Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn review

A flintlock is a firearm from ye olden days which uses flint-striking ignition to fire. It’s fallen out of fashion lately, mainly because it takes about 400 years to reload. The idea of trying to use one to kill several gods is pretty daunting. But I'd certainly rather take on that challenge than the far more terrifying one of being a Soulslike releasing less than a month after Shadow of the Erdtree. Maybe this game deserves a 90 just for bravery?

You play as Nor, an axe-wielding warrior trapped in a seemingly endless war with the living dead, because someone’s unfortunately left the door to the afterlife open. After one of those classic attempts at fixing everything that actually makes it all much worse, Nor gets a nice big pile of guilt to motivate her through the rest of the adventure. More interestingly, she also meets and teams up with Enki, a "tiny fox thing" that's also a god. 

Enki introduces some novel powers, but let's get the more familiar stuff out of the way first. Combat is about locking onto foes, dodging, blocking, whacking them with your favourite axe when you get an opening, and ideally pulling off a parry and dealing out some lovely retaliation straight after. So far, so Souls, but there’s a welcome shot of Bloodborne in here too. You have a firearm on your hip that you can use to interrupt attacks. Ammo replenishes after executing a few melee strikes, and let’s thank every god that they went with that idea instead of realistic flintlock reloading. 

There are a fair few firearms to be found, including an outstanding blunderbuss that blasts enemies off their feet. There's something wonderfully petulant about being on the back foot in an axe fight and then just pulling out your gun and pressing the "I win" button, Indiana Jones-style. You also get a ranged weapon with more finite ammo that’s great for picking off a few irritating enemies from afar before rushing in with your axe. Bonus points for including Gears of War's active reload, wherein you’re rewarded for pressing reload at the exact right time, and which someday I’ll make all shooters use by law. 

Flintlock sells itself as a Soulslite and it is a more easygoing experience than being sentenced to death every three seconds in The Lands Between. Nor and a growing caravan of campfire companions travel to different areas, where you’re free to double jump about looking for enemies to hit, side quests to complete, hamlets to liberate, and resources to upgrade your weapons. All to help you with your main goal of killing whatever god is ruining life for everyone here. 

Defeating enemies, completing quests, etc, earns you "reputation" which can be spent on unlocking skills, upgrading weapons, or a nice bit of clothes shopping. Die and you’ll drop all your reputation and have one chance to return to the location of your death to get it all back. So the usual Souls structure then, incredibly overfamiliar but still effective enough at keeping the tension high and making you focus on every fight. There’s also a smart system wherein a percentage bonus of reputation is increased steadily for executing attacks, dodging, and even sliding into battle. The percentage resets whenever you take a hit, but if you’re playing perfectly, it can reward you with well over 100% of your earnings. A really nice idea—I wouldn’t complain if that became a Soulslike staple.

Having a god on your team also livens things up. You get a double jump and an air dash, and can unlock triangular portals in the sky that send you zipping through the air. The long trudge back to where you died in a Soulslike is one of gaming’s most miserable commutes so being able to soar to it instead is a welcome change. Plus it’s fun steadily unlocking portals throughout a location until you’re essentially flying about it like an axe-wielding prop plane. 

You can have Enki attack your enemies, slowly building up an icy blue meter that lets you execute a devastating strike when it's full. There are some decent upgrades for him on the skill tree, too, like a very helpful power that raises foes into the air and leaves them stuck there while you get some delightfully cheap axe smacks in. Flintlock's not a particularly long game—just over 13 hours with all side quests done too on standard difficulty—but that means the skill tree keeps giving you stuff at a nice clip.  

Gods be good

So with a steady drip-feed of new powers to play with, its love of pretty purple super strikes and explosive red barrels everywhere, Flintlock’s best bouts have enough spectacle to almost cover up a slightly stiff combat system. One with a parry window that’s a little too generous on standard difficulty, a little too tight on the only difficulty higher. Even if you’d sooner eat a barrel of sawdust than attempt parrying in one of these games, moment to moment combat simply lacks the polish or versatility that usually makes mastering fighting in these games such a joy. This isn’t up to the standards of even pretenders to the throne like Lords of the Fallen, Lies of P, or this year’s excellent Another Crab’s Treasure. 

