Reseña | Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn

The AA gaming space is always a very interesting environment, where developers join forces to often aim higher than their resources allow. The result of these efforts is often games with amazing ideas but somewhat uneven implementation.

Sometimes the ideas are so original that the uneven execution can be overlooked and the game can be left high and low, and vice versa. However, there are also times when the developers’ efforts seem to fall short of one or the other, creating a game that is simply playable.

Unfortunately Flintlock: Siege of Dawn is one of those games for several reasons. The title developed by A44 Games and published by Kepler Interactive It’s an attempt by the developer to enter the lucrative world of Soulslike, the genre created by FromSoftware with its “Dark Souls” franchise, and while it sounds like an excellent idea on paper, this angle of development becomes the first big problem for Flintlock: Siege of Dawn, and one that leaves the game in a kind of limbo where the lack of original elements makes it unattractive.

It should be made clear that despite its issues, Flintlock: Siege of Dawn is not a bad game; its short length of around eight hours allows the player to experience a mechanically solid fantasy adventure and not feel like it was all a waste once finished. Flintlock: Siege of Dawn has a number of qualities that speak well of A44 as a developer, but which also leave it unclear how they have yet to reach their full potential.

Flintlock: Siege of Dawn and its interesting aesthetic section

This installment offers a rather striking visual section, what the developers themselves call Powder Punk, and which combines an American Civil War aesthetic with elements of European and Ottoman architecture, plus classic fantasy elements among which we find zombies, monsters, spirits and warriors in armor, and even a sphinx, making its second appearance of the year after its participation in Dragon’s Dogma 2.

For those who are avid fans of the fantasy genre or even fans of fantasy book series such as The Powder Mage Trilogy, written by Brian McClellan, you will find plenty to enjoy here from a visual standpoint.

The game combines this aesthetic with a fairly linear level design, which places the player in a map divided into zones that they must traverse while eliminating the enemies in their path. The zones look large, but once explored they appear quite small and make the game feel somewhat one-way, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but it does go against what FromSoftware and others who have explored the genre have done, with more complex and explorable environments.

Even though exploration isn’t all that satisfying, the linearity of the experience adds a welcome element of urgency.

A familiar fight for fans of the Soulslike genre

Of course, within the Soulslike genre another element that is incredibly important is combat, and for Flintlock: Siege of Dawn this means an element that is sure to create mixed reactions. Combat behaves similarly to how the genre has established it to date, with movements locked in by their animations and the implementation of a “parry” system as has become so popular; dodging, jumping and blocking are also parts of the recipe and Flintlock incorporates each of the ingredients.

However, while the combat is serviceable, it’s not great or even good due to a number of factors, including some rather poor, if not incomplete, animations. During traversal and combat, Flitnlock shows its greatest weaknesses and that’s that everything has this floating-in-the-air feel to it, and while this helps during acrobatic runs through levels, it feels pretty off when it comes to fighting in what should be a tight combat system.

However, all that glitters is not gold

Even FromSoftware has issues in this regard with some hitboxes that don’t make sense, but Flintlock: Siege of Dawn just doesn’t feel right when fighting, everything seems to slide around more than it should, including the character you’re controlling and also the enemies, which makes analyzing the space between you and the enemy a difficult task.

Enemies are also relentless on many occasions and drain the player’s life almost instantly if they are not alert. Also, certain mechanics such as interrupting unblockable attacks using our firearms, become almost laughable to use, since the enemies are extremely fast, while shooting is incredibly slow, so this technique only works if you anticipate the attack or if you are far away.

Still it has striking mechanics

That said, once you use the parry, the counterattack animations are very satisfying, and those that end up finishing off the enemy even more so. It’s strange then that these animations feel so visceral and complete when the animations for much more basic elements like running, jumping or attacking feel so incomplete.

The only innovative element that the game offers in terms of combat or progression is the experience multiplier mechanic. As in every Soulslike, the death of each enemy means the gain of points that can be exchanged for new combat moves, or the improvement of our weapons and armor, but here in Flintlock: Siege of Dawn each new enemy defeated increases the multiplier, which makes each new enemy defeated in succession worth more points, but this only happens if you play without receiving any kind of damage, since the slightest hit makes the multiplier disappear. It’s a pretty interesting risk and reward system.

But… What about the story of Flintlock: Siege of Dawn?

In terms of the world it presents and its narrative, Flintlock: Siege of Dawn makes the same mistake as a lot of these AA games, which is to introduce the player to a world and characters in a very rough way and without establishing anything at all. The game seems to believe that the player will automatically become interested in the characters and the world, without establishing the details of the world and how it works. As the story progresses, the story becomes clearer, but it’s hard to get to that point without feeling disdain for the characters and the entire adventure from the start.

It seems that many developers have incorrectly learned the lessons of FromSoftware and believe that not explaining anything means creating an automatically captivating mystery, without understanding that mystery in FromSoftware games is generated by a lack of understanding of the past, of the lore, of everything that happened before the game began and not by not understanding what happens in the present; the background is not history and vice versa.

As a result, both the characters in Flintlock: Siege of Dawn and its world feel rather poor, despite looking so great. Nor, our protagonist, receives about as much characterization as a pool table, while Enki, our companion, comes off better, but as a secondary character he doesn’t shine as he should.

Conclusion

Flintlock: Siege of Dawn tries, but fails, to execute the Soulslike formula the way games like Stellar Blade or Lies or P have, and the result is a game that, while functional, pales in comparison to many other works that offer the same thing, but much better executed.

After having played Shadow of the ErdtreeElden Ring’s titanic expansion, Flintlock: Siege of Dawn, feels like a beginner’s game, and while its core systems may offer some level of enjoyment for many, it’s going to be hard for the game to break into the industry when there are so many better offerings.

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Our review of Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn was conducted on PC and the code was provided by Kepler Interactive. The game is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Game Pass..