A NOVEL TIME.
Fiction novels and I have never really clicked. The last time I attempted reading a long work of fiction for pleasure was when Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire came out. To put it shortly, I don’t read a lot. That being said, I do enjoy a good visual novel. Breaks of gameplay interspersed between long portions of reading seems to make it easier for me to digest. So when I saw that Ash of Gods: Redemption was a mix between turn-based strategy and visual novel I was excited to see what this game had to offer.
The game follows three very different heroes and their parties on their paths to stop a cataclysmic event known as “The Reaping” from occurring. There is Hopper Rouley, the healer who seemingly knows a lot about the history of the world, Thorn Brenin who is a retired captain unwillingly caught in the middle of The Reaping when it starts and his band of shaken soldiers, and Lo Pheng, the enigmatic warrior and his tagalong group of bandits. Lore about this world is thick and rich with each character having their own unique backstory that defines the world of Terminus even more, and players can explore this as much or as little as they choose through dialog.
PLATFORMS: PC
MSRP: $24.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $19.99
Ash of Gods: Redemption is first and foremost a visual novel with choose your own adventure elements. If players have little interest in reading, they will not enjoy this game as the majority is text and is not voiced. What is here though is fantastic, and while I’m not one for fiction, I was enthralled to learn more about the characters, the world, and the impending doom of The Reaping. My choices dictated whether a party member trusted me to whether or not they died and even had potential party members pass before I could speak to them. These choices can have long term effects on the story too. As it is an apocalyptic story, there is little levity to be found here, so come expecting dark fantasy akin to Game of Thrones rather than Lord of the Rings and you won’t be disappointed.
The secondary portion of this game is a turn based strategy. First, I chose which fighters I wanted to enter the fray, with each character having different skills based upon their weapon of choice (think a class system: warriors use swords, archers use bows, etc.) that will dictate their usefulness in battle. I then got to place my characters within a certain area of the battlefield before combat began. Combat works on a chess type turn order, where I take a turn then my opponent gets to take a turn. This may be off putting to some players like myself, as it means even when I outnumbered the enemy the last surviving soldier would get to move every turn, which is only good if I was at a disadvantage (there is a reason for this that I will get to later). Every attack can either target an enemy’s stamina or health, and if I drained stamina it limited the actions an enemy could take and every attack against stamina from that point on would do double damage to health. There is also a card system in place that acts like magic spells and pieces of these cards could be collected from battles and vendors in game to further my spell choices.
The tutorial for the battle system made sense but the battle after the tutorial I had little idea of how it worked because it introduced elements such as the card system and characters with different abilities. I also had a character fall in combat, and while there is a perma-death system that isn’t super punishing, I wanted to see the story out to its fullest potential for this review. Luckily, Ash of Gods: Redemption has a standard mode and a story mode which automates combat and gives all characters higher stats. So I switched to story mode. At any point during story mode I could take off the automated combat, which I did a few times just to see if I grasped it any better after the computer showed how it’s done, but I did not. I think a little more time should’ve been spent explaining all the combat systems.
Getting back to the point where I had left standard mode was easy as this game saved all my previous decisions and grayed them out in dialog meaning that I could easily play through this game again and see the different outcomes to my decisions without having to remember what I had chosen previously. I also increased the text and animation speed as those were options as well. I wish more games had this. In design (short of maybe a better combat tutorial) the game is stunning. The animation reminded me of Heavy Metal or Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings films, and that’s partially because it’s all rotoscoped. I can’t tell you how pretty this game is because of that. The music is also fantastic and really helps this game feel alive despite being mostly text. Something I didn’t dive into due to my lack of understanding around the combat was multiplayer (which is why the combat switches back and forth as previously mentioned) but it is here for those who enjoy the combat.
I think my time with Ash of Gods: Redemption was well spent, despite getting a very cryptic bad ending to the story. The writing was stellar and the world was super interesting. I hope to see more of it. While a bit of swearing at times felt out of place and I didn’t really like the combat system, the fact that I was allowed to experience this story without having to engage with a system I didn’t like or understand was nice and something I hope more games include. I also wasn’t a fan of having one final decision to make right near the end of the game as it felt a bit cheap, but it was clear that it is not the reason why I got the bad ending. Other than my own personal tastes I can’t fault this game for much. It’s gorgeous and I’d like to see more from this team and this franchise.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
