Increasingly, I judge Souls-adjacent games not by the height of their bosses or the depth of their dungeons, but by the cleverness of their shortcuts, and Flintlock: Siege Of Dawn has my favorite shortcuts of all time. Instead of just being paths to the other side of barred doors – although there are plenty of such Lordrannish loops in this game – they consist of aerial chains of magic, purple triangles that pull you towards them when you hold down a button. They add strength to a sprawling, faux-Napoleonic world that might otherwise be a collection of atmospheric strolls between equivalents of fire and combat defined by tight resource systems. They’re idiot-proof grapple points from which you can lunge at the next triangle, a ledge of upgrade materials, or a wandering musketeer in dire need of a ground pound.
Let’s go back to shortcuts. First some scene setting. In Flintlock, you play as Nor, a lean and hunky army sapper fighting the legions of the dead. As the curtain rises, Nor and her fellow Field Engineers accidentally breach a portal that triggers a full-blown invasion by the Underworld Gods. The rest of the story is about putting the lid back on Pandora’s box with Nor galloping between towns, fast traveling shrines (which also revive local zombies) and boss battles with escaped deities as he gathers his scattered friends to form a traveling caravan. side quest purveyors and enhancers who gather around the campfires behind you.
Nor soon also befriends one of the stray gods, Enki, a feathered, fox-like wraith who accompanies you everywhere and is the source of your supernatural powers – notably Nor’s ability to hurl himself around gusts of enchanted black dust. Enki is God Of War’s Atreus, a support character mapped to the face button, but with some significant differences. First, he is not burdened with any toxic filial angst, though he does have baggage regarding the nature of his divinity. Second, he has a smaller repertoire of support skills than Atreus – you can basically press a button to make him curse opponents, “set” them up for an armor-ripping canned attack or finisher, all the while building up energy to pick an AOE mega-spell.
This focus makes him more forgettable than Atreus, but also less picky. I feel the same way about much of Flintlock, which basically combines God Of War with the soulslike stylings of A44’s previous Ashen, then welds the mixture into a laid-back, 20-hour “Soulslite” with a handful of its own party tricks. inventing. The result is a satisfying summer extravaganza that won’t take up too many weekends, with a few risque additions and the occasional touch of genius.
The game’s inspirations are evident from the title screen, but Flintlock wasted no time elaborating on them. The Norwegian has a one-handed melee weapon in his right hand and a pistol in his left. As in Bloodborne, the pistol is primarily used defensively – to interrupt otherwise unblockable attacks and prepare the enemy for a counterattack. But fresh guns provide new uses. There is a glowing radioactive tree root, the projectiles of which explode after a few seconds, knocking Prime over the target escort. There’s a blunderbuss that not only tickles the enemy’s health points, but also applies knockdown across a wide arc, making it the perfect antidote to a wandering horde.
Melee weapons, meanwhile, cover a small, busy gamut from hammers that rain punishment through armor to incendiary axes that sometimes leave you waiting for a fight. Each is a means of refilling a gun, with the game awarding a round of gunpowder for every four swings that connect. As such, you’ll always be multi-classed, hacking heads to earn the powder to fight the next unblockable hit, though the game’s progression system – whose power-ups can be reversed at will and restore some of the associated XP or “Reputation” – allows you to tame your access to sorcery, butchery or shooting.
You stack equipment effects and synergies of your old equipment on top of this well-measured battle chemistry. Right now I’m wearing a set of togs that (if I remember correctly) cause me to explode whenever Enki uses four curses in a row, as well as whenever I earn powder, as well as whenever I attack from block. It makes regular skirmishes a little unscientific – sometimes I can’t even see myself. It’s also a problem to roam dungeons stocked with barrels of gunpowder and other volatiles – perhaps the Flintlock environment designers love them too much. I also have the option of a crystal-studded get-up that turns my dodge into a teleport, and a golden gauntlet that copies my grenades as they fly.
