I made it no secret that while I love the first person genre, I’m always on the lookout for games outside of my comfort zone to check out, so when I stumbled across Clash: Artifacts Of Chaos, it did tick those boxes but I didn’t pay much attention to it at first. That is, until I saw that the developers, ACE Team, also made Zeno Clash; a game I really enjoyed and felt it deserved a bigger audience then it had. So, seeing them return with a new title in the same universe, I was excited and, outside of some shortcomings, I don’t think I will ever play any game that is quite like Clash: Artifacts Of Chaos and I mean that in the most positive way possible.
In order to avoid spoilers, I won’t be delving into the story here so, what I will say is that you play as Pseudo and you are tasked with taking a bird-like-thing named The Boy to his new home, along the way combating those who wish to bring the boy back with them instead. Again, I won’t spoil anything but for a simple premise, the story did keep me engaged and some of the twists, including one big one, caught me by surprise. What helps is the strong voice acting, especially from Pseudo who comes off as stoic but still having some humanity in him, though a few of the voices either didn’t fit the character designs at times or were just slightly irksome (I’m looking at you, bird-things). Back to Pseudo, I say ‘humanity’ as Pseudo isn’t really human, so to speak, which brings me to this game’s almost otherworldly artstyle. If I were to use one phrase to describe it, I’d choose ‘Disturbing Yet Beautiful’. The landscape has this alien-yet-familiar feeling to it that makes you feel like this could be on Earth but you know deep down it’s not. This goes double for the inhabitants as some of them have a design that could exist in our reality while others not so much. I will say a few of the designs weren’t the best and seemed just a bit too cartoonish for this world but it really wasn’t enough to take me out of the game. Same goes with the music as it’s some of the best I’ve heard in a game. In fact, to compare it to something, some of the tracks really reminded me of The Neverhood and Vangers as they all have this feeling of taking you to another plane of existence and that is really the best way I can describe this game on a whole: Familiar, yet you know, deep down, you’re in a different world.
The combat is where I think this game both shines like a star but during the transition to night time. To begin with, this isn’t a typical one-on-one brawler. While you can go around and beat up everyone you see, you can turn the tide in your favor with either a melee weapon or a mechanic called The Ritual. The way it works is, once you see an opponent and you see the pop-up on screen, you can invoke the Ritual and play a little dice game. Both characters then choose one artifact that can help them while hindering the other player, like having the opponent drink a slow acting poison before the fight or having it that you must fight within a small confine. Once both artifacts are chosen, you and the opponent then roll four dice then use tools called Tchaks to modify the dice in the arenas and the one with the higher point value wins and that artifact is used. A very simple idea and mechanic but it’s surprisingly in-depth and has some good strategy to it, though it is pretty easy as, a lot of the matches I was in, I either ended up winning the Ritual or it ended in a tie, meaning no artifacts were used.
As for the actual fighting, well, that’s a mixed bag and where I said it is like a star that’s starting to show up as it becomes night; not too bright but not too dim either. I feel the main issue is that the fighting engine is good for either one-on-one or one-on-two encounters, but anything more and it does show some weakness as I ended up getting cheap shots from other characters while I was trying to dodge another attack. Now, the fighting isn’t bad, hear me out. It’s not overtly complex but has enough good ideas to make it fun and engaging. As you time and chain your dodges and punches, it almost becomes a sorta pseudo-dance game which is pretty cool, if you ask me. More games should make fighting feel like a dance instead of just two lumbering characters beating the heck out of each other. I also like how you can choose what fighting stance to use throughout the game, with the first being Slash, Boxing, and Spear. Each stance offers a different fighting style, like Spear being suited for long-range and Mammoth, one of the many you can unlock, is slow but offers heavy damage, with more you can unlock throughout the game at various totems after you fight the owner of the move. You can also trigger a first person mode once a bar is filled up and you stagger an opponent, allowing you to layeth the smackdown on them for a bit. Again, it’s not bad, it just could’ve been slightly better.
This brings me to the RPG mechanics and one of the few low-points in the game. With every fight, you gain experience which you use to level up your base skills at your camp. That stuff is easy to understand and figure out. My problem is the leveling up of your moves. The way it works is that, throughout the world, you’ll find little figurines of varying sizes and you take them to a special burner where you can improve your moves, with the cost rising with each improvement. Neat idea but I wish this was tied in more with the camp as having to scrounge around for figurines in the world just to improve your moveset is a bit tedious. Speaking of the camp, this is where you do your leveling up and refilling of your flasks, which you can use to restore your health, via a cooking mechanic. You can also choose to sleep and either wake up the next day or at night, with night bringing in a new gameplay mechanic. If you choose night, then you take control of a Pseudo in a different form to complete smaller puzzles in order to progress; like finding and fighting a burning guy in order to remove the thorns blocking your way in the morning. This other form of Pseudo also acts like a second life as, if you are defeated in the morning, then you can control this guy and return to where you were felled and wake him up to give yourself a second chance. But, if you are defeated before you reach the body, then it’s game over and back to a previous save/camp, which can be disheartening at times if you didn’t find a new camp before the fight that ended your run.
Despite my enjoyment, I do have some other issues with the title, outside of the RPG and fighting. For one, navigation is not the best and I found myself getting lost more often than not. The game is semi-open world, meaning you’ll visit small sectioned areas throughout your journey, so you’d think getting lost wouldn’t be an issue. But, nine times out of ten, I found myself constantly backtracking due to missing one small turn or misunderstanding the in-game map on the pause screen. Granted, going off the beaten path does lead to finding chests holding totems or trading materials, but to me personally? It really didn’t feel rewarding to me and felt more like a consolation prize for not placing in a challenge. Speaking of trading, brings me to my other issue: The shop. Instead of currency like gold to acquire items, you use materials you find throughout the game to acquire new items like armor and weapons. A neat idea, for sure, but throughout my entire playtime, I rarely if ever was able to use the store as a lot of the items I needed to trade I never found, even when I purposely went off the beaten path. I don’t know if there’s an RNG for the materials or what, but no matter how hard I looked, I could never find the items I needed to trade so I couldn’t use the shop at all and ended up just relying on my skills on a whole.
I went into Clash: Artifacts Of Chaos with small expectations and came out with a big smile on my face. Every so often, a game comes along that surprises me and ends up being one of my favorite games I’ve played in a while and this is one such title. Yes, there were some rough spots but, like most things in life, I was able to look past most of it and come out enjoying my time with the game.
