This week, Passtech Games (creators of Curse of the Dead Gods) release the version 1.0 of their action RPG roguelite, Ravenswatch, after about a year and a half of development in early access. The new content update brings a proper final boss, new talents for heroes, skins, a new playable character, and of course, a perfect opportunity to take a look at the program.
I must admit that I had seen Ravenswatch promoted on multiple popular internet networks and sites, but I had never ventured to try it until now; in part due to the huge backlog that PC users often have and look at with suspicion every time a new game is released. Be that as it may, with the version 1.0 in hand, I can tell you that this is reasonably good: even if the first few minutes were a bit rough, one quickly realizes the potential.
Ravenswatch puts fantasy characters from popular tales – Little Red Riding Hood, Aladdin, or Wu-Kong among others – to fight Lovecraftian evils against the clock: the “bad guy” has a timer, and during the game, you must prepare yourself as best as possible for his arrival. There are objectives that reward you with large XP bundles, and even some that reduce the boss’s health bar to make it a bit easier when the encounter arrives.
All of this leaves us with certain metagame or community agreement in their cooperative matches: some objectives must be resolved before others, enemy hordes must be cleaned following a logic, and time is (literally) gold. I am still getting used to those etiquettes, but for now, I think what Ravenswatch offers is a fairly respectable PvE experience.
Damage in different action games
And what convinces me the most, as I mentioned, is the management of damage. Experimenting on my own with Scarlet, a Little Red Riding Hood who turns into the Big Bad Wolf at night, I managed to reach the end of Chapter 3 in one of my first runs. Being a melee character with a slightly tight cooldown for the dodge key, however, I found that the damage exchange with enemies was nothing short of a roller coaster.
They deal a lot of damage to me, but I also heal a lot if I manage well. You’re always in tension
They deal a lot of damage to me, but thanks to a certain improvement in the “powerful ability” slot that gives me life absorption, I also recover a lot of health when hitting under circumstances that are controllable by the player. The whole process requires me to juggle certain skills, and I often find myself waiting for the dodge or defensive to be ready to perform the next step of the process. Moments that translate into tension, and being tense is synonymous with having a good time. In this context, at least.
We have become accustomed to action RPGs doing certain things their way: souls-like, for example, usually require you to time your dodges very well because otherwise, enemies punish you with a hard blow that in turn sends a clear message, “one more hit, and you’re dead”. That is one way to understand how damage can be fun.
Risk of Rain 2 does something else that flirts with the fantasy of power: many adversaries can knock you down in a single attack and end your perfect run, but in return, you can also pump completely absurd amounts of damage if you equip yourself wisely and play your skills well. Another way to have fun with numbers.
So Ravenswatch does the same by turning your bar into a carousel that goes up and down very often. It does not let you fall asleep at any moment as your character becomes stronger passively, and it makes even a flat map without much richness or originality become interesting to explore as well.
In 3DJuegos | Precisely because I adore this fantasy and science fiction RPG, I will always regret that Remnant 2 did not inherit the most fun aspects of the original
In 3DJuegos | In Dark Souls you have four bars. Health, mana, stamina, and another that the game never shows you but is always there, balance
