Made enough progress in Tails of Iron to talk about it some more.
It's definitely taking enough influence from Dark Souls to warrant a comparison to or even be called a soulslike being that the battles can be fucking brutal and I just ran into the first boss that I had to fight over and over for a good 30 or so minutes to finally take down. Granted, before then I'd taken most bosses or encounters on the first or second try. At the same time, it does a number of things differently that's worth talking about.
There is no EXP in the game and the only drops from enemies are certain resources you can use to buy things. Except in certain cases where you'll get an equipment drop but I'm 90% sure these are scripted drops because I've yet to see a repeat equipment drop. You do find equipment(Weapons, Armor, Shields) as you explore and progress and it's all neatly organized in your equipment menu into types and size, as well as showing the gain or loss of damage/protection(and protection against specific enemy types). While there is no Stamina system, your equipment load works like Souls, where heavier items make you more protected but less mobile and you have a little meter to show you just where you are on your equipment load spectrum and how removing/changing/adding equipment affects it(Green is improved, Red is hindered). Also, you can't sell or drop equipment and can only swap out from placed chests found at specific rest areas on the game world(so no armor/weapon swapping on the fly).
Since there is no EXP, there's also no stats, so your equipment load max appears to be set(so you can't just pump points into endurance so you can roll in stone armor) but it also means you don't lose anything when you die in combat other then a little bit of progress since the last bonfire(which here is a bench that saves the game). Interestingly, the game so far seems to be quite generous with these bonfires, finding one after every couple enemy encounters, and in some cases it's a full rest area, where the bench has a nearby keg of sunny d/estus(here called bug juice, and apparently literally made from bugs, so killing certain insects allow you to refill your flask without having to find another keg), a barrel of arrows(restock to full) and a weapons chest(to change out your gear). A particularly nasty boss fight I mentioned above has all of this on the short lead in to him, so you're full up and ready to go before the fight(He still kicked my ass a bunch of times, but at least I didn't have to wait long to retry).
Basically, this is trying to do 2d melee Souls-like combat while trying to cut out much of the grind and making builds around what equipment you use, not how you allocate stats.
Enemy encounters appear to be mostly scripted. Namely you'll be crossing an screen and either be ambushed or walk into an enemy camp(or something) and you'll be locked on that screen with a number of enemies or a Boss until you kill them all. On numerous occasions, new enemies will show up from offscreen as you kill earlier ones to keep the pressure on but this always appears to be scripted to happen in the same way. In one boss battle, the boss will be in the foreground waiting for you and a bunch of his boys will be in the background watching the fight. Once the bosses health bar is depleted enough, he'll blow a horn and jump into the background where you can't hit him while some of the minions in the background will move up to the foreground to fight you and then once they're dead the boss will come back for the next phase of the fight. It reminds me some brawlers I played back in the day, though it's a strictly 2d rather then semi-isometric plane(?) so you have to get good at crowd control and not getting surrounded. Once enemies are cleared they don't usually respawn, so it's normally safe to run back and restock/save if you're hurting and not have to fight all the way back again. Ironically, the number of bonfires and rest areas for the number of enemy encounters so far means you'll rarely have to do this.
The art style is quite good, having kind of a fairytale/storybook look to it. I appreciate you'll have stuff going on in the background layers a lot, such as the boss battle where the minions will hang out watching the fight until their boss summons them into the foreground where you're fighting. But also in towns where you'll see rats working and such in the background to give a sense that the areas are being used and lived in. This is particularly striking because as you advance through the game, previously abandoned and devastated locations will slowly come back to life and be rebuilt over time by the population and there's notable changes as you return various points through the game. There's a related mechanic that once you've rescued members of your family per the story and they return to the castle, you'll have to raise funds to repair the castle so they can get back to work(as the castles Cook and Blacksmith respectively) and as you get the required resources(taxation hasn't been invented yet, apparently), the castle will be repaired and the blacksmith/cooking mechanics will be available again(briefly shown off in the intro).
One little touch I like is that it seems that whenever you hear music in game, you'll always find someone playing a musical instrument nearby. Even in boss fights, there'll often be a couple of frogs playing a fight tune in the background and then run off once you kill the boss. If you come back to these fights after dying, the musicians will be shown resting or even asleep, only to wake up and begin playing when the fight begins anew. So a nice little detail there. Also, Doug Cockle, the voice of Geralt from the Witcher games, has the only voice in the game as the narrator, as all the in game characters talk with voices that sound like whistles and grumbles and such(and all conversations are shown as little pictograms in a sequence which is just enough for you to get the gist what what they're saying).
