Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn does what it can to deliver an epic adventure despite its clear limitations. The semi-open-world action game’s dazzling spots are its invigorating premise, its unique spin on Souls-inspired tag-team combat, and its fun exploration mechanics. Unfortunately, it fails to deliver a fully satisfying or polished adventure, resulting in a respectable but flawed quest for revenge.
Developer A44 has created an intriguing world that combines colonial aesthetics and technology (think 18th or 19th century) with magic and fantasy creatures. Soldier Nor Vanek sets out on a mission to kill all the gods after they and their armies of the dead break into the mortal realm. He finds an unlikely ally in Enki, a compact fox-like deity who has mysterious reasons to support Nor kill his kin.
As the two heroes gather a compact group of allies to face their god-like enemies, Flintlock weaves a proper story supported by better performances. However, the significant character development could have been more coherent. While the evolution of Nor and Enki’s uneasy partnership feels largely earned with a few decent reveals, the rest of the supporting cast doesn’t receive the same love, making it strenuous to care about them. The pantheon of main antagonists feels equally uninteresting, with little time spent establishing their personalities or purpose in the world; they’re just cool-looking punching bags who occasionally taunt players on their way to them. While I found the narrative engaging, the uneven audio mixing meant that the soundtrack often drowned out the dialogue.
Flintlock’s combat consists of decent melee combat that emphasizes compact combos while keeping distant enemies at bay with a variety of firearms. Slashing enemies with Nor’s axe feels passable at best. Parrying feels equally mediocre and sometimes unreliable due to questionable time windows that are strenuous to pin down even after hours of deep adventure. The action is functional, but a skinny layer of barrenness holds it back, including dumb as a rock enemies that often fail to detect you even when you pass well into their line of sight.
Pressing a button allows Enki to support out by casting debilitating curses that weaken, stun, or poison targets. It’s a cold aid that pays off even more once you’ve unlocked a few cold upgrades. Ultimately, Enki can restrain or distract enemies, imbue your melee weapon with his power, and curse multiple enemies at once, among other valuable abilities. Firing the Nora pistol from the hip to interrupt or repel an attack is a fun strategy that’s made it my favorite sidearm. Other ranged weapons, like the rifle, grenade launcher, or flamethrower, don’t stand out or feel good enough to encourage regular exploit.
While described as a Souls-lite and employing familiar genre tropes like having to regain lost experience points (called Reputation) upon death, I wouldn’t call Flintlock a complex game. Most of the threats can be defeated without a hitch, and none of the boss fights require more than a few attempts; the final boss, surprisingly, is the biggest wimp of the bunch. The most engaging and effective twist in combat is the experience point multiplier that increases as you perform different attacks and actions, encouraging players to get original with their attacks. The catch is that you have to manually add these points to your XP pool by holding down the d-pad button; if you don’t, taking damage resets the counter to zero, meaning you can finish the entire encounter and walk away with little effect (though larger enemies still drop a guaranteed gigantic amount of XP). I like how this system adds more tension and purpose to combat.
Flintlock takes place primarily on two medium-sized landmasses, offering a compact number of standard side quests (with valuable rewards) and collectibles, such as various XP and upgrade items and story notes. It’s not the most invigorating world to explore, with the exception of an unlockable network of magical warp points called Rifts that allow players to glide through the sky to speed up travel. Rifts serve as great shortcuts and occasionally create fun platforming segments, making them one of my favorite mechanics in the game.
Flintlock’s presentation is unremarkable, and the only thing that really caught my interest were the few original creature designs. With two graphical options, it’s better to stick with the default performance mode, as the quality only offers a slight boost. The animations can be artificial, and sometimes have an unfinished quality, such as the bad-looking slow-motion kill cam that takes away from the satisfaction of rifle headshots.
Despite my inhibitions, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn never falls to the level of actively bad. Instead, it drifts along a solid line of mediocrity that results in a moderately good time. It often feels like it wants to say or do more, but is held back by scope and execution, not to mention a few technical blunders. While it occasionally shows flashes of brilliance, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn falls tiny of true godhood.
