Dust: An Elysian Tail has two kinds of enemies: Ones that don’t care how you approach them, and ones that can only be approached in one specific way. What you want in a game is enemies that can be approached in many different ways, but have clever weaknesses that players can exploit. Those enemies are instantly killed when parried, and no other attacks have any effect at all. The closest thing is an enemy that must be parried by attacking just as it does, but even this is ham handed. No enemies that you have to really dance with. There are no enemies that are better dealt with via one combo as opposed to another. Dust: An Elysian Tail sets up all these well grounded fundamentals and then never asks you to use them. That means that the combo system is essentially useless. Double check that video above and you’ll notice that despite all those flashy combos, most enemy health bars are depleted in one or two hits. If you put any amount of your growth points while leveling up into attack power, you’ll immediately see what I mean. Platforming was always a game of simply dodge rolling from platform to platform, with the consequences slightly varied.Ĭombat is even worse. This was alright, but honestly, there wasn’t enough fundamentally different things to do. Caves have spikes that damage the player if they mis-time a jump, whereas a forest bit might just have the player fall out of a tree (losing progress, in that they have to climb back up there).
The underground caves are different from the forests and not just in their visual design, but in what the players are asked to do. Dust: An Elysian Tail actually has a fair amount of variety on the surface. Which was really weird given the fact that I enjoyed the actual sprites as much as I did. You’ll understand it more if you play the game, but when the characters speak, these up close shots are just poorly animated, poorly designed, and honestly just poorly drawn. The actual character art is just such bland anime. I mean, look at this combat scene with the actual active sprites:Ĭool effects, cool animations… they’re fun to watch. To get this out of the way, the Character art stood out to me in a really odd way. However, we haven’t gotten to any of the short comings yet… It feels good because the animations and sound effects are top-notch. What I’m saying here is that Dust: An Elysian Tail has a lot of good fundamentals. I was doing more than just jumping and what I was doing was directly leading to a successful platforming execution. People like being able to predict what’s going to happen, and knowing that I was going to make each jump by dodge rolling ended up feeling viscerally satisfying. You’re given the ability to dodge roll (or air-dodge, as it worked while jumping) and often platforms and enemies were placed with enough intent that dodging would move you just far enough that you ended up right where you should be (say, between two bunches of spikes, or from one tiny platform to the next). There is also a fair bit of platforming in Dust: An Elysian Tail, which was usually done pretty well. All of this makes for a strong foundation off which to build. All in all, the actions are a variety and allow for the possibility of complex combat. Lastly, your companion Fidget can toss out a number of spells that hurt enemies and have dramatic effects when combined with your spinny-wind channel deal. This is used in a variety of ways, but can’t be channeled indefinitely. The third action is being able to channel your spinning wind move. The fact that you have to be intentional in your combos makes the game pretty fun at first. That would result in something sub-optimal. You can’t just mash attacks and throw your combo button in wherever you want. This works pretty well because it actually requires some specific execution.
The second action being that you can execute special “combos” by pressing the Y button (if you’re using an Xbox 360 controller) after a certain number of regular attacks. Mashing your standard attack, obviously, being the first. There are three and a half primary actions that you can take while fighting. So, how does the combat hold up mechanically? Well, there were parts that were pretty good actually. So, it looks pretty good at least, right? That’s a good start for a combat-platformer. All in all that part of the game is very well done. Everything is fluid and the sound effects go with it perfectly. Dust: An Elysian Tail has great looking combat animations. I’ll specifically say the combat animation. Developed by Humble Hearts, I just recently got around to playing it, and am here to tell you that… well, before I get ahead of myself, let’s do this in the usual format. Dust: An Elysian Tail is an independently developed game that was published by Microsoft last year.