It’s obvious after playing one of FromSoftware’s Souls games for just a few short minutes just how much effort, creativity, and skill it takes to make all those disparate mechanical systems lock into place in a way that still manages to weave passive narrative in a gratifying way. So, when faced with a game like Flintlock: Siege of Dawn, it should be clear just how respectable it is for any game to rise to the level of “perfectly decent Soulslike.”
That’s especially true in Flintlock, given that Wellington-based A44 Games’s latest still manages its own twists on the established formula when it comes to flashy and stylish mid-air traversal options. You’re also given a helper NPC character who can wear down an enemy’s stagger meter without our player character, a soldier named Nor, laying a finger on them.
In the game, an army of 18th-century-coded soldiers discovers that the literal gate dividing the world of the living from the realm of the dead is breaking. When a climactic battle shatters that gate, letting about half a dozen eldritch gods loose on the world, Nor, in her guilt, teams up with one of the lesser gods, a fox named Enki, to put the Old Ones back where they belong.
Nor will do battle with the gods with axes and a flintlock pistol. In a gimmick straight out of Bloodborne, the flintlock is largely a parry tool in practice, allowing Nor to break enemies from strong attacks when her ax’s normal parry mechanic won’t do the job. Fights generally recall 2018’s God of War more than anything, but aside from a lack of enemy variety, that’s not a bad thing, especially once more magical attacks become a regular part of the player’s arsenal.
Battles are challenging but never reach the nerve-wrecking tension of a proper FromSoftware title, though boss fights do come close later in the game. There’s a certain breed of player who will be grateful for that lowered window of accessibility, while still indulging in many of the same mechanical ideas, while Souls game veterans may find the relative ease welcoming, especially after Shadow of the Erdtree took a sharp, painful turn in the other direction.
There’s just a ceiling on how far Flintlock’s ambitions fly in every other regard. Namley, the characters and storytelling leave much to be desired. It doesn’t help that the game drops you into a climactic battle against the armies of the dead without establishing a single thing about the world, but even if it did, few of the game’s characters or their stories stick in the mind.
Nor and Enki fare the best out of the cast, which is good since we spend the most time with them. But more than that, their time together is well spent, bantering back and forth as they travel along. In particular, there are great sequences after boss fights where the two of them commiserate over their guilt and grief. The side quests are largely uninspired, though a few do manage to reach the heights the rest of the game disappointingly never sustains.
When looking for reasons to continue in Flintlock, most of them have to do with seeing another gorgeous vista, going off the beaten path for resources, and finding more fights to play around with new magic skills and combinations. More of that could and should come from the narrative, but what Flintlock does right, it does well, and in a way that welcomes more players into the fold. That, apparently, is something A44 can do that FromSoftware won’t.
We didn’t receive a response from the game’s publicist to our request for review code. This game was reviewed with code purchased by the reviewer.
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