Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn – It can be seen that the “legacy” that the Souls-like genre was born by FromSoftware has become a “fan-attracting” formula, which perhaps most producers who are cherishing an action role-playing game want to include.

However, to create a game that truly harmonizes the values ​​”learned” from the Souls series while still carrying its own creative imprint is always not easy, especially for “young” developers with little experience like A44 game, who introduced a new concept – “Souls-lite” with the second product called Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn .

According to A44, Souls-lite is exactly what it sounds like: more of a homage than an attempt to turn Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn into a Souls clone, so that the new creative element will help the game have its own identity.

A44 itself has some experience when its first product called Ashen also follows the Souls-like direction, released in 2018 with average quality, bringing a lot of promise to gamers when looking at Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn thanks to impressive trailers at major international gaming events.

So, is Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn a good enough product for you to enjoy? – MarkGame will answer that question, so you… don’t have to experience it.

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THE DANCE OF “HOT GOODS”, “COLD GOODS” AND MAGIC!

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn puts players in a somewhat “strange” setting, where there is a breakthrough in weapon manufacturing technology when soldiers are equipped with guns.

Along with that, the player is not only an anonymous soldier but also a master of using explosives, as well as the ability to fight with “cold goods” (swords) skillfully. However, these technical advances may not yet achieve “democracy” when facing the magic and darkness of the gods that are trampling the land of the main character.

As the game sets up, the combat system built in Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn will revolve around familiar melee weapons such as axes, hammers, swords… along with the extremely strong support of guns from pistols, rifles, to “retractable” guns and even… hand-held cannons.

The connection between these two types of weapons in the game is even tighter with the presence of an important “link” which is Enki – a god, and also a companion with the ability to… curse enemies.

To make it easier to describe, players can think of the smooth combination of the combat system that doesn’t require “measurement of strength” from God of War , the combination of guns and axes from Bloodborne , and even support magic from Enki.

The connection between these three is so tight that if in Bloodborne the player can play completely melee without using guns, then in Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn it is simply… impossible! At first it seems a bit “imprisoned” because it limits the ability to customize the way gamers fight. But in return, the fighting phases in the game will be extremely ornate, smooth and highly “addictive”.

Facing an opponent in Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn is not simply dodging, counterattacking or shooting from a distance, the enemy is always designed with a very thick amount of armor, a good defense ability so fighting by instinct from other games is foolish.

On the contrary, players need to try to choose a good fighting position and counterattack timing when the opponent is vulnerable (when launching an attack) to fire a shot to knock down the opponent before rushing into close combat.

But that’s still not enough because the opponent’s armor is very thick and the amount of damage returned is enough to kill the player in just two notes.

At this point, Enki’s help is needed by “cursing” death to the opponent. When the curse is fulfilled, all melee or ranged attacks of the main character will help fill the curse bar. Once this bar is full, the opponent will fall into a state of severe stun, completely lose fighting spirit and receive damage many times higher directly to the original health bar.

The difficulty of each opponent is also different, depending on the role and equipment they are carrying, so each confrontation, whether with one or several enemies at the same time, brings the same tension.

Players must combine Enki’s attacks, guns and melee weapons with 3 separate buttons, so they also need to have a cool head and a certain amount of caution, although the game’s combat pace is always high and will increase many times towards the end of the game.

Then your victory will be rewarded with slo-mo moves with fierce moves and extremely cinematic camera angles, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn will make the player’s adrenaline pumped and satisfied in every finishing move of the game.

In addition, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn also allows for expanded combat capabilities with a skill-tree system to unlock advanced coordination abilities. At this time, Enki not only acts through the player’s commands but can also voluntarily support in cases where the main character is besieged, or advanced skills help the main character to confront 4 or 5 opponents at the same time.

 

With this engaging combination of old and new combat systems, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn initially creates very good momentum.

In addition, the ability to move flexibly during combat is also “freely” provided by the developer, allowing players to double-jump, dodge, and glide… continuously without having to worry about the obsession called “stamina”, further increasing the versatility of the character surrounded by enemies, while having enough melee, long-range, or “guerrilla” combat.

With this fascinating combination of old and new combat systems, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn initially creates a very good momentum when expanding the accessibility to gamers of both the intense combat genre like God of War , and the emphasis on caution like the famous Souls series.

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LOST INFINITE POTENTIAL

Compared to Ashen released in 2018, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn was invested by A44 on a much larger scale, from design, music, voice acting and even targeting a wider market. Of course, the potential that Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn had was extremely large until it lost everything due to a bland storyline, and many problems when combining the above potentials together.

First is the superficiality in world building in the game when it is known that A44 “once” collaborated with Sweet Baby Inc. during the development process, causing the direction to change, leading to the game’s extremely loose plot.

The most obvious “out of sync” is that the game’s plot is extremely monotonous, linear, and predictable to the point of being silly when placed next to the aforementioned well-invested combat system. The linearity is so “heavy” that the player’s path is almost only in one direction: one starting point – one ending point, and everything is “drawn” on a semi-open map that looks free, but the writer “swears” that they only serve to see where you have been.

