It is not often that I come across a game that is difficult to complete not because it is so complex but rather because it is incredibly boring. One of such titles is Farsiders, the debut project of Gambit Ghost Studio. The game positions itself as a hack-n-slash RPG in a setting that combines cyberpunk and magical fantasy, but at the same time the presentation of the plot and gameplay might just make one bored enough to put it down 30 minutes after the start.
You play as Cassandra, a rookie who has just arrived at the Spectralon organization and immediately found herself in a confrontation with the Soul Syndicate, a nefarious group that uses soul magic to achieve its dastardly goals. During a battle against the bad guys, Cassandra and her partner find themselves in the magical world of Tellune, the story of which is based on the King Arthur legends.
In the process of exploring the world, players will get to meet the Knights of the Round Table, learn magic and defeat evil across two universes. This is how you can sum up the narrative side of things, but let’s instead focus on gameplay, the actual bread and butter of hack-n-slash RPGs.
The battle system features a combination of melee and ranged combat, expanded due to the learned abilities that can be used on their own or as a power-up for players’ weapons. The character’s abilities and characteristics can also be upgraded, which was completely unnecessary in this case in my opinion.
For example, the protagonist moves EXTREMELY SLOWLY during the early levels of the game. The situation can be changed by leveling up the movement speed but why the developers have chosen this approach remains a mystery and makes me think back to Dark Souls 2 and it’s infamous Adaptability. Increasing the hero’s damage and HP does not really create a feeling of improvement or getting stronger: opponents die from the same number of hits, and the heroine is as quick to croak in endgame as she is on low levels.
The heroine’s arsenal consists of a sword and a pistol, which can be further enhanced by various magical skills you learn as you level up. The possible upgrades include dash (the most frequently used ability as it allows you to quickly explore locations), a block with the chance to parry as well as magical skills that can be used as an “ultimate” of sorts. As a result, the battles turn out to be very monotonous, with most enemies getting simply clicked to death with a single button. Some of them need to be reached first before the mentioned treatment commences.
The biggest drawback when it comes to battles is their duration and the intervals between the fights. Enemies expire before you even start having fun, and the exploration of the world and the presentation of the plot is extremely drawn-out.
Yes, ordinary enemies try to organize themselves into something resembling a battle formation where ranged opponents stay the furthest away from the player character, hiding behind the cannon fodder melee… but this problem is solved by a single press of the Ult button that recharges rather fast on its own.
The game cannot boast a huge diversity of opponents. There are mobs with melee and ranged attacks, bosses and “elites” that have additional empowerments. For example, your ordinary melee opponent but with additional HP regeneration. The bosses manage to relieve the boredom a little: they are not very tough, have 3-4 attacks in reserve, but they can actually punish the player for being too reckless and making mistakes. Almost all of them can be defeated easily, if not on your first try, then for sure on the second or third.
There are also challenging versions of bosses that task players to survive for a certain amount of time in the arena with various mechanics. Once you are done, the game plops you back to continue exploring the world and the story.
Stylistically, the game is quite beautiful, but the actual level design and the contents of the available maps are extremely poor in ideas. Players will spend most of their time in a long corridor with checkpoints without the chance of additional exploration as you run towards the next battle and try not to break your dash button. A few hours in, this kind of gameplay numbs you enough that you just want to spam “skip” at any dialogue thrown your way.
Speaking about buttons: I played the game with a gamepad, and the “Accept” and “Cancel” buttons on it were reversed which led me to constantly be confused in the menus in the first couple of hours. The last time I saw this was in Genshin Impact, and it actually let you change this configuration.
In Farsiders, the only settings available to players for changes are the resolution, display mode, localization and the sound volume. The soundtrack is not bad, but there are very few tracks, and it becomes as boring as gameplay just as quickly. The ambient sounds are otherwise unremarkable.
To summarize, the first project of Gambit Ghost Studio turned out to be extremely controversial in its ideas and with quite a few problems when it comes to gameplay. I hope the studio will not stop there and will take all of their shortcomings into account.
Farsiders can serve as a game you enjoy for a couple of evenings. Its price tag is quite affordable, and that’s about the best thing I can say about it.
