[Review] Guild of Darksteel - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: Igor Sandman
Published By: Digerati
Categories: Action, Adventure
Release Date: 07.15.21

Guild of Darksteel is a tad interesting. I cam in expecting a Castelvania-like game from screenshots, but then found myself playing something closer to a cinematic platformer mixed with an action RPG.

Every little bit of movement, from fighting, to defending, to walking and jumping has it’s own weight to it. Pay attention to those animations and how long they take. Just spamming your attacks will get you nowhere and killed very fast. But that’s fine, the game, especially given with a lore reason gives infinitive lives. Dying will always just bring you back to the latest checkpoint, those being save statues.

Combat itself has a good feel to it. At least one you get the timing down for combos and blocking. Like mentioned earlier, mashing will get you nowhere. Lets say a combo has you press Y, then X three times. Mashing X is going to do nothing. Once the timing is correct, you get a pretty cool looking move. You’ll slowly get more of these as you progress in the game, with some incorporating different buttons, enhancing other combos, or even stealing health from an enemy. That last one is great, as as far as I know, there are no healing drops from enemies, only experience crystals, which once you little gauge at the bottom is full, allow you to level up a combo.

With everything having a deliberate feeling to it, there’s no surprise that the sprite animation is well done. I’d go as far as to say the whole game looks great. The early part of the game has a very drab and samey look, especially since you’ll go into that cavern more that you’d like back and forth, but the game has a much more impressive showing the further you get in.

The world you’re in has scale, it feels as grand as it’s trying to present itself as with the story, of which is about finding purpose in immortality, which should be a blessing, but comes off as a curse. It’s slow to move from place to place, making it actually feel like a arduous journey. Not sure if that was the intent, but it worked for me. At times even, I got lost not sure what to do.