IT’S THE DARK SOULS OF HAVING FUN.

That is to say it isn’t very good.

I received a code for the PC version of this game which started up just fine. The game throws the player into combat so I bungle my way through the encounter because there’s zero tutorial. I then cross the river and enter the first cutscene to have the game crash. So I tried again and got the same issue. I then looked into the error and thought maybe I was missing a .dll file for Unity so I downloaded it and still got the crash. Double checking the specs on Steam I see it only runs on Windows 10 and I am running Windows 7 on my home PC. Loading up Decay of Logos on my much weaker laptop running Windows 10 it worked just fine. I wasn’t going to review this game on weaker hardware so I did the mature thing and bought a copy on PS4.

I regret that decision.

PLATFORMS: PS4, XB1, PC (SWITCH RELEASING IN FUTURE)
MSRP: $19.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $7.99
PRICE I PAID: $20.22 USD ($26.99 CAD)

The game runs fine. It has frame drops and the camera sometimes does weird things in combat but for the most part the issues I have with this game are not based on technical performance.

What I do have an issue with is the game design. First off, the game told me next to nothing. That first encounter at the beginning of the game didn’t tell me how to swing a sword. Don’t worry though because the game tells the player how to attack after they’ve already figured it out in the first real part of the game. Helpful. This game enjoys saying obvious things players will likely have done through experimentation long after the scenario first shows up.

Because the way this game plays is clearly taking a note from Dark Souls, I feel it necessary to point out how all of those games clearly state the controls and what things are at the beginning of the game. That’s not to say that there are not things to learn and discover in Dark Souls, but they are fair with their difficulty and give the player a fighting chance from the beginning.

By the second area (a swamp) in Decay of Logos there is a basic enemy that will stunlock the player, destroy all their armor because of the stunlock, and then kill the player leaving them to revive at the closest shrine with zero armor. Fantastic. The game suggests going down into the caves below, and in those caves I need to carry a torch which means using a one handed weapon. I fought some of the same stunlocking enemies in the dim underground cave only lit by my torch, and after beating them I found myself hurt so I decided to take a potion.

The character put the torch out to take the potion.

With no way to relight the torch I was stuck in the dark I had no way out. I tried to “feel” my way out only to fall down a hole and die. When the character dies she loses some of her stats until she rests and because I don’t know where the nearest rest point is it is either run all the way back to the last one or push on with the lowered stats and no armor.

Back to the Dark Souls comparisons, it should be noted that jumping in those games was used very little. That’s not to say it wasn’t used, but they required some skill to pull off and therefore didn’t gate large portions of necessary content behind platforming. Decay of Logos does, and falling can lead to instant deaths. While it is easier to jump in Decay of Logos, to watch a character nearly make a jump (the character model actually makes a motion as if she has landed on a surface) only to slide off and die is insulting.

Also, they give the main character a companion steed that looks like a deer. It can be ridden, but only for a short while before bucking the player off because it is stressed. Feed it some berries and the stress goes away… I suppose I am supposed to keep doing this until the meter goes up? It is unclear and the companion is hard to control and I’m faster on foot anyway so what is the point?

By the way, I don’t know what the plot is so don’t ask.

Okay, so after all this grief and dying a lot I say to myself: “These arrows I’m picking up clearly means there is a bow. If I find the bow I think a lot of my problems will be solved.” I found the bow; it solved zero of my problems. It does barely any damage and is super easy to miss targets with. Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but the game wouldn’t tell me either way. No, instead one of the totems says that sometimes it is better to take higher ground. Not only is taking the high ground rarely an option, it is a bad one anyway because the bow does the same damage as a spitball fired by a fourth grader.

Combat would be fine if the lock on stayed, but sometimes it just gives up and I end up swinging at air. Weapons degrade but do so very slowly, which is a plus because if they broke quickly players would be screwed as this game has no inventory. Two weapons, a full set of armor, five potions, and one extra slot for a piece of armor or weapon are all that players get. There’s a wide range of weapons too, but because of the limited inventory space the chances that people will abandon the trusted weapons is very minimal (not that they’ll make it very far because the game isn’t fun).

Also, just to be clear I fought two very large enemies that I would consider bosses (they both gave me a trophy for beating them) that were identical. In my short time with this game before I gave up because I have better things to do with my life than suffer over a game I am not enjoying, especially when other reviews need to be written, I ran into a total of six enemies: tree people (with a few variants that operate the same way), slugs that stunlock the player, giants with clubs, evil turnips, bees, and barrel mimics. The only enemy that was somewhat fun to fight was the tree people, and that became tedious too.

This game is simply not very good. I have played worse for sure, but the mistakes made here are purely by design. Players should get the benefit of the doubt on making jumps, or maybe don’t have most jumps lead to instant death. Enemies should be fun to fight, not unwanted encounters that can kill you or at least break all your armor. Inventory this limited in an RPG is absurd. Don’t let the somewhat interesting, Breath of the Wild art style fool either, because the game isn’t all that pretty in gameplay; it comes off lifeless and bland.

This game is the bare minimum of what I considered a playable game. We’re in the “busy season” of game releases. Spend your money elsewhere.

Review copy of game provided by publisher. (Our reviewer purchased the PS4 version since the PC version did not run properly on Windows 7)