The story isn't quite as imaginative as the central mechanic, but it's far less generic than it could have gotten away with, and achieves the rare feat of making arbitrary mystical bullshit legitimately compelling. Setting-wise, it's a fantasy reimagining of Finland, with a script that revels in unapologetic cheese (a good thing), and voice acting that leans right in with it. Everything looks faintly like it's made of plasticine, but in a good way. Iron Danger is pretty, and sits halfway between the Baldur's Gate school of real-ish-ism, and the larger than life caricatures of World Of Warcraft. This strange little motor is housed in a pleasant little chassis, too. Do you push on, accepting that the action will push the initial hits back further than you can rewind to avert, or do you go back to a worse position and a full health bar? These are decisions I've not had to make in a game like this before, and I really enjoyed it. For example, say you've ended up taking a couple of big hits with a character, but as a result they've ended up in a position to deal a finishing blow on a tough opponent. It opens up some interesting dilemmas, too. I'm a terrible one for savescumming RPG fights again and again until I get an "acceptable" outcome, but here that felt redundant. Interestingly, I found this completely changed my approach to tricky brawls. And of course, because there's a limit to how far back you can rewind, you can't just keep starting from the beginning: the timeline of a fight slowly becomes set in stone, like footprints in quick-drying concrete. But it never feels "easy" - the challenge is in puzzling out the ever-evolving, nasty ballet of each fracas, and improvising a path through it. well, like its own thing entirely, which is what's so exciting about it.ĭoes it just mean every fight ends in a win? Well, yes. And I suppose it's turn-based, but it never feels that way either. It sounds a lot like quicksaving made playable, right? But in practice it really doesn't feel that way. Then let time trundle forwards again, and see if the situation has improved. You wallop the space bar, slide the present back to the moment just before the stabbening, and use the block skill. So: say your hammer geezer gets stabbed by a bandit. The bar is punctuated by little symbols that show what the selected character has been up to, and - crucially - when they done beened up to it. Then, when you inevitably get into a fight, everything becomes very different.Īt the tap of the space bar, characters enter a mystical "trance" state, where time is represented as a bar at the bottom of the screen, split into fourteen "heartbeats". Controlling a party of two, you wander around a sequence of good old levels (for there is no open world here), and talk with people and interact with things in the time-honoured style. To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Īs ever, new things are often best described as mash-ups of known quantities, and in this case I'd ask you to imagine what would happen if Divinity: Original Sin 2 borrowed the time-rewind system from that one Prince Of Persia game. And while 90% of the time these mechanics are not in fact unique, every so often you get one that's the real deal, and this tactical RPG with functional time travel is certainly one of 'em. A lot of games market themselves as being built around a "unique" mechanic. I really wanted to review Iron Danger back in March, but the world was in the middle of going totally cowabunga at the time, so it rather fell through the cracks.Īnd you know what? I'm damn glad I reversed time and pulled it back from the oblivion of the "want to play it one day" pile, because it's an impressive little number. Check the Best Game You Missed tag for more. As 2020 goes kicking and screaming into that good night, we've rounded up some of the best games from the year that we didn't end up covering.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |