[Review] Fall of Light – Nintendo Switch

Fall of Light

Reviewed by Kieran

Developer: RuneHeads
Publisher: Digerati
Category: Action, Adventure
Release Date: 08.30.2018

Hello darkness my old friend

Do you ever play a game and find yourself thinking, what if? What if the dungeons had been better, the AI was up to scratch, the music didn’t make my earholes bleed. Fall of Light is one of those titles that makes you ask that question. A lot. It’s more than just another Dark Souls clone, with some genuinely intriguing moments, however it feels as though the vision that the developer had started with hasn’t quite been achieved. That is at least the humble view of this helpless hack.

Also, for the record, earholes is totally a real word and not at all nonsensical.

You’re nonsensical!

Story

Essentially, you assume the role of Nyx, an old and war hardened veteran who wishes to take his daughter Aether to the last place on Earth that still has sunlight.

The story is told through some quite suspect cut scenes. Whilst the graphics are passable, the voice acting in Fall of Light is quite hard to swallow. It really does sound a bit wooden at times, which is a shame as it feels as though the story might have been engaging, had I been able to really invest in it. The opening sequence, it must be said, really suffered because of this as, from the outset, any sense of intrigue or curiosity were lost. Instead, all I felt towards the title, still so early in it’s conception, was a great feeling of disappointment. Which leads me nicely into my next section.

Presentation

I feel it necessary to be perfectly honest here, the presentation isn’t great in Fall of light. The graphics are reminiscent of a bygone era, unfortunately without possessing the charm that perhaps a 16 bit offering would. Essentially, they are bad GameCube graphics, imagine a fuzzy Eternal Darkness. Now delete that image and never tarnish your memories of Eternal Darkness ever again, or so help me god, I will smite thee.

The music is generally sombre and more often than not simply offers some ambience in the background. Aside from that, it’s not particularly memorable, in either a good or bad way.

Performance issues blight this little beast throughout however, with load times being criminally slow. Remember the fable of the tortoise and the hare? This is the tortoise, after its had its legs chopped off to make delicious soup.

I feel as though its also worth mentioning that the hit boxes on enemies was all over the place. There were numerous times that I genuinely died, simply because my hits, although being true, had failed to register.

Gameplay

Fall of light is the kind of game that lives or dies depending on how well it plays. I guess that makes me judge, jury and executioner then. With that being the case, Fall of light, I hereby sentence you to death.

Movement is slow, intentional perhaps due to the increased age of our protagonist, as is combat which utilises a stamina meter. Essentially every time you swing a weapon or do a roll your stamina depletes, which is fine. What I found a bit disconcerting was how using your shield also depleted stamina. Because of this, I found that my pattern of attack was hit and run, well walk. This made the ebb and flow of the game even more excruciating.

When you die, and a new cycle begins, your daughter will be wherever you demised, in a pile of blue ash. It’s within your interest to resurrect here as soon as possible, as everything is easier with her around. In the presence of her light, you are stronger, so there is some value to having her around. Saying that, I’ve played better escort missions, it’s certainly no ‘Protect the milk’ from Majoras Mask.

I’m not for one moment going to lie and say I was in anyway accomplished when playing this game. I wasn’t. I was utterly terrible. It took me a good 2o cycles, as the game calls them, to progress past the 1st area. I did find that I would struggle, make a seemingly decent amount of progress, before once again hitting a wall. This simply added to the overall frustration of playing Fall of Light.

Conclusion

Ultimately, Fall of Light frustrates too greatly to be enjoyable. Every what if? moment simply adds to the overall sense of disappointment at what could have been a fairly enjoyable Dark Souls clone. Instead, what it is, is a poor attempt to cash in on the whole ‘git gud’ culture that spawned a whole generation of YouTube idiots. There are a lot of novel ideas, unfortunately none of them have been fleshed out, expanded upon enough to feel like worthwhile inclusions.

And the less said about the incredibly random scene that I experienced after one particular death, the better.