Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn Review (Xbox Series X|S)

Back in December 2018, A44 Games released Ashen. With a striking art style, gorgeous atmosphere and great combat, it is still an indie gem of the soulslike genre. Now, five and a half years later, the team is back with Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, which is a soulslike far greater in scale than the small adventure Ashen was.

Flintlock takes place in a land of corrupt Gods and their armies of the Undead. You play as Nor Vanek, an elite member of the Coalition army (a.k.a. the good guys) who endeavour to lay siege on the city of Dawn. Unfortunately, after a failed attempt, you find yourself scattered from your army pals, and tasked with making your way back. On the way, you discover a mysterious fox-like companion called Enki.

With Enki by your side, they reveal new details about the world as you journey across the lands of Kian to take down the Gods once and for all. On that journey, you regroup with your Coalition forces as you attempt to complete the task and finish the siege.

That premise forms a simple but enjoyable main story that carries you through Flintlock's 20-hour adventure. There's a solid pacing to the first two acts (which make up a large part of the game), but sadly, it's dropped for a quick conclusion in the third act. During the transition between acts 2 and 3, a major plot point is resolved in about 30 seconds and the group carries on as if it never happened - amplifying that feeling that the end of the game feels quite rushed.

Despite great voice acting and performances, we never really get enough time with the game's allies besides Enki, either. We didn't learn much about them or grow to love them through meaningful side quests, except in one instance. Despite being told about their history with Nor, we never really got the sense that these characters had known each other for ages.

Additionally, they largely serve as vendors to upgrade your weapons and gear and feel quite underutilised. We get the sense that, at one point, there were bigger plans for them and the ally system in general.

Given how core the narrative is to Flintlock and the lack of a satisfying conclusion to boot, this is definitely a disappointment. What saves Flintlock's experience is the combat and traversal. In practice, there isn't much here that you haven't seen before. Flintlock is a typical soulslike, although not quite as punishing as most of the games in the genre. Dubbed a 'souls-light', the game scales back the punishing difficulty you will find in other titles and has a more forgiving flow.

Nor has a melee weapon, a gun that can be used to interrupt attacks, or a ranged musket which can be manually scoped in and aimed at enemies from afar. With 'Black Powder' dodges and jumps, she can also double jump and dodge to the side quickly to evade attacks while parrying and blocking melee swings from enemies.

Initially, we found the combat feel wasn't great, and we struggled to get in the flow of things as we tried to mix dodging, blocking and parrying. However, after unlocking some upgrades for Nor's gear and new skills, the game began to feel a lot better.

This largely comes down to the fact we had unlocked upgrades that boosted the rate at which the stun meter on enemies filled. When that stun meter is full, it allows you to perform a finishing attack, instantly killing them or wiping away an enemy's armour (which can make them incredibly resistant to damage).

Once we had those upgrades that allowed us to build the stun meter quickly, along with using Enki's combat abilities that involve building this meter too, we had tonnes of fun carving through hordes of the undead. Stunning them with just a few hits and finishing them off with a flashy critical melee or ranged attack feels great. But, it also feels like the only way to play Flintlock enjoyably, with a distinct lack of flexibility when it comes to gameplay styles and choices.

Getting around is also just as much fun. Nor and Enki's Rift Travel allows you to fly across the entire map to find secrets and skip areas. It feels like the most innovative and exciting thing in Flintlock, and we wish the game was built around this traversal more, rather than it being used mostly as shortcuts around the map. Rift Travel has a great sense of momentum, and it really shows off the visuals in Flintlock - which can be stunning at times.

Taking down minibosses and main bosses are both satisfying moments, and these areas had a good sense of progression to them as we worked our way through the semi-open maps, clearing quests and making our way to the next God fight.

Combat isn't perfect though and there are some strange and sudden difficulty fluctuations throughout the game, and some attacks are not telegraphed well, making it hard to work out when we should parry or dodge them. We also found ourselves getting clipped and caught in an attack that we had evaded a few times, which was frustrating.

As with almost every aspect of the game, Flintlock has a few other imperfections that stand out. As you kill enemies, you will liberate large towns and villages. Unfortunately, there is rarely anything to do in these areas besides buy some outfits for Nor that all look visually similar or play a game of Sebo, a minigame within the world that feels shoehorned in rather than properly developed or fleshed out.

Additionally, the upgrade system for Nor's weapons and guns all feels rather threadbare and unsatisfying, simply using Reputation (the game's main currency you get from defeating enemies) to upgrade the rarity and deal more damage, with nothing beyond that. The inventory screen also gave us the impression that we would be finding dozens and dozens of melee and ranged weapons. But in our playthrough, where we completed every side quest and explored each area, we only found three melee weapons and around a dozen ranged weapons (guns and muskets).

The ability to bank the Reputation you earn in combat and stack up bonus amounts, provided you don't get hit, is an interesting twist that adds a great sense of risk and reward to the gameplay. But when the upgrades you spend that Reputation on aren't that satisfying, there isn't much reason to take the risk.

It all gives the impression that Flintlock originally had much more going on, and these systems were far more developed than they are in the final product, likely being scaled back as the game was scoped and delayed several times over the last few years.