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Ravenswatch PS5 review – a new roguelite that wants to be co-op Hades


Ravenswatch screenshot

Ravenswatch – it’s very… brown (Nacon)

Hades is the inspiration for a new four-player co-op game that features an inspired array of folklore heroes, from Sun Wukong to the Pied Piper.

Roguelikes have always been popular with indie developers, because they let you stretch relatively modest amounts of content a very long way. The runaway success of Hades has done nothing to dim that enthusiasm and that appears to be the main inspiration for Ravenswatch, which is another story-driven action roguelite, this time built around folklore characters rather than Greek mythology.

With nine heroes to choose from, five of whom you’ll need to unlock by completing the opening chapter with different characters, the first thing that strikes you is their diversity. Scarlet is Red Riding Hood, but rather than hiding from the Big Bad Wolf she’s co-opted it, turning into a werewolf every time it gets dark in the game’s fast-moving day/night cycle.

There’s also Beowulf, who specialises in crowd control; Sun Wukong, who would have been relatively unknown in the West until Black Myth: Wukong gave him some much-needed profile raising; and more unexpectedly, The Pied Piper, who attacks at range using notes from his pipe, and auto-spawns rats that you can direct to attack enemies.

Each comes with a number of special moves on brief cooldown timers, and one ultimate that takes longer to recharge. You unleash these as often as you possibly can, taking on groups of mainly melee-based enemies that stand waiting for you in the game’s procedurally generated levels, making use of the mini-map in the corner of the screen to help locate points of interest as you explore, slowly removing the fog that covers it.

While procedural generation is a roguelike standard, it does mean levels are totally un-memorable, their walls and fences gating off power-ups, forcing you to navigate your way around them, while making little architectural sense and looking visually uninteresting. The game also has bizarrely long load times, which actually made us think the game had crashed the first time we played it.

Each of the three chapters is played against a timer, with the boss turning up after a set number of in-game days. That means you’re always working against the clock, killing enemies for experience points, snagging new abilities and power-ups, and adding to your health until the inevitable chapter ending showdown. Because you’re never completely sure whereabouts everything is, that means some runs are randomly a lot easier.

You will at least find that the heroes are completely unique, and some prove to be far more useful in combat than others. Scarlet, with her nightly werewolf cycle, is great. Enemies also change slightly after dark – although just looking at the screen it’s impossible to tell day from night – making the rhythm of her runs totally different from the feel of other heroes.

The Pied Piper’s ranged attacks manage to set him apart, making his runs a little closer to a twin-stick shooter. The Snow Queen has a distance attack, but it …read more

Source:: Metro

      

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