Dust: An Elysian Tail Review

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.