It's definitely taking enough influence from Dark Souls to warrant a comparison to or even be called a soulslike being that the battles can be fucking brutal and I just ran into the first boss that I had to fight over and over for a good 30 or so minutes to finally take down. Granted, before then I'd taken most bosses or encounters on the first or second try. At the same time, it does a number of things differently that's worth talking about.
There is no EXP in the game and the only drops from enemies are certain resources you can use to buy things. Except in certain cases where you'll get an equipment drop but I'm 90% sure these are scripted drops because I've yet to see a repeat equipment drop. You do find equipment(Weapons, Armor, Shields) as you explore and progress and it's all neatly organized in your equipment menu into types and size, as well as showing the gain or loss of damage/protection(and protection against specific enemy types). While there is no Stamina system, your equipment load works like Souls, where heavier items make you more protected but less mobile and you have a little meter to show you just where you are on your equipment load spectrum and how removing/changing/adding equipment affects it(Green is improved, Red is hindered). Also, you can't sell or drop equipment and can only swap out from placed chests found at specific rest areas on the game world(so no armor/weapon swapping on the fly).
Since there is no EXP, there's also no stats, so your equipment load max appears to be set(so you can't just pump points into endurance so you can roll in stone armor) but it also means you don't lose anything when you die in combat other then a little bit of progress since the last bonfire(which here is a bench that saves the game). Interestingly, the game so far seems to be quite generous with these bonfires, finding one after every couple enemy encounters, and in some cases it's a full rest area, where the bench has a nearby keg of sunny d/estus(here called bug juice, and apparently literally made from bugs, so killing certain insects allow you to refill your flask without having to find another keg), a barrel of arrows(restock to full) and a weapons chest(to change out your gear). A particularly nasty boss fight I mentioned above has all of this on the short lead in to him, so you're full up and ready to go before the fight(He still kicked my ass a bunch of times, but at least I didn't have to wait long to retry).
Basically, this is trying to do 2d melee Souls-like combat while trying to cut out much of the grind and making builds around what equipment you use, not how you allocate stats.
Enemy encounters appear to be mostly scripted. Namely you'll be crossing an screen and either be ambushed or walk into an enemy camp(or something) and you'll be locked on that screen with a number of enemies or a Boss until you kill them all. On numerous occasions, new enemies will show up from offscreen as you kill earlier ones to keep the pressure on but this always appears to be scripted to happen in the same way. In one boss battle, the boss will be in the foreground waiting for you and a bunch of his boys will be in the background watching the fight. Once the bosses health bar is depleted enough, he'll blow a horn and jump into the background where you can't hit him while some of the minions in the background will move up to the foreground to fight you and then once they're dead the boss will come back for the next phase of the fight. It reminds me some brawlers I played back in the day, though it's a strictly 2d rather then semi-isometric plane(?) so you have to get good at crowd control and not getting surrounded. Once enemies are cleared they don't usually respawn, so it's normally safe to run back and restock/save if you're hurting and not have to fight all the way back again. Ironically, the number of bonfires and rest areas for the number of enemy encounters so far means you'll rarely have to do this.
The art style is quite good, having kind of a fairytale/storybook look to it. I appreciate you'll have stuff going on in the background layers a lot, such as the boss battle where the minions will hang out watching the fight until their boss summons them into the foreground where you're fighting. But also in towns where you'll see rats working and such in the background to give a sense that the areas are being used and lived in. This is particularly striking because as you advance through the game, previously abandoned and devastated locations will slowly come back to life and be rebuilt over time by the population and there's notable changes as you return various points through the game. There's a related mechanic that once you've rescued members of your family per the story and they return to the castle, you'll have to raise funds to repair the castle so they can get back to work(as the castles Cook and Blacksmith respectively) and as you get the required resources(taxation hasn't been invented yet, apparently), the castle will be repaired and the blacksmith/cooking mechanics will be available again(briefly shown off in the intro).
One little touch I like is that it seems that whenever you hear music in game, you'll always find someone playing a musical instrument nearby. Even in boss fights, there'll often be a couple of frogs playing a fight tune in the background and then run off once you kill the boss. If you come back to these fights after dying, the musicians will be shown resting or even asleep, only to wake up and begin playing when the fight begins anew. So a nice little detail there. Also, Doug Cockle, the voice of Geralt from the Witcher games, has the only voice in the game as the narrator, as all the in game characters talk with voices that sound like whistles and grumbles and such(and all conversations are shown as little pictograms in a sequence which is just enough for you to get the gist what what they're saying).
Last edited:
