Chasm review

Meh

by MrSpanky

With his legendary Kickstarter, chasm has long been one of the most anticipated Metroid-like of his generation. And about 6h after the day-one purchase, a little disappointment is unfortunately at the rendezvous. Running like a Castlevania Symphony of the night, chasm puts you in the shoes of a hero who has to go through different places while eradicating the population of monsters lying there and in the amount of experience. Just as with Alucard, the level rise is simply an increase in the life and classic features of the RPG (attack, defense, etc...). It is also possible to equip weapons with a different feeling, and various pieces of armor. At the end of each world, we find a boss not very difficult and a door to a new world, this until the end. The game is pretty short and unless you are looking to do the 100%, there is not much replayability. The peculiarity of the game is to offer worlds randomly generating each new game, like any good rogue-like that respects itself. Honestly, I do not see too much interest in such a system, since a death means a return to the menu, and I do not want to start the game right away:p. in addition, the procedural generation still brings the same motives that make the progression in the different worlds very similar. The rogue-like side is also seen in the fact of having to rescue villagers imprisoned in different places. Every liberated villager unlocks new possibilities in the base village (Magic Shop, forge, etc...), but there are finally few interesting things. The blacksmith in particular is a little useless. On the graphics side and pixel art, the game is on the other hand beautiful. Each enemy is unique and the animation is excellent. In short, even if he tries interesting concepts, chasm remains very classic, and lacks a lot of... Charm. The rogue-like aspect would have deserved to be pushed farther, the plot is really flush with daisies, and it lacks a charismatic main antagonist. A nice Metroid-like, but not really the slap we were expecting.

Very big fan of aria of sorrow, I wisely waited chasm these long years since the Kickstarter campaign which now dates back more than 5 years, and if many backers have been disappointed, I find for my part the vast majority of aspects that I liked to the time:-technical gameplay. It is necessary to read the patterns of enemies, and we find combat mechanics similar to AoS in which, to optimize its DPS and its mobility, it was appropriate to timer its attacks and movements according to "combos" type mini-jump > attack just before to land in order to cancel the end of the animation > backdash > attack from the first frames of the dash to undo it and bring a second almost successive shot to the first. Here in chasm, a kick to the ground will keep several long frames in a fixed position during the completion of the attack animation, which seems very slow when we got used to the more contemporary games like Deadcells. This is why it is quickly essential to master these optimization techniques, the game is quite difficult in its last two chapters if we play too "conventionally". -Possibility of chswimming of weapons, whose type modifies the range, speed, and area of effect of your attacks (for example a spear will have a long range with average attack speed, a dagger will have a very short range but will be faster, while a axe will be very slow but would offer a vertical attack area allowing to touch enemies above you). -Very neat pixel-art graphics, DA rather classic but well mastered. Personally I find the game beautiful. It is clear that if you expect chasm a fast game to today's standards, with new content unblocked over the course of progression within the game, you will most likely be disappointed. The number of objects and equipment is very limited, the acquisition of new skills is slow (we remain stuck without double jump during an eternity), and the procedural generation really does not bring much to the game (I would have preferred a fixed map on which it would have been possible to let go of much more at the Visual level in particular). Chasm is more aimed at nostalgic people of the genre, and although I am generally not very receptive to retro-gaming, I enjoyed the handful of hours spent on this little game.