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How badly do you want to play another Souls-like? If you are an addict of the increasingly-common mechanic, then this 2D scrolling action title might not be the worst option for you, but it certainly doesn’t approach anywhere the genre’s best, ‘You get what you pay for’, as the saying goes.
Graphics-wise, you are greeted with a Youtube-advert quality of animation and ugly designs, followed by a non-existent story apart your standard knight ‘save the world’ rigmarole, and a god-awful falling mechanic that sometimes you’ll walk away without a scratch and others pathetically crumple and die instantly.
The ‘git gud’ crowd will be happy to know that the expected level of ‘stress inducing/kidney-stone producing’ difficulty is here in full force, providing frustrating deaths when being surrounded by numerous weak enemies and one medium strength enemy is enough to see your downfall.
Unsurprisingly, gameplay is focused around dodging and parrying and both are implemented fairly well, with last second dodges causing slow-motion avoiding maneuvers.
For me, this is the only redeemable part of the action, as defeating enemies’ results in body parts exploding in the exact same manner each time, and the string attacks, despite there being numerous different weapons, leaves a lot to be desired, becoming stale rather quickly as you spam the attack button as your stamina meter bobs up and down.
What should be a strength of Watcher Chronicles, and what the entire hook of the game should revolve around, is actually Watcher’s biggest letdown – the bosses. Lacking difficulty and variety, they are only difficult until you figure out their first couple of lunges and then you can dodge and spam your 3-string basic attack ad nauseum. In some cases, you can just spam from the get go and the boss won’t have even have time to react, going the entire fight without damage and lasting only a few seconds.
Rather than their difficulty, the main frustration is the length of the journey you need to re-embark in order to fight them again due to save points being so far away.
With the enemies not holding up their end of the bargain, it’s lucky that the challenge to get your accrued XP back to base to level up (before you die twice and lose it forever), is actually any fun at all. It’s the only real appreciative and rewarding gameplay loop in the game, the action and the increasingly stronger enemies playing a side note to it throughout.
If the visuals were improved and there was a semblance of a story, there might be something to try and trumpet here, or at least try and bring the gameplay up a level, but without it, you are eating crackers without the cream, and it’s not appetizing.
The design of the levels isn’t that much better either, with too much of an emphasis on 2D platforming with one of the most annoying falling mechanics I’ve ever come across, the height in which the game decides for your death seemingly arbitrary. It’s such a miserable way to die, based on how pathetic the animation looks.
With bland Souls-like gameplay and disappointing bosses, Watcher Chronicles joins the bottom of the pile in an ever expanding genre with far better and more in-depth alternatives, ultimately leaving the game with nowhere to go but join the bargain bin of 2-min platinum-chasers and mobile games.
