If you invented a time machine and decided for some reason to visit me in the year 2011, you would’ve easily had a better shot of me stabbing you in the eye with a spork than getting me to believe Dark Souls would have become one of the most beloved franchises in recent history. It still perplexes me that gamers around the globe have shown so much love to a game that punishes the player from start to finish. It’s spawned so many imitations that it’s started its own sub-genre. Typically, the difficulty of a game is something that is subjective and varies from player to player, but this sub-genre contains experiences that often make the player regret evenwatching a trailer. Decay of Logos is the newest game to follow suit, walking so close to Dark Souls it’s hard to see which footprints belong to which game.

You begin in a village deep in the midst of being invaded by The Crimson Knights. I braced myself for a challenging battle, as I knew from the get-go this was a Souls inspired title, quickly scrambling to get the lay of the controls assuming this bulking gentleman in armor was going to put me through the wringer. Much to my surprise, the hulking warrior fell after a single hit from my sword. I was in a state of awe… that was it? It left me riding a high that lasted through the rest of the opening, which contained a montage of our protagonist’s budding friendship with a strange Elk.

Once the prologue is complete you’re dropped into the first open-world area with nothing but your sword, some tutorials etched into some stones, a strange alter that works as a save/respawn point, and your not so trusty elk companion (in my head, I assigned him the moniker of Mr. Beans). Despite that opening montage that alludes to a strong bond already having been formed between you and the creature, the animal comes equipped with one of the most annoying traits of wild animals – it’s skittish as all Hell. If you attempt to ride him, you’ll get a fun little message informing you that you need to feed him first. Once I returned a short time later with some food, he was a little more accepting, allowing me to pet him and ride him off into battle. Or so I thought.

Much like everything else in the game, very little is explained to you as there is virtually no hand-holding. As I trotted along at a snail’s pace, struggling to get my trusty steed to kick into second gear, I kicked him a few times since this is the universal sign for “go,” only to notice a stress meter filling up at a rapid pace. As if trying to make a picture-perfect case of how realism in games doesn’t always check off the “fun factor” box, he opted to pull away from any direction I sent him until we reached an enemy I missed on my first pass through the area. I’m not sure what elk eat in the wild, but I feel like they would enjoy a fresh turnip which is exactly what shot out of the ground at us, clacking some gigantic teeth like it was something from The Joker’s wet dream. Contrary to my initial thought, Mr. Beans kicked my ass off of him and ran in the opposite direction, leaving me to battle the dangerous vegetable on foot.

The combat is what you’d expect from a Souls inspired venture, offering a mixture of offensive and defensive tactics. Within a few strikes, the angry turnip was laid to rest and I worked my way forward, onto the next group of enemies: Groot’s entire extended family. When battles are one-on-one the combat is very doable, despite some questionable button mapping (RB is light attack on the Xbox One, which is a pet peeve of mine anytime I have to rely on this button heavily outside of reloading or grenades) with no options for customization to be found. On the other hand, tackling groups of enemies at the same time is quite problematic, thanks to the wonky lock-on feature that has a pesky habit of allowing your character to completely forget which enemy you’re aiming at and go after his friend at his side, even while locked on to the correct target. This goes from being a minor annoyance into full-blown devastation when you take into account the enemies come packing attacks that are one-hit kills, even when at full health. This feels like an awkward design choice, negating the point of a health bar and health potions.

At first, death doesn’t seem to carry any consequences – you simply respawn at the last altar you activated, with your inventory in check. What the game doesn’t tell you is there is an XP system that rewards you for the token actions found within RPGs, and with each death you lose some of this XP. Additionally, you will find that your equipment degrades as you use it, which can become extremely problematic and resulted in me restarting from scratch a total of four times in its pre-release state. This was not because I wanted to or some startling revelation made me want to respec my character, but rather my weapon broke and I couldn’t find a suitable replacement, and by suitable I mean any replacement. This left me wandering around with a broken sword that would still smash crates and barrels, hoping for a decent weapon within, and would only occasionally take a sliver of health away from the enemies. Again, pushing me further into a blind rage, the enemies respawn within the open world at the same place, each and every time you die, with only minor changes that come down to the weaponry they wield (i.e. some of the trees have shields, others do not). With these issues combined, I could not bring myself to complete the game in full, as it was much for a test of my wits than I cared to deal with in the end.

There were many communications of patches after we were provided the game, as well as following its actual release. We decided to wait to review it once it was in a more complete state to hopefully avoid the same situation that happened to Days Gone. At the end of the day, Decay of Logos is a game that will test your patience and resolve every step of the way. While I found absolutely nothing about the game to love, I am sure there are a few Souls fans out there that would get some sort of masochistic joy from it. Everyone else… well, they’ll wish they had a time machine to go back to stop themselves from blowing $19.99.

4 out of 10

Pros

• Squint Really Hard and it Resembles Fable
• Makes Dark Souls Look Easy

Cons

• Horrid Combat
• Punishing Mechanics
• Minimalistic Approach to Standard RPG Systems

Decay of Logos was developed by Amplify Creations and published by Rising Star Games. It is available on PC, PS4, and X1. The game was provided to us for review on X1. If you’d like to see more of Decay of Logos, check out the developer’s site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

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