2024-05-13 12:00:00
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is one of the best walking simulators in recent years. The graphics are divine and the landscapes are realistic and atmospheric. The puzzles are quite difficult and the world is very empty and lonely. This feeling of isolation is often a sign that indie studios don’t have the biggest gaming budgets, and Astronauts clearly had its challenges, but they still released a stunning and mysterious game that gave them the confidence to to tackle a new genre, namely the roguelike type. Witchfire is their latest project, drawing inspiration from the Souls series, the roguelike genre, and first-person shooters in an eclectic way by featuring a crossover between games I had early access to. I tried Witchfire on the Epic Game Store, where you can purchase an early access version right now.
The first thing I want to say is that Witchfire is far from over. The version I played had many missing elements that needed to be implemented before the game could be fully formed. So I focused on what is actually available. One thing that isn’t really included in the Witchfire package is the story. In fact, there isn’t one. There’s no dubbing or real intro movie or anything like that. You are simply thrown into the game and you have to choose your career. You can choose between Assassin, Berserker, Hunter, Shadow, Saint, and Penitent, depending on what you want, and your playstyle is based on the stats each class excels at. So a class may be more focused on strength and critical hits, or it may be focused on magic so you can cast a variety of magical abilities, or you may prefer your weapons to simply deal more damage. Whatever your preference, there is a class available, although there isn’t much information on how these professions affect playstyle. It’s a bit crude, which is common in games . You have just stumbled upon a beach and must start fighting a horde of numerous monsters that mysteriously appear behind you. The way many opponents appear without any animation is very jarring, as you can actually see them appear out of nowhere. Like I said, Witchfire needs more time in the oven.
Here is an announcement:
Witchfire, as mentioned, is a roguelike, so when you die you have to start over and fight the same monsters over and over again until you get stronger so you can survive a little longer. This game design will be very familiar to fans of the genre, but this is where Witchfire falls apart, as you lose all of the so-called crystals that you can use to upgrade your character after you die. If you’re lucky you can get upgrades, meaning you only lose half of your crystals when you die, but I found it extremely frustrating that the first few attempts made no progress. You often die before making progress. You can get non-permanent upgrades from killing monsters, such as faster reload speed or lower health of your opponents. This way you get some benefits with each attempt, but I find the scales tipped a bit. Some monsters jump in your face and take too many shots to eliminate. Some monsters move very quickly and unpredictably, making them frustrating to fight. Of course, there are positives to be said, like the shooting mechanics themselves, which are great and could be a lot of fun with better balance.
Witchfire is basically about defeating the Witch, who is the boss of the game. However, this boss is inaccessible until you have purchased access to the game’s so-called Gnosis, which unlocks different wings of the castle on which you find yourself between attempts to achieve. You are released into an open area with the boss in the northern part of the map. In between there are areas of varying difficulty that you can progress through as needed, which is very cool and a new idea for a roguelike game. So, if you’re feeling strong, you can head to the east of the island to face tougher monsters and have a higher chance of getting more crystals to upgrade your witch hunter. However, at the same time, consider whether you want to gamble your hard-earned crystals, as the chances of losing them are higher, resulting in loss of progress. You can then run up to a corpse and pick it up again, but this is easier said than done since you are very weak to begin with.
When you die you do a lot of stuff at the beginning where you find keys to different portals that allow you to come back with crystals so you can upgrade your character. So you can escape with your crystal, but it requires luck, skill and above all patience. I am not world champion. If that’s not difficult enough, the witch can cast a curse on you called Catastrophe, which will slowly wear off and kill you if you don’t find this tornado in time. I don’t know how I feel about this mechanic, mainly because you have to run through the map multiple times to stop the deadly cyclone, but if you beat it you will be rewarded with many crystals that you will have the chance to take out of the game and use You collect loot to improve your character.
Here is an announcement:
Witchfire has great potential, but lacks content. Nvidia DLSS is one of the things that will come later. Other steps will come later. The story is also an afterthought, some of the upgrades you can get haven’t been implemented into the game yet, and without all of that it’s a lackluster experience. You have a small idea of what the game will look like, but it doesn’t seem like the developers are in the most ingenious operations, so I think it will be a while before Witchfire hits its peak. Plus, there are a few things that I personally miss, like the ability to enlarge the font size so you can actually see the little nuggets of history that are sometimes found in various boxes. If there’s anything that’s an early access game, it’s Witchfire, and you have to respect that not every game needs to release everything, because it’s essentially an early access anticipation of the game and a taste of its future content.
Witchfire is very exciting and has huge potential, but I won’t be able to play it again until a year and a half from now. Witchfire is lacking in content and is just a thin cup of tea at the moment, but there are a lot of enticing things that haven’t been implemented yet and when they are added I’ll be the one left, but for the moment, it’s not very fun.
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#wait #play #Witchfire #Trailer #Gamereactor