• For our 10th anniversary on May 9th, 2024, we will be giving out 15 GB of free, off-shore, DMCA-resistant file storage per user, and very possibly, public video hosting! For more details, check a look at our roadmap here.

    Welcome to the edge of the civilized internet! All our official content can be found here. If you have any questions, try our FAQ here or see our video on why this site exists at all!

Shattered: Tale of the Forgotten King - A Gauche Review Production

Gauche

Arch Disciple
Messages
663


5/10 - The love/hate is strong here​

Redlock Studio made it with the Unreal Engine. Game is a massive ram whore. Recommended system requirements is 8gb but I was hitting 9gb use.



So imagine a dark souls-lite framework mixed with a plot conjured by Tsutomu Nihei, third person game with fixed camera angle segments and 3d platforming topped off with a jank combat system. Oh and a hoverboard riding, amnesia ridden, mostly silent protagonist in a digital world. Throw in dimension hoping monsters with lore logs that I actually backtracked for to read.

Lets talk combat. It sucks.
You've got light/heavy swing, dodge roll and parry.
When you die to an enemy you'll lose your souls until you take revenge and kill the same enemy that slayed ya. If you die to the environment you keep your souls.
There is Strength and Magic stats you can level but in reality there is only Strength. Magic, while useful for small mobs and early bosses it is made useless in late game boss fights as the animation cast times are too long to use and not get hit for. After learning this I ended up reskilling.
Enemy variety is low. You fight the same type for a long time. They all share the same human-form like body. There are no giant monsters or animals here. There are just bigger human shaped folk about.
Over half get stunned with light attacks while nearly the other half get stunned with heavy. This means as long as you have the stamina upkeep you could just repeat hitting the attack button without fear of retaliation as you've just stun locked the enemy. Some enemies don't get stunned at all. You run from them as the souls dropped don't justify their damage output and health.
Bosses are easy. I say this having gotten stuck on one for over an hour as I couldn't figure out how to advance the fight. The "hard" ones have set attacks. You know how in Dark Souls bosses make like 3 massive swings and you drop your guard only to be hit by the fourth? That sort of combat is absent here. Once you've seen an attack, it will always repeat the same action without variance. So you find the window to hit and it will always be there.
There is no armor system, just weapons and spells. The reality is only weapons, 7 of them. They're all just swords with different stats though so your attack animations hardly change. Dark Soul lore drops as descriptions are still present.

Lets talk world navigation. It sucks.
Those fixed camera angle segments with platforming are easily the worst part of the game. Platforms "magnetize" you to them in these sections. Its hard to explain but if you fight against it you'll fuck up and die. This took a while for me to get used to so I died a lot.
You get a hoverboard later on to explore the largest map area. You know how in Skyrim you can jank yourself up a mountain. The hoverboard enables this jank mechanic.
Save/Load time transitions are long. Save/Load times are pretty fast though which is odd. Your inputs still register while transitioning.
Exploring is fun but aside from pretty ventures is pretty unrewarding. You'll find key items, upgrade materials. health/mana pots and souls. I didn't mind it but I was only in it for the key items. The music helps.

Lets talk lore. 04 - 510 - 3 ∞/10
If I were to replay this game I would screen shot every line.

The open areas in this game have this serene abstract beauty going on. Whoever got paid to make this shit, it wasn't enough. You won't find animals roaming around, just these amalgamations of structures/landscapes.
This screen shot is straight from the dev's website. Notice the max HP and Stamina bars? Dirty cheats they are.
Game has a key to disable the HUD.



*
*These ships in the background move

There are parts I didn't complete, sections which seem unfinished and lots and lots of walking around

Here is a good guide for item/lore locations:


My advice is to just use cheat engine, find the value for items and just give yourself the Eibon fragments/Memory shards needed for lore.
Dissecting the lore was the better part of the game for me. Having it locked behind missable key items sucks. You even have the option to sell Eibon fragments too which would make the lore unobtainable then. Unlike Dark Souls, there is no New Game+ which means no farming them. Why disservice the lore so?
 
Last edited:

Arnox

Master
Staff member
Founder
Messages
5,288
Good review. I did like how you used the tables to section off the screenshots. Very slick.
 
Top