Coming from a team of developers by the name of YummyYummyTummy is the follow up to Fallen Legion: Rise to Glory. Fallen Legion Revenants hopes to build on the success of the previous title by maintaining a common gameplay thread, but in time honoured tradition it also goes about making subtle changes that introduce new mechanics. Or at least that’s what it says in the game blurb! The question on everyone’s lips is “how successful has this update been?”. Well, let’s dive straight into the world of this new real-time action RPG and find out.
Now, what a good RPG, real-time action flavour or not, needs is a good story, and luckily we are on pretty safe ground here. In Fallen Legion Revenants the world as we know it is covered by a miasma that turns ordinary people into mutated monsters. It’s therefore been left to humanity to do what it always does in these situations and make a hasty retreat to the one safe place that is left. In this case, this is a floating castle high above the ground, Welkin Castle; the last bastion of mankind. But it isn’t without its problems as well, ruled as it is by a brutal dictator known as the Warder.
We are split between two main characters in Revenants, one of which is still alive. Lucien is a noble and lives in the castle where he is a member of the council which controls the building. The other character is Rowena, a dead woman who refuses to accept being dead, as her son is held in the dungeons of Welkin Castle. She and Lucien form a pact where he will influence matters in the castle, and Rowena will take on the hordes of monsters below with the aid of Exemplars, living weapons that can take on the form of people in order to give evil a good kicking. With me so far?
Graphically, Fallen Legion Revenants is very much like that of Rise to Glory, running a stylised, almost JRPG look to the characters that we control and meet. The backdrops of the castle and the ruined world are all nicely drawn as well, and with the design of the enemies being pretty top notch, the look of the game is very pleasing indeed. That said, the animation of Lucien is a bit strange and running around with him, visiting the various locations within the castle walls is a bit odd. On the flip, Rowena and her allies all look great.
The enemies are a mixed bunch, as you’d expect, ranging from possessed pigs right up to screen filling boss monstrosities. They are a nicely varied bunch too. Further to this, the accompanying sounds are all present and correct as well, with crunching attacks and swooshing of spells to ensure that Revenants sounds good too. One effect I particularly like is the way that there is a tension building sound effect when you have to make a decision, and as time counts down it gets more and more urgent.
So, the story is good and the way the game looks is pretty damn decent too. How about the actual gameplay? Well, that is a little more split.
The main part of the game revolves around Rowena and her selected trio of Exemplars running about on the surface of the planet, kicking all kinds of monster ass. The basis of the gameplay is the same as the previous game, in that each Exemplar under your control is assigned a controller face button, and when their action gauge is full, they can attack in rapid succession. For instance, you may have A mapped to the ranged character, and X and B to the melee characters; tapping the correct button at the correct time will lead to them attacking. A slight change this time around is that the more powerful attacks, which instead of being automatically triggered every five attacks, now have to be selected by pressing RB and the relevant character button. LB is reserved for blocking again, and learning to recognise the various enemies and their attack animations is vital, as quite often damage can be reflected whilst perfectly blocking an attack can stagger an enemy, leading to increased attacking potential. Of course, while her Exemplars are busy fighting, Rowena, being dead, has a somewhat diminished damage potential. Nicely, she can utilise healing spells and resurrect “dead” Exemplars.
Another new mechanism is the ability to move the characters and enemies around on a grid of three squares each. There are various attacks that can either bring the enemies closer to the team, or push them away, causing enemy attacks to miss, for instance. Also, when Rowena casts a healing spell it will be active on one of the squares that the Exemplars can stand on, and so they need to be repositioned to make sure they can take advantage of the healing. It sounds complicated but it is actually pretty straightforward once you get to grips with it.
But what about that other half? Well, this focuses on Lucien trying to make the life of the castle a bit more appealing, mainly by trying to sway people to his side and win votes on the council. There are crossovers from one world to the other; for instance, while exploring the world, we find a candlestick, which, when presented to one of the other council members, make her more friendly towards what we are trying to do. Each of Lucien’s decisions has a time limit for you to be able to weigh up the pros and cons, and there are some big decisions to be made, with real consequences.
Fallen Legion Revenants makes a pretty decent fist of following up to Fallen Legion: Rise to Glory. The new additions to the battle system work well, as does the way the story is split between the two main characters. It isn’t hard to care about the narrative in place here, and this will keep you playing through to the climax just to find out what happens.
As an action RPG goes, Fallen Legion Revenants is good fun to play, especially as the decisions you have to make are able to add a little spice to proceedings.
Fallen Legion Revenants is on the Xbox Store
