly refusing to deviate from the formula in almost any meaningful way. How much it’s predictability might bother you will largely depend on how much the minutiae of the story of a game like this matters to you. To its credit you do get a pretty good sense of the tone of the game from its highly detailed world. Everywhere you look there is a visual feast. Ruins and macabre pepper every area and the nice variety of color pallets and multitude of scrolling layers go a long way to establishing the vibe – even if the story itself doesn’t.

"While Tails of Iron does seem to check a lot of the boxes that a game like this should, I still never quite felt all of its pieces click into place in a consistently satisfying way."

Tails of Iron’s gameplay is a similarly mixed bag. It checks a lot of the side-scrolling action-RPG boxes well enough with a wide variety of weapons and shields that make you balance out their effectiveness with their weight, a handful of enemy types that require different approaches to take down, and the occasional bit of backtracking and side quests that can sometimes make the game feel like something bigger than it actually is. Depending on what you’re looking for from this sort of game, it could be right up your alley if you don’t want to deal with the complexities of truly deep combat or be overwhelmed with the open-ended nature of a really expansive world. Afterall, there is nothing wrong with a simplistic take on a genre that normally sees more complex games come out of it. And to its credit, there is a bit more meat on the bone than first meets the eye with food recipes that can be learned and a fair amount of weapons and armor that can be collected. But Tails of Iron’s primary problem is not it’s watered-down nature; it’s that it doesn’t make any of its main mechanics fun or satisfying enough to weather the storm of monotony that inevitably rolls in once you notice it’s small handful of ideas starting to repeat themselves.

The combat of Tails of Iron is presented as the main course, and does have a few functional albeit boiler plate ideas that keep it from falling into complete mediocrity. Sneaking a few hits in between using your shield to block, dodging when red indicators are shown, and parrying when yellow indicators are shown is a delicate dance that can be fun when it’s all happening at once and you’re in the zone. Certain enemies might hang back and fire arrows at you while you’re dealing with others in close-quarters, and depending on the situation you could justify going after either one first. When bigger enemies come in however, they tend to have more distinct patterns that, in turn, force you to fight them in very specific ways that rarely allow for much experimentation.

You’ll learn this quickly, as fighting more than a few basic enemies at a time in the “wrong” way can quickly result in a chain reaction of getting bashed by all of them and killed before you even know what hit you. Parrying requires two button presses, both of which are triggers, so it can feel a bit mushy and imprecise to pull off, which doesn’t mix well with the short windows of time you’re often given between seeing that yellow indicator and getting hit. Dodging works well enough, but it won’t work with enemies that are expecting a parry – only the red-highlighted enemies that require a dodge. Not only does it not work, but it will likely result in getting hit by default. So, when you are pulling it all together it can feel more like a squishy rhythm game than a combat system. Finishing moves are there, but at their best are only mildly amusing.

"The combat of Tails of Iron is presented as the main course, and does have a few functional albeit boiler plate ideas that keep it from falling into complete mediocrity."

Had the combat itself been more versatile and satisfying, replaying the same fights multiple times to find the “right” way to beat them could have been an interesting hook, but here, repeat attempts get stale long before they should. Thankfully it doesn’t rub any salt in the wound with sparse checkpoints or some sort of cumulative punishment for dying. But aside from that, with most attacks feeling stilted and unenthusiastic due to the rigid nature of the character models, the moment-to-moment combat in Tails of Iron often feels like a series of generic ideas held together by its presentation and mostly mediocre execution. I’ll stop far short of calling it bad, because it’s not, but I’m equally uncomfortable with calling it particularly good.

Thankfully, the game’s many combat sections are broken up by some platforming and dialogue moments in a way that feels well-paced. You will find yourself climbing up walls, wall-jumping, even climbing across some ceilings. Traversal feels good enough, but much like the combat, nothing particularly interesting is ever really done with it to add to the overall experience or make those ideas feel organic to this game. The dialogue with other characters do their job at conveying certain ideas in a cute way by using animated pictures instead of words to convey certain concepts. It’s a neat idea, but the lack of text and voice also severely limits these characters’ chances of being identified with or standing apart from each other.

