Dust: An Elysian
Tail
This game has
personally touched me from happiness to dread in countless moments,
which I will be getting into shortly. The game is a story driven
metroidvania action platformer, with completely hand drawn artwork.
The target audience is questionable whether it is directed at a broad
audience or specifically the furry community, which it fits
extraordinarily well in both instances. The storyline has many twists
and turns, with dramatics at every turn that are done so well, in my
opinion, never lose face.
The artwork of this
game is nothing less than gorgeous, for being done by a single man in
his spare time. Albeit, the animations can seem rather awkward in
some instances, and sometimes the shading on a character can make
them pop out of their scenery a tad too much, even through those
downsides it stands strong and looks unbelievably mesmerizing
throughout every stage and map.
Personally I
believe the target audience be more of the twelve to twenty-five
margin, rather than the younger population. The game involves many
critical and precise movements and combinations that may be tough to
pull off with a younger player, and many dark tones that may be
unsuitable.
The gameplay has an
abundance of platforming and puzzle based locations, with a large
amount of what could be considered hack'n'slash or beat'em up. At
some point, you could even say it is a bullet hell game, for your
enemies that is, as once you get the hang of using magic your
standard combat abilities become significantly less used. Throughout
the game, it does become significantly tougher as enemies can bring
down quite a beating to you along with status effects, while healing
items become so expensive that saving up for an offensive or
defensive item means you cannot allow yourself to be hit much at all.
Many players may see a huge downfall to this fact, that it adds so
much of a challenge that it loses fan value, but in my personal
opinion I much enjoy the challenge.
Further on my
personal opinion, first of all I'd like to say this is not a game
meant for a mouse and keyboard. Unless you want to replace your mouse
from button mashing, invest in a gamepad for this. The story made me
feel personally attached to the main character Dust, who has two
sides two individuals tragic backgrounds and endings. The game made
me laugh, it made me cry, and made me anxious for a return. All these
reasons are why I can happily say this game has been a fantastic
adventure and worth a play through by just about anyone.
