Atlas Fallen Review (Verrix)
Overall a fun game with nice combat, but a few crucial things bring it down to 'good but not great'. Would recommend for anyone looking for a bit of mindless fun, but not anyone looking for the next big story game.
Pro(s)
- Combat: Honestly, the combat is probably the best part of the game. It's already pretty fluid on it's own with the 3 different weapons, parry system, momentum gauge (as it builds, you deal more and take more damage), and varying types of monsters. But then you add just an incredible amount of 'essence stones' into the mix that you can mix-and-match between a bunch of slots, slowly unlocking the benefits of in battle as you build up your gauge. Of course there's the basic ones like 'more damage from X' and 'more defense when Y', but there's also stuff like an auto-parry (with a cooldown), crystallization (stun) when breaking parts, and a lot more. There's also your 'idol', which is what you use to heal in-battle, and even in that you can select between a bunch of different types of idols that all have different benefits and types of healing.
- Exploration: Really good exploration. The world isn't overly large, there aren't collectibles spammed everywhere, and most puzzles are pretty short (I hate Sealing Totems). You also are only required to do a few of them for story progression, and a few others for achievements, making for a nice and relaxing time in the game's world.
- Graphics: While it's not anything overwhelming, I would say the world is definitely beautiful for the game only being 30 GB. While there isn't a ton of variation, it's passable considering you can only make so many types of places in the world if the entire world is supposed to be covered in sand, which in my opinion Deck13 did very well.
- Difficulty: Lots of options for difficulty, as there's 3 varying difficulties (that are essentially easy, normal, and hard), with nothing locked behind picking a certain one, allowing you to play at whatever you feel like.
Pro/Con (Person-Dependent)
- Story/Lore: The story I feel needed more time. It felt like I was spending too little time on each part of the story despite taking my time and completing side quests and looking for loot. Besides it needing more time, it's definitely more of a story where half of it is you learning what happened to the world, and the other half you trying to change the future, as opposed to you being the sole protagonist. Most of the NPCs are forgettable, but there are a few major characters, which coincidentally are also labeled as main characters if you look at their position on the map. Honestly, the story is hit-or-miss, but I don't think it'll hinder your enjoyment of the game.
- Completion Experience: Not too bad. Most of the achievements will be obtained naturally as you play, with another large chunk being for collectibles. There's only a few achievements that are truly 'miscellaneous', and luckily none of the achievements are missable. There are a few things that are better done when you can, such as completing Airborne with a Heavenly Shrine instead of a regular enemy, but besides that the only real complaint is that Wildlife Habitats can take a bit too long to trigger, and you also have to collect all shards, which there is an excess of, for another achievement, but it's also the only collectible that you can't track.
Con(s)
- Price: The game costing $50 is a little high for the amount of time you'll likely spend in the game, but I wouldn't say it's too outlandish given the quality of the game, however short. Maybe pick it up on sale for $30-40.
Extras
- Bugs: I did crash a total of 2 times, but not really sure what happened since there was no lag or issues right before the crash, but either way I just loaded the game back up (which was very quick), and loaded back into an auto save from a few seconds prior. Other than that no major stuttering or lag to note.