There’s not nearly the range of build options you’d find in Soulslike or the latest God Of War, but there’s plenty of wiggle room within a single playthrough. Flintlock is also not as demanding as Souls or GOW on normal difficulty – it gives out Estus-style health flasks in every village freed from the malignant dead. But it incentivizes you to play well with a multiplier that grants bonus reputation per turn the longer you stay undamaged. During combat, a burning question arises as to when you should harvest your accumulated Rep, canceling the multiplier. Let it run too long and you risk losing thousands of XP to the next zombie who wants to hug.
Pistols aside, the Norwegian gets longer-range firearms in the form of rifles, mortars, and a pistol that spews rolling rounds. In my hands, these tools exist for cutting through snipers and canceling the odd midboss I can’t be bothered to fight. Rather than organic extensions of the combat system, it feels like a safety valve for the inevitable tedium of any game that consists largely of melee combat. I don’t mind them being there, but they don’t feel needed.
I have similar feelings of disenchantment with the plot and writing, to the point where I mindlessly grafted them into the point about the ranged mechanics. Flintlock’s world is beautiful, with its faux Turkish cafes run by creatures that consist of arm-snapping masks, his attention to detail such as cracked murals and copper ladles hinting at his love of horizon-swallowing, white palaces and mineral tumors. Broader ambient themes include the rise of blind fanaticism fueled by fear of mortality and the need to uncover morsels of written mythology. But people seem shallow. Nor’s companions are chatty and have loyalty quests attached to the coolest set, but for the most part they’re glorified upgrade offers. The other quest-giving NPCs are 8-bit RPG creatures, though the voice acting is snappy.
Some NPCs are players of Sebo, a subtly tasty minigame played on a triangular board using tokens that can have special abilities like jumping over enemy pieces. It’s a nice addition that I’d like to return to now that I’m out of the deadline, but Sebo’s artificial abundance of players reflects an environment that isn’t quite sure whether it’s a world or a procession of distractions that alter the pace and polish. scenery.
She’s no tough do-gooder with a complicated past herself – a charismatic lead, sure, but without much emotional texture. He talks best with Enki about their dramatically different understanding of the universe. For all his divine insight and for all his melodious voice, Enki can be touchingly childish (as can the other gods, in less touching ways). There is a sweet antiquixotic moment when he is captivated by the sight of a windmill. A little later, a tour of some of the memorials is an opportunity to talk about loss and remembrance. What happens to the deities when they perish?
There’s always the danger that a practiced genre hybrid boils down to the sum of its influences, but Flintlock: Siege Of Dawn manages to bring everything together and develop enough spin to set itself apart. On which note, those shortcuts. Flipping and running between space triangles is a joy in itself, especially when the game flirtatiously stretches the gap between certain grapple points and encourages you to run and double jump to continue the chain. But the real payoff is the sense of uncovering the designer’s hidden logic, as the teasing of these triangles is also a slow realization that every layout, however stale and ghoul-clogged, however soul-adjacent, is built to be enjoyed from above.
Each network of aerial launchers must be conjured, strand by strand. As you follow the quest paths, the rumble of the controller beckons you to opalescent pedestals of skulls that cough up another set of triangles. By the time you complete this quest, you should have an entire roller coaster set up and waiting for it to pull you back to the last town center or campfire. Should you take too many musket balls on your chops while climbing, unlocking triangles as you go will also make the familiar ritual of recovering lost XP less nimble.
There’s a moment in the second main area where you find yourself at the top of what’s actually a massive slide, a vertiginous slope between cliffs thickly lined with rotting crossbowmen. I screamed and shuffled down to the campsite at the bottom, then found the skull plinth and set about clearing the heights and discovering more plinths until I could finally walk the entire mountain without getting my feet dirty. It evoked an emotion I hadn’t quite felt in Flintlock before: not just admiration for the rugged craftsmanship on display, but delight.
This review is based on a compilation of the game review provided by the developer.