With this linearity and confinement, players just need to… close their eyes and run straight to the end of the map to confront the final boss of that area and that’s it, repeat 3 times for all 3 areas and players can completely complete the game in about 5-7 hours of play without having to think any further.

The plot developments are also almost smooth, the knots are only intentionally created through dialogues that “suddenly” surge with emotions after boss fights, about the main character doubting life when accompanying Enki, very awkward!

Sometimes, the drama suddenly becomes… abrupt because the dialogue simply ends there, the question is left unanswered in the middle of a questioning conversation between Enki and the main character without any reason, as if the developer thinks the player “must have understood it already”.

Enki was added not only to play a role in combat but also as a character that pushes the game’s plot forward, with the intention of showing players the ups and downs in the relationship between gods, humans, and the main character, through situations where both are forced to trust each other.

Even at the end of the game, the main character’s questions to Enki are still left unanswered, even though they promise to continue on a new, more arduous journey together. The author himself will probably never understand what belief or motivation could help the main character reach that ending. It’s like the curtain came down, and the director forced the main character to sing an “epic” song to make it look grand.

The pieces of background and story picked up along the way are just “decorative”, because they almost don’t tell any really necessary legends, because they simply say things that are already very clearly shown during the game.

Oh, and if the player doesn’t understand why the supreme gods decided to destroy the mortal world, well… that’s okay, because the writers of Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn probably forgot what it was all about. It’s like you have the “leave your brain at home and go watch Transformers” mentality.

A44 “once” collaborated with Sweet Baby Inc. during development, causing the direction to change, resulting in the game’s extremely loose storyline.

Awkward Combination

In terms of world-building, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn is built in a very “canvas” way. Besides the frustrating linearity, the world in the game, although not empty, is soulless and lacks the motivation to explore. You spend time scouring every inch of the game, but the rewards in return will usually be of two types: one type that “looks” useful but has no “place to be used”, and the other type that is determined to be… useless as soon as you pick them up.

The first type is weapons such as rifles, hand cannons, pistols, grenades or melee weapons such as axes, hammers, knives… each with different characteristics, serving a few different combat situations.

However, upgrading these weapons at the same time is impossible, because they require a huge amount of materials and money.

Not to mention, the balance in usage opportunities or upgrade capabilities are also very different. You will pick up a sword with very strong upgrade capabilities in exchange for very little materials (almost no cost), while others cost a lot of money and many different types of materials in large quantities, in exchange for no practical advantage, and limited usability.

This leads to the second type – upgrade materials become useless when upgrading an item is so easy, there’s no incentive to scour the map for them.

It’s not worth it to scour the map just to pick up… a few steel chunks that you might not use until the end of the game. The distribution of materials on the map is also unbalanced, like A44 knows that… they are useless, so he has to limit a certain type of material at this stage and then put it all in later stages to avoid the main character becoming too strong.

The game’s side quests also don’t bring any valuable rewards, because most of them are money, which helps players expand some skills in a “good to have, but not having doesn’t affect anything” way, so the motivation to do them is not much.

Not to mention these side quests have no direct impact or connection to the main storyline of the game.

The NPCs in the game are the most redundant thing, no different from the 5000 mobile objects in Assassin’s Creed Unity years ago.

They can’t interact, can’t talk, can’t reveal information, have no specific activities, nothing… they just stand there, look around to look like a city with people and that’s it.

Some “special” NPCs are designated to have a gambling function, and you can only interact with them. Perhaps A44 has put all their brainpower into developing the “Go” game in Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, so they’ll skip the world-building part.

And if you are wondering about the bosses? Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn only has 4 main bosses, or 5 if you are an “easygoing” reader. The rest of the boss fights in the game are simply a matter of bringing a high-level soldier into the boss room, letting them corner you with a “power-over-power” style while calling a bunch of “followers” ​​to fight with you and that’s it. This very stupid and lazy boss design has to be repeated about ten times during the game, making the writer bored to death!

As for the 4 main bosses, they are also designed very immaturely, the way to deal with them is no different from confronting a normal elite soldier including: wait for them to attack and counterattack (parry) or shoot, let Enki “cast a spell” and then just keep punching them, repeat like that until they roll over and die.

Even if the boss reaches phase two or phase three with some new moves, the way to defeat them is the same, extremely easy and… boring. The number of “hard tries” that the writer has probably can’t be counted on the fingers of one hand for the hardest boss. As for the final boss… the first time is enough!

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn ‘s graphics and art direction look great overall, with many of the scenes looking impressive and beautiful. The main characters and weapons in particular are very well thought out, and the spooky side characters are also impressively designed and beautiful when looked at closely.

However, due to the focus on details, the other parts are not as polished. The game world is on the brink of destruction but is too bright and strangely peaceful, except for the giant crystals that appear. The first map (the rocky area) is beautiful, but the second map (the desert area) is monotonous and lacks detail.

Sound and music are probably the two areas that are most awkwardly coordinated: the voice acting is very good, with the voice actors conveying the emotions of the characters realistically, combined with the powerful and pleasing combat simulation sounds, but all because of a poor soundtrack system, and the ability to simulate bad spatial sound, it drags down the player’s emotions. Very half-baked!

Besides the frustrating linearity, the game world, while not empty, is soulless and lacks the motivation to explore.