Dust: An Elysian tail Review
Dust is a 2D side-scroller RPG created by one man, Dean Dodrill. This is Dean;s first game and was created using XNA.
Story
You wake in a forest not knowing where you are, who you are or where you have come from. Luckily you’re greeted by a great wise and powerful sword that can talk and offer advice but not answers and the swords owner Fidgit, a small orange wingbat. You will fight through many lands to try and find your identity and discover what it is that has happened to you and those around you.
The story is pretty deep and very well written. You are forever trying to work out what it is that’s going on and what the story of Dust is. It is that sheer lack of knowledge and curiosity that keeps you going.
Throughout the journey you will meet many NPC’s and they’re some of the best NPC’s about in the video game world. Very well presented with beautiful drawings and voice acting at its best, you will be looking forward to what they have to say UNTIL….. Your game progress feels like it is stopped every couple of minutes because there is someone else to talk to or because you have to listen to Fidgit AGAIN!!!!!!!!! And it’s not even as if they’re quick conversations, you have them talking to you with a little animation going on and then the writing in large letters next to them all the time.
The constant stopping to talk got on my nerves. At first I really enjoyed the conversations because of how well written everything is but when you never get a proper chance to enjoy the gameplay it gets very frustrating.
There was a point when I wanted a Fidgit plush because of how cute she was but not I want the plush so I can shout “Shut Up” at it.
Gameplay
With dust being a side-scroller RPG you can imagine how great it is to find items to help you in your travels and also the excitement you get when the shop has something in stock that would aid you in your travels. You are forever looting items that can be used to craft new weapons and armour and also lots and lots of money that you can spend at the shop.
I loved this about Dust but that’s because I am a huge fan of looting. The one downside of looting is that you will not be finding any new cool weapons but instead trying to make you sword more powerful.
Fidgit is also there when you need a help in hand. She is able to use one of her many fighting abilities to aid you when under attack and with your “Y” attack you can tornado her projectiles etc and expand them into a devastating radius of doom.
There are many areas to cover in Dust from snowy mountains to dark forests. Each area has a very unique feel as well as unique enemies which is nice to see baring in mind some games give us the same thing over and over no matter where you are in the campaign. Each area has NPC’s offering side quests which are your typical “Run and get me this” fetch quests which in every game get tedious after a while.
Depending on what difficulty you play Dust depends on the strength of the enemies (obviously). If you’re familiar with gaming you should consider playing on a harder difficulty or you will get bored quick and have a sense of rinse and repeat.
Navigating the lands can be a chore due to the lack of skills to navigate until further into the game. Although this seems like a good idea, you will get fed up with back tracking and having to remember areas that you’re unable to go to.
Combat is very smooth and easy. “X” is your basic attack and feels great as if you are holding the sharpest sword in the world that makes cutting metal feel like you’re cutting silk and the secondary attack is “Y” and offers a spinning tornado type attack that does constant damage…. well until Dust can’t handle it anymore and gets hurt himself
It is also pretty cool that when attacking in the air your “Y” attack can make you feel as if you’re flying. I used this to get to higher places quite a lot of the time.
Visuals
DUST has lovely, hand drawn art all the way through which is something not seen enough nowadays in video games. A mixture of bright and subtle pastel colours are very pleasing to the eye that to me is the best part of Dust: An Elysian tail.
Overall
Dust feels so alive and full due to the combat, art and story it’s just a shame the constant dialogue is there to stun what could be a great experience.
6/10
Review By Wicket2961
