Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn Review
Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn is a souls-lite game that is not exactly a souls-like genre, but a new genre that blends classic action-adventure games with the souls genre. Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn offers players both souls-type difficulty options and action-adventure game mechanics such as double or triple jumping. The main feature distinguishing Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn from other Souls games is that the game has 3 different difficulty levels. If you want a gameplay close to the Souls experience, you should choose the hardest, if you wish to advance the story, you should choose the easiest.
- Nice World Design
- Weapons
- Gameplay is terrible
Souls-Like vs. Souls-Lite
Souls-like games are games that have enemy design, difficulty, and fantasy universe design based on the Dark Souls series and do not directly tell the story to the players. In Souls-like games, you need to kill enemies and collect points to improve your character. If you die once, all your money falls to the ground, and if you die without getting it back, you lose it all. Additionally, in Souls-like games, the character control scheme and the character's mobility are limited. In other words, mechanics such as double jumping, dashing, and floating are not available in soul-like games.
Unlike the Souls-like genre, Souls-lite games combine both action-adventure games and the souls genre, incorporating different mechanics of both genres. For example, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn game offers both souls-like difficulty and parrying system, as well as features such as double jump and air dash.
Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn Gameplay Features
Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn offers players three different weapons instead of weapon variety: a hand axe, a flintlock rifle, and a flintlock pistol. However, the game has added variations to these weapons such as appearance and damage to compensate for the limited weapon variety. Although your general attack style in the game is focused on close combat, in critical situations you can create openings using your flintlock gun or kill your enemies from long range with your flintlock rifle. To get the bullets, you must damage your enemies with your hand axe. Each time you deal damage, a certain portion of your bullet bar will be filled. You can also use the spells of the gods that help you in the game, in addition to your hand axe and weapons.
The flintlock gun the game offers is often useful for disrupting opponents' defences and creating openings from which you can attack them. The parry mechanics of the game, unlike the classic Souls games, are used to lower the shields of shielded enemies. If you want to take revenge on the shielded enemies that are a nuisance in every Souls game, we are sure that you will love the unshielding mechanic that Flintlock offers. Magic abilities are functional to stun your enemies and deal high damage to them. The combination of all these mechanics creates an entertaining gameplay sequence.
Skill Trees
Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn offers players three different skill trees. These skill trees can be summarized as POWDER, which improves your long-range weapons, MAGIC, which improves your magic abilities, and STEEL, which improves your hand axe damage and abilities. Additionally, each time you improve a skill tree, your corresponding damage will increase as a percentage. For example, if you unlock a skill in the STEEL skill tree, your melee damage increases.
If you use your spells in the game, it is possible to make your enemies defenceless. This feature is functional when fighting against powerful enemies or boss monsters. Moreover, all you have to do for your spell usage rights to recharge is to wait. If you want to use special abilities, you must fill the skill usage cost by killing enemies.
Mobility
Another feature that makes Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn souls-lite is the abundance of mobility and tracks it offers to the players. First of all, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn offers players the ability to double jump and dash in the air. You can move in the direction you choose, using the firepower of your flintlock gun to dash through the air. It is also possible to upgrade your double jump to a triple jump from the relevant skill tree. It allows you to reach heights and locations that you cannot reach in a classic Souls game. For this reason, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn offers players courses that require skill and accurate movements. Another parkour theme that the game offers is the portals that we can enter thanks to the magic of the assistant next to us. These portals are ideal for floating in the air and moving quickly from one area to another.
Weapon Upgrades
Although Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn does not offer players a variety of weapons, it does offer variety in the weapons available. You can improve the weapons you have or replace them with different weapons. You can also find an upgrade that adds fire damage to your weapon in the chest you find at the end of the Demo version of the game. This development shows us that the game will offer improvements that will cause different elemental damage. If you think playing with a single weapon throughout the entire game will be boring, these variations may put your mind at ease.
Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn Difficulty Options
The biggest feature that distinguishes Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn from Souls games is that it has difficulty levels that will appeal to all players. If you want a punishing experience like Elden Ring, where every enemy has a daunting difficulty, you need to choose the game's hardest mode. In this mode, your enemies' damage and hit points are higher. The game offers a similar experience at every difficulty level, as it only increases the hit points and damage of the enemies in terms of difficulty mechanics. The easy difficulty level of Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn is designed for players who only want to experience the story. If you choose this difficulty mode, you will not earn any Steam achievements. The medium difficulty level of the game is for players who are not familiar with the soul-like genre but do not want to complete the story easily.
Let’s Wrap It Up
If you have just finished the Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree DLC and are looking for a difficult souls type game, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn is a game worth trying. Although Flintlock is not as challenging and mysterious as a From Software game, it gives a similar flavor. Additionally, the game offers difficulty options, making it ideal for all players, not just souls players. For this reason, if you have reservations about the game being challenging, you do not need to worry because Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn has challenges that appeal to all players.