Developer: Sasha Darko
Publisher: Sasha Darko
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC
The Last Dogma – Review
Once in a while, you come across a game and don’t really know what to expect of it. The Last Dogma is a good representation of such game. It’s a dark comedy exploration adventure set in alternate world where the US campaigns for world domination. It’s also a reboot of the old Sacred Line Genesis games, which were text based horror games.
Story
In The Last Dogma, you play as Sebastian Arise who’s an ATF special agent tasked with the job of hunting down a firearms dealer in Yugoslavia. Everything seemed simple, just follow the dealer and call in for backup when he stations himself. Nothing seemed more wrong as you get into more adventures than you’ve ever wanted. When further investigating the town you’re assigned to, you find yourself going into the sewers where you find a very strange light. The light tells you to go closer and closer, which eventually teleports you to Goody-Goody’s dimension. She has tasked you to destroy the Troublemaker and you decide to follow the orders because you don’t know any better.
The story might seem pretty interesting but in reality it’s really incoherent and doesn’t make a lot of sense. At the start of the game, you get warned that the story is very complicated and hard to comprehend, the developer has even made a very detailed statement which explains the whole story. Sadly, it doesn’t really make any sense at all and nobody would ever come up with that while playing. There’s even an ending which randomly teleports you to a white room and the game starts telling you you’ve realized you’re in a video game and gives you a bunch of random levels to complete, which was probably the best part of the game.
Graphics
The Last Dogma’s graphics are rather good, some levels look quite nice and the design is satisfactory as well. There are however some major issues concerning the graphics. First of all is the lighting, which is just atrocious. Sometimes when looking at objects, the light reflects so bright off of them rendering you near-blind. It also has really weird motion blur which can’t be turned off.
On top of that, the game doesn’t run that good in general. Graphics options are extremely limited and changing them doesn’t increase performance drastically. It includes quality options like True, Medium and Pentium 486 and Resolution options which are Full HD, HD-Ready and HD, who thought this was a good idea? According to the Steam page, HD Ready is 768p (what?) and Full HD is 1080p but is not supported. The game also doesn’t support 4:3 aspect ratio, which might be a problem for some people.
Sound
Music and sound effects are fine at most times. The music is mostly mysterious but there’s also electro tunes involved. It fits together nicely with whatever random levels you get yourself into and it isn’t too overwhelming which is good since you can’t turn it down in the options. Accompanying the music are the sound effects, which are decent enough but are clearly low-quality. The game is almost fully narrated as well which is really nice, even though the narration is mostly mediocre.
Gameplay
The Last Dogma is an indie adventure game that relies heavily on story and exploration. You play in first person and have limited actions to your disposal. Movement is easy as you’d expect nowadays but The Last Dogma does utilize a 1-2-3 system to interact with objects. In the upper left corner of your screen you have four actions which will light up if you’re looking at something you can interact with. It’s usually just talking or observing, which isn’t all that special. The dialogues themselves are rather annoying to go through, requiring you to press the arrow keys (which also move you) to progress, making you run around like an idiot every time you start talking to someone.
For the remainder of the game you’ll just be running around with very little combat involved. You have one guard who you have to shoot and a few medieval swordsmen who you have to kill with a katana, but that’s as far as combat goes. The exploration part of the game isn’t all that spectacular either. Most of the game consists of simply running around in obvious directions and if you do have a bigger playing field, most of it is blocked by invisible walls. You can also find some secrets here and there but they’re usually poorly hidden and not that hard to find. One of the entrances to the secret ending is a bright white cave entrance for example, which doesn’t really make it a secret anymore.
Sadly, that’s almost everything you can do gameplay wise. Sometimes you’ll have to solve a puzzle but there aren’t that many and they’re really not challenging. One Easter Egg in the game is to pick up “Slender notes”, after picking up about ninety (they’re literally spread around the floor) the game decides you’ve picked up enough and lets you progress. There are also occasional bugs and glitches which might kill you, even in the tutorial. Somehow, when standing on top of a moving lamp you either get catapulted into the air or slammed into the ground, both of which result in either death or near death.
Conclusion
Overall, The Last Dogma looked quite interesting to begin with but it falls short in many aspects. The absurd story and dark humor can be entertaining at times but it’s really not that funny anymore once you get further into the game. There’s also very little challenge and room for exploration which is disappointing for a game that relies solely on exploring. On top of that, the environment might look nice at first but the game runs really bad and lighting is simply put terrible.
The Last Dogma - Review,
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