There’s no real way for any of them to express unique personality traits with such a rudimentary style of communication. Perhaps the developer felt like the personality brought to the overall game from having this style of dialogue outweighs the loss of personality that each character suffers from it, but I’m not so sure it does. It ultimately feels like they traded away an opportunity to get me to care about the characters and thus, the story, more. It also doesn’t help that the noises used to represent characters’ vocalizations are usually more annoying than not – especially after hearing them for the 7th or 8th time within just a couple of minutes. All things considered, I was surprised to see Tails of Iron playing it so safe in so many ways given the intriguing first impression it made with me.

"Tails of Iron never quite falls flat on its face. It’s a functional and serviceable addition to its genre that gives players a well-realized world to experience and can provide some meaningful challenge all while running respectably well. But with its somewhat wooden combat being the centerpiece, garnished with generic platforming and small handful of other slip-ups, it can sometimes be too much for its glimmers of inventiveness to overcome."

Ear-splitting dialogue sound effects aside, the music and sound is actually an area where the game shines quite a bit overall. The music always seems to fit the situation well with thundering cellos during important battles and buoyant mandolins accompanying calmer sections. It all creates a perfect auditory foundation on which the visuals easily stand. In fact, the blend of sight and sound here are so good that, had the game leaned into it a bit more, it could have really gone a long way to saving the experience from the doldrums of its gameplay.

Tails of Iron never quite falls flat on its face. It’s a functional and serviceable addition to its genre that gives players a well-realized world to experience and can provide some meaningful challenge all while running respectably well. But with its somewhat wooden combat being the centerpiece, garnished with generic platforming and small handful of other slip-ups, it can sometimes be too much for its glimmers of inventiveness to overcome. The game’s friendly price and obvious triumphs in art style and music might be enough for some to see it through, but as far as side-scrolling action RPG’s go, there are just too many other ones that do much better what Tails of Iron is aiming at for me to recommend it broadly. You can certainly tell that there’s a lot of heart behind the game’s general concept, and I’m always down for a dark rodent-themed adventure. But the fact that almost none of the game’s ideas ever reach any notable heights, creates an unfortunately low ceiling for the overall experience.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

The story of Eldest Souls is similar in tone to most games of this sort. Humanity is under threat and you play humanity’s last hope to put the conflict to bed for good. It’s a simple set up but also alludes to a tumultuous and complicated past that the game constantly reminds you of with shards of a former civilization all around you. Especially in outdoor areas, shattered buildings and rubble accompany every location, so the game does give you the feeling of being in the midst of a dense lore, despite the context of the current situation being quite simple.

All that said, the similarities between Eldest Souls and an actual Dark Souls game almost entirely end after you account for the high difficulty and the dreary gothic setting. There are no standard enemies per se, and dying doesn’t really make you lose anything (other than perhaps your patience), and I think that works in the game’s favor. Dying and trying again is a loop that is better served by the quickness you might more often find in something like Super Meat Boy, and the overall structure of the boss rush format has more in common with Cuphead than Souls games. So to simply lump Eldest Souls in with the countless other souls-likes would be an oversimplification.

"Not exactly the most original concept in 2021, but while Eldest Souls may not be the first to the party, it is a game that combines its ideas well."

The combat in Eldest Souls is a firm challenge. Bosses are varied, and present multiple types of challenges that need to be identified and conquered in order to even have a chance at taking them down. Using your dodge effectively, managing your stamina, charge time, and knowing exactly when to land a few hits or use a special attack is key to memorizing and surviving each one of the boss’ multiple attacks. Some attacks are more of a challenge of your ability to dodge at the exact right time, while others are more focused on getting you to learn where to stand to avoid taking damage, and some leave short windows of time for you to get a few hits in. All of them require patience and are rarely navigated properly on the first few tries. Most of those inaugural attempts will end in death and will probably do so quickly, as it only takes a few hits from any one boss to kill you – if that. The blood burst attacks often prove useful as they reward you with bits of health as you hack away at your opponent. While the idea of inching your life bar back up is enticing, and fun to do, it can also lead to death quickly if you get slightly carried away with it and don’t keep your eye on the ball. Blood bursts are just as much an invitation to regain some ground as they are an opportunity to accelerate your failure. Overall the combat is good with just enough depth and functionality to satisfy most seasoned players and surprisingly approachable in its relative simplicity compared to other similar games.

The moment to moment combat itself feels good, albeit a tad murky at times. The standard attacks have such short range that you’ll often be getting right on top of the various bosses to land hits, and that doesn’t always mix well with the constant flamboyant animations of you and your opponent. This can sometimes lead to situations where you can’t be quite sure of where exactly you’re at with any given swing of the sword, and thus, whether or not a dodge will register at the moment you need it to. This is partly a natural by-product of the isometric viewpoint, but also partly due to a clash between the idea of needing to be so close to the enemy to hit them, a short window to register a dash between attacks, and the indiscernible cluster of pixels that being right in an opponent can result in.

It’s also important to point out that, despite stamina management being rightfully made one of the games’ many challenging focal points, it can also be a little too easy – at times – to end up in situations where more dashes are required to avoid taking damage than you’ll be able to do in a short moment, requiring you to think further ahead than the game probably needs you to in order to get it’s point across. Getting the hang of the special attacks associated with each style is extremely helpful. Many of the more challenging moments can turn in your favor as soon you begin to truly wield those to their greatest effect. Eldest Souls does not have what I would call a robust amount of combat options, but between the three styles, the health regenerating blood burst attacks, the special moves for each style, and the open-ended flexibility of the skill trees, I’d say there is more than enough meat on the bone here to keep you experimenting and refining your skills all the way through. While I would have preferred slightly less of an emphasis on repetition and memorization, it’s hard to argue with the end result of all of its pieces. It mostly works quite well for what it is.

"Eldest Souls does not have what I would call a robust amount of combat options, but between the three styles, the health regenerating blood burst attacks, the special moves for each style, and the open-ended flexibility of the skill trees, I’d say there is more than enough meat on the bone here to keep you experimenting and refining your skills all the way through."

While the game is generally centered around the character’s one, massive sword, which is every bit as big as he is, you do have three different combat styles to choose from, and all have their own respective skill trees that can be completely recalibrated at any time before or after a boss battle. If the elevated defense of the “counter” style isn’t helping you with your current situation, feel free to switch to “berzerk” for higher damage or “windslide” for more maneuverability for your next try. Either way, you can always dump all of your experience points into whatever you choose so going all-in on any one style will never pigeon-hole you into any one area of expertise. This is something that I wish more action RPGs allowed, and makes perfect sense for a game full of enemies that challenge you in such different ways.

Accompanying the levity in-between bosses, you will also come across a handful of explorable areas, some of which might contain items useful to the games interesting but unobtrusive NPC characters scattered throughout. The light explorability in the game’s hub world is a nice palette cleanser between fights and also helps the tone of the game’s lore ring a little truer as you learn just a little bit more about it each time.

The art style, much like the general story of Eldest Souls, is nothing new, and doesn’t stand out much in concept. Super sharp pixel art will always be pleasing to the eye, and it’s executed well here, but it doesn’t ever really feel like it’s utilized to its potential, either. Most of the game’s areas look fairly similar, and will rarely if ever surprise with their color pallets or visual depth until the final area. It’s far from bad, but I couldn’t help but notice the lack of variety and overuse of the same drab cool colors and earth tones for most of it. Conversely, visual variety is indeed present and consistent with the game’s 10 entrancing bosses, which is where that effort is needed most I suppose. They all vary greatly in shape and size but still feel very much like a part of the dark ruthless world they inhabit. The bosses are so unique and interesting that the intrigue of finding out what the next one is all about often becomes a huge part of what drives you forward through the game, and that’s a great thing to have in a boss-rush game.

"Most of the game’s areas look fairly similar, and will rarely if ever surprise with their color pallets or visual depth until the final area. It’s far from bad, but I couldn’t help but notice the lack of variety and overuse of the same drab cool colors and earth tones for most of it. Conversely, visual variety is indeed present and consistent with the game’s 10 entrancing bosses, which is where that effort is needed most I suppose."

The game’s music also seems to strike the right tone with lots of brooding chords on the low end that loom over the games calmer segments, but appropriately heats up in tempo and intensity during fights. It’s not a soundtrack I would recommend paying extra to have, but it fits the game just fine. Sound effects follow suit with slashes and bashes that don’t overwhelm the music, but stand out enough to let you know when you’ve been hit or landed one of your own.

Eldest Souls isn’t going to blow anyone away with most of its ideas, as they’ve all been done countless times before in different games, but this particular union of art style, tough-but-approachable combat, and the under-appreciated boss rush format, pulls its weight and makes this game more memorable than I expected it to be, especially considering that this is the developer’s first major outing. It’s got a few flaws and could have used more pop in the sound department and level design, but that’s nothing that a true fan of any of its core elements couldn’t overlook.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.