Developer: Deck13 Interactive
Publisher: Focus Entertainment
Platform: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PS5
Atlas Fallen – Review
We’ve had quite a busy Summer when it came to game releases, and it seems like things aren’t going to slow down any time soon. We’ve recently explored space in both Starfield and the latest Armored Core, to now go for a more primitive setting in Atlas Fallen. This game was probably on the wishlist of many gamers, as the early footage looked interesting for an action-adventure RPG. Now that we were able to try out the game for ourselves, we found that this title eerily reminded us of Forspoken when it came to missed opportunities and an overall lack of polish.
Story
The story of Atlas Fallen starts off rather vague. You’ll dive into the game playing as a spirit, who is defeated mere moments later. Time then fast-forwards, and you find yourself creating your own unnamed character. The latter is important, as many people in the world of Atlas Fallen are in fact ‘unnamed’. This results in them being treated as slaves and disposable. The unnamed constantly perform duties for Thelos, a godlike entity that always requires more essence. You, and other unnamed, decide to stand up against your camp’s officer, to hopefully be treated better. When you are sent out in the wild to retrieve an object, with the promise that a deal can be made when doing so, you encounter a mysterious gauntlet that gives you powers. Not only do you gain impressive combat abilities, but you can also communicate with Nyaal, a spirit that is clearly linked to the gauntlet. Of course, things go awry, and you eventually end up going on a quest to confront Thelos himself.
Overall, the story is decent, but it feels a bit overdone. You’ll play through a fairly predictable plot with extremely generic characters. The game lacks interesting characters to actually motivate you to press forward. We reckon this is due to the fact that most characters are the so-called unnamed, and all these NPCs simply adhere to stereotypes. We feel as if the story could have been fleshed out better.
Graphics
Graphically, the game fails to impress. Don’t get us wrong, there are quite a few beautiful sceneries to look at, but for the most part, the world feels barren and empty. Sadly, the NPCs don’t fare any better, as many of these suffer from very janky facial animations and most of them lack personality. It feels as if the world and its inhabitants were built with very basic and standard models, without truly pouring some love into them. The wraith designs are okay, even though there’s only a limited variety to be found in the world. The game does suffer from a few graphical bugs, such as extreme clipping when interacting with the environment.
Sound
As a whole, Atlas Fallen’s sound design is quite good. We enjoyed the voice acting for the most part, even though some voices did remind us of the cheesy voice acting of the ’90s, and the soundtrack is fitting for an adventure title such as this. You’ll get satisfying audio feedback from your attacks, and the wraiths’ SFX are also rather decent. The game’s soundscape may perhaps be the only area where the quality does not falter.
Gameplay
Atlas Fallen is an open-world action-adventure RPG, in which you’ll be playing as your own ‘unnamed’ character who is guided by a spirit that possesses a powerful gauntlet. You’ll mainly be exploring the world in order to complete quests (which often involve finding pieces to upgrade your gauntlet) or battle enemies to gain more experience. The game’s offset is very simple, and it doesn’t take too long before you get to grips with the controls and mechanics of the game.
Fighting wraiths is fairly satisfying, albeit a bit rudimentary. The game has a hack-and-slash-like combat system, and this works great to a certain extent. Combat in Atlas Fallen is dependent on a momentum gauge that charges as you keep hitting enemies, and when you reach certain thresholds, you’ll deal more damage and have access to more skills. The major caveat here is that you take more damage and it does take a while for some abilities to trigger. Even though we were trying to hit all the right notes when we first delved into the game, our battles quickly devolved into blocking when necessary and spamming our main attack buttons over and over again. After a while, every battle felt the same, and this did ruin somewhat of the game’s initial charm.
Traversing the world is done by basically gliding through the sand with your powers. This was fairly amusing at first, but once again, this way of traveling felt a bit basic. Every small obstacle you encounter will make you lose your momentum, and sometimes the traversing mechanics don’t work properly. That being said, this original mechanic was still somewhat fun to mess around with, and it felt like an original way of traversing the map, similar to Forspoken’s Magic Parkours. We do commend developers for trying out different movement mechanics, as this often adds a bit of flair to an otherwise tried-and-true formula.
As you progress through the game, you’ll unlock new upgrades and abilities, and there’s some room to tinker with your gear as well. The main customization can be found in the momentum gauge menu, however, as you unlock new abilities that you can equip in the different parts of the gauge. This was rather fun to mess around with, even though some of the passive upgrades weren’t all too impressive.
Conclusion
Atlas Fallen is a treasure trove of missed opportunities. It’s a shame, really, because the game does have a lot of potential with its fairly interesting setting and solid foundation. We sadly noticed the cracks early on, as the flow of the combat felt off at times, and the traversal mechanics also didn’t go as smoothly as we had hoped. The overall atmosphere was okay, but we noticed a severe lack of polish. Even so, Atlas Fallen is one of those games that would be interesting to pick up during a sale, but not for its current asking price.
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