Atlas Fallen Review (Northstrider)
Fun game.
The initial release was a little bit rough around the edges with some weird inconsistent fights difficulty wise and Deck13's ongoing struggle with creating an intuitive gameplay flow. However, they have shown that they can learn and the recent update on august 6th 2024 has worked quite a bit on ironing these woes out.
I did play through the whole game about half a year ago but I've decided to start another playthrough to see what they have changed in the early hours of the game as they have stated they did rework it a bit.
And they really did. The early game has been polished up alot to a point where quests are more straightforward and easier to find and do, the combat balance feels much more in line with the character's power progression and the new added sandstorm rifts on the overworld make up for some nice change every now and then.
The gameplay itself didn't change that much. You're the wielder of a gauntlet that houses the powers of a god and as you go, you are setting out to find essence stones and gauntlet shards to personalize and enhance your gameplay. Defeating major boss enemies reward you with new weapon types (of which there aren't that many but each of them feels unique and are well polished).
The combat flow persists of fighting hordes of sand monsters to fill a power bar which unlocks stronger moves and allows you to use more and more of your essence stones. So the longer the fights, the more intense they grow. With that being said, keeping in mind that this is not a AAA title, you may find fighting the enemies a bit repetitive as the game has a fixed amount of enemy types in each region.
They try to ease up that repetition by involving exploration and puzzle rewards so you're not only chasing from big enemy to big enemy but also from chest to chest.
The story is pretty straightforward and nothing mindblowing but it does serve its purpose of explaining why the world looks like the climate change simulator and why the sand monsters exist. Deck13 really loves their religious fanatics and gods in games.
Of course the game isn't perfect and especially their coop-aspect is very undercooked but given that this is the developer's very first time attempting to implement a multiplayer component into one of their games, they will probably figure it out with their next project.
So yeah, I'm enjoying the game and the major update did a pretty good job at improving on its shortcomings. Deck13 has learned quite alot over the years and their previous titles and I'm fairly surprised that Focus Entertainment gave them this chance to improve the game. So that's a big W for a publisher for once.