Dark Devotion (PC) review

The first impact with Dark Devotion all in all not bad: a screaming pixel art, an extremely well characterized atmosphere, plays of light and shadows everywhere able to send the eyes of the beholder in a soup of jujube and a large number of opponents against whom to apply the sacred law of roll / dodge, one of the maxims that every good soulslike player should know.

Yes, Dark Devotion is a Soulslike slightly hybridized with other genres: there is metroidvania in it, there is the random madness of a roguelike in some of its traits but there is a combat system that it seems to have taken weight from Dark Souls, Salt & Sanctuary and from the cheerful company of game designers who fell in love with the great work of Hidetaka Miyazaki.

Born from the ideas of Hibernian Workshop, a very small independent French studio, the title has on its side the funds reached through a kickstarter campaign and a considerable dose of references to all that European architectural culture typical of a certain Middle Ages.

Let's see together now if Dark Devotion it is a title that deserves time or if it is permissible to leave it on the virtual shelves of Steam.

Of Templars, faith and shady characters.

The narrative introduction with which the title advances its playful proposal to the player is not original but at least manages to be effective: Dark Devotion draws heavily on medieval imagery, Gothic architecture, Templar culture and many other sources for to set up a dark world, almost sick in its idea of ​​faith, to be reconstructed through cryptic dialogues and texts left around the dungeons.

The narration, in essence, is carried out through the typical stylistic features that Miyazaki he set up with his Dark Souls and with Demon Souls: a world told in a fragmentary way that can reach a sense of completeness through research and patience.

The world of Dark Devotion is full of one religion taken to the extreme, by one faith used as a matter of exchange (as we will see later), of an excruciating sense of guilt that forces men to pursue their missions even after death.

Sin is perhaps related to amount of space dedicated to fiction: such an idea could have easily breached the hearts of many players if only there had been more dialogues and more elements in which to immerse themselves.

What little the game presents is of good quality but ends up being too cryptic and lacking in mother scenes that act as a driving force for the experience; Such a pity.

But how is this Dark Devotion played?

From the purely playful point of view Dark Devotion he behaves much better despite some curious and not particularly happy stances. The title features a combat system anchored to what Dark Souls reminded all game designers years and years ago: all game actions are inextricably linked to the stamina of one's character.
The two-dimensionality changes the gameplay of the title very little, here really very close to a 1: 1 experience compared to the one that Salt & Sanctuary presented to players in 2016.

Where Dark Devotion shuffles the cards is in hybridization.
The metroidvaniosa soul of Dark Devotion you see it in the more adventurous gameplay of the average, with traps and switches to interact with, in the interconnected map that can be called up with a button and in the platform sections so to speak where we will see our patience put to the test. Die in the title of Ireland Studios it is anything but difficult and you will often find yourself having to deal with the game over screen, only to be resurrected inside the central hub without any possessions. This absolute poverty of resources will be addressed by exploring and getting your hands on a huge range of objects that the title makes available to the player.

Through exploration, the player will be able to come into contact with the two main types of loot present within the title: the random loot, linked to usable objects, appears only inside the crates that are positioned in the dungeons with painstaking care; the rest of the objects that we will find inside the dark tunnels and the rotting dungeons of the title will be fixed; monsters will drop certain weapons, some corners will hide arrows for their bow and so it will be during each run.

Roguecosa?

The roguelike aspect of the title is linked to the resource called faith and represents one of the most interesting twists of the game, as well as one of its most marked defects. Our eoina, by defeating opponents, obtains faith points that can be spent around specific altars present within the levels to obtain blessings or to be cursed instead.

Blessings and curses represent, in terms of gameplay, bonuses or penalties to the statistics that can simplify or make the title a hell. The amount of progress made before each game over adjusts the size of the curse / blessing that can be received, leaving the player with a single parameter to control; the rest is generated randomly and is not even explained to the player, often leaving him groping in the dark. We will often find ourselves disintegrating the bosses in our path with an unusual ease solely thanks to a blessing obtained in the room before the bossfight and we will instead find ourselves inveighing against the creation and the software house for the curse also obtained before the room final, invalidating tens of minutes of painstaking exploration.

The complete randomness and inability for the player to have some kind of damage containment pays off Dark Devotion a strange title: charming but sometimes stupidly frustrating.

Devotion to technique.

Where the title of Ireland Studios is not wrong is the technical side, one of the best seen during this 2019.
Dark Devotion manages to shine with its own light thanks to a painstaking pixel art, made with a skill not particularly common in the world of independent video games and able to make memorable a title made mainly of Gothic / Romanesque architecture otherwise difficult to distinguish from each other.

The gaming hub, for example, is a splendid visual example of how an atmosphere can be created through numerous handfuls of pixels: the huge sprites of the NPCs exude a sense of anguish and agony hardly found in titles of the same genre or made using the same technique, the lighting system of the title greatly helps the creation of an oppressive and leaden atmosphere, giving with each ray of natural light a real breath of air for the player.

The animations of the characters are fluid and realistic enough to make them harmonize with what is presented by the rest of the game, which, thanks to the painstaking art direction, manages not to be cloying despite a not exactly very extensive color palette; shame about the sound sector, not particularly memorable nor able to give further personality to a title that manages to remain in the part designated for the aesthetics of the human brain.

Dark DevotionIn conclusion, it is a video game with some playful / narrative problems linked to risky choices made by the developers. The title risks not seeming neither funny nor engaging due to a lack of control over its continuation and due to a storyline that could have been managed better; this slightly obscures the incredible technical work done by the French software house, the real spearhead of the title. If you are passionate about soulslike and don't want to wait for the next title of From Software definitely give it a look.

We want to thank you The Arcade Crew for letting us try the title on Steam.