This is where Flintlock might justifiably tap the "Souls-lite" part of the sign. Look there’s even a difficulty setting for players who just want to focus on the story! But it’s borderline impressive how a story of soldiers in Napoleonic cosplay fighting vindictive gods can be so dull and seen-it-all-before. Pity the poor voice actors who get stuck with horrible in-universe slang like "what in The Pits are you doing here?" Voice acting is tonally inconsistent throughout, too. Nor and her mentor figure give pared-back, grounded performances that clash with hammy NPC barks that sound like they’re auditioning for the new Fable. One villain is so OTT that PlatinumGames would likely ask them to dial it back a bit, and some of the overly earnest monologuing towards the end is cringe ASMR.

I could probably overlook (overlisten?) this if there were any decent characters. But this story’s so impatient to get going that it doesn’t take the time to introduce anyone properly. It does the classic dramatic character death intro trope, but with a character we met literally a matter of seconds ago. Never mind being moved by their passing, I’m struggling to remember their name. Nor and Enki have arcs but they feel rushed. I’d recommend stabbing Nor in the back if you feel like it. Based on this game, she’ll forgive you before you’ve even finished removing the knife.

The three major areas you explore aren't exactly memorable either. Pretty, sure, but also very fantasy setting 101, though how easily you gentrify them is entertaining. You’ll come across hamlets that have been overtaken by the dead and have to seek out a Big Bad to take down. Succeed, and all the dead disappear, all the buildings magically become nice again, and even the weather gets in on the fun and brightens up. Best of all, you’ll unlock a, er, coffee shop where you’ll get an extra healing flask for your trouble. You can also unlock side quests by talking to the barista about local rumours, just like real coffee shop baristas don’t. Charmingly baffling why they didn’t just use ‘taverns’, but more fantasy games for teetotallers can’t be a bad thing, I suppose. Still, did anyone think Soulslikes were crying out for Far Cry-style outpost-clearing?

Some of the actual side quests fare better, such as an entertaining excursion to a creepy manor. Slightly unorthodox parents were doing experiments on their children here to try and achieve immortality. Now we’re talking! Nor and Enki occasionally have a nice rapport, like in an exchange where he fruitlessly tries to teach her to pronounce something in the language of the gods. But these are the exception, not the rule. 

And I definitely could have done without certain endlessly repeated lines. "Sorted, as they say," says Enki for the millionth time after a combat encounter, making me wish I could introduce the axe to his skull too. "Never gets old," says Nor yet again, defining irony. 

I'll at least forgive the recurring barks during resource-gathering ("what's this?" proclaims poor, forgetful Nor as I pick up the same iron I've been using to upgrade my axe for hours) because seeking out treasures is actually good fun. Collecting materials to upgrade weapons is, thankfully, not a case of wasting several hours chopping down trees. Instead you’ll find a finite supply of the materials you need through exploration, rewarding you for searching areas thoroughly and with little of the challenge-free highlighting on the map that blights so many open-world games. It lets the fun navigation powers take centre stage, which frees me from tiresomely comparing it to Dark Souls every four seconds, even if the game can be a little inconsistent with what can be climbed on and what will send Nor tumbling to her doom.

You're left with a perfectly playable action RPG that's hard to recommend because it's all been done better elsewhere. Want a less harsh Souls? Play Another Crab’s Treasure. Finished all of FromSoftware's games and want more fantasy Soulslikes? Try Lords of the Fallen or the already outstanding Early Access release of No Rest for the Wicked. And did I mention a little expansion that scored 95% and came out a few weeks ago? I'll look back on Flintlock's sky-hopping, clever percentage system, and Bloodborne-riffing shooting with a smile, but this one’s otherwise a bit of a misfire.