Ash of Gods: Redemption, the debut game of a domestic studio AurumDust, led by Nikolai Bondarenko (prior to that he headed the development department at GameNet), immediately dubbed a Russian clone The Banner Saga. By and large, this is what it turned out to be in the end – albeit not in every way as high quality as the original, but also very interesting.
Our saga
Why clone? Well, first of all, the visual similarity of both projects is immediately striking. And although the authors say that the art is inspired by the works Ralph Bakshi (Ralph Bakshi), classic Disney animation and projects of the famous Soviet studio "Soyuzmultfilm" (For example, "Snow Queen"), one look at the videos and screenshots is enough to understand where the legs are coming from.
Secondly, Ash of Gods: Redemption in many ways built on almost the same “Banner Sag” mechanics. At its center is actually a visual novel – with numerous characters, long dialogues and the need to constantly make important decisions. It is complemented by survival elements, as well as turn-based tactical battles, which you need to engage in between making decisions and reading kilometers of text.
We move around the global map, encounter random events that require one choice or another, stop in large settlements (or set up a camp), where we can trade in a shop, chat with key characters and take part in squad management – attach magical jewelry to someone, raise the level of fighters and spend time and resources on healing wounds. Doesn’t remind me of anything?
Harvest for three
The plot itself, which is the main focus, obviously does not repeat the events The Banner Saga, but also revolves around the approach of the next Ragnarok. In this case, in a world called Terminus, approximately the same thing happens that Captain Shepard and his team have already experienced in Mass Effect, — the next Harvest begins, when once every thousand years the Reapers appear on the scene and begin to mow down all living things. Only the action takes place not in space, but on earth, where the Middle Ages, steampunk, magic and God knows what else are mixed. And the Reapers are not intelligent ships, but strange long-haired creatures.
At the center of these events were three different, but equally important characters for the story. Retired captain of the royal guard Thorn Brenin, along with his daughter and several warriors, flees from the Harvest and is looking for how to save his own child. Traveling scribe and healer Hopper Rowley, along with a couple of associates, follows on his heels, realizing that Thorne and, especially, his daughter, may be the key to salvation from disaster. And the professional mercenary Lo Feng, with the beginning of the Harvest, leaves his employer and fights to get to his native Shadow Clan. The hero was followed by a crowd of armed but beautiful girls whom Lo Feng freed from captivity.
Through fog and water
The action, as expected, constantly switches between key characters, somewhere they intersect and again go along their own forks. And everything would be fine, but Ash of Gods, unlike The Banner Saga, there is a lot (especially at first) of unnecessary, full of fluff and rather banally written dialogues, through which you literally have to wade through, trying to get to something really important.
Many minor characters are poorly written and largely secondary. There are youngsters here who heed our advice, and old friends who will definitely stab you in the back at the most inopportune moment. There is even a prince hiding under the guise of an ordinary warrior.
And the game world itself raises https://nongamstop-casinos.uk/no-limit-casinos/ many questions. Without preparation, they dump a bunch of incomprehensible titles, names and events on us, but they don’t really explain anything – there’s no built-in code, like in RPGs from BioWare, no useful hyperlinks, such as in Tyranny.
In addition to the story campaign, Ash of Gods has a battle mode between players, which is still being actively developed.
Sweet life
The situation with the combat system is approximately the same. It seems like a lot was taken from The Banner Saga, there are many interesting nuances, the mechanics are quite solid – but not everything and does not always work well.
Fighters of different classes (archers, warriors, assassins, hammerers, priests, etc.) walk around the squares and use unique skills. At the same time, as in the works of the studio Stoic, we are allowed to hit either directly on health, or on energy, which also serves as additional protection. By destroying the entire yellow bar, you will be able to deal critical damage to the red bar, that is, to hit points.
Moreover, for using many strong skills you have to pay not only with the same energy, but also with your own health. This unique feature Ash of Gods ideally forces you to act thoughtfully and not “spam” powerful attacks.
However, in any case, it is very difficult to lose a battle and finally kill one of your players. Having fallen on the battlefield, they receive critical wounds and are finally sent to the kingdom of the dead, only after acquiring four of these “skulls”. And you can treat critical wounds in cities and during an overnight stay, spending a ridiculous amount of money on it in strix – this is a resource that protects against the harmful effects of the Harvest. In the earlier version, it accumulated slowly, but was spent quickly, and this could really cause problems. But in the final, the degree of difficulty in this sense was reduced.
Why cards??
In addition, the enemy AI is dumb and forgives you a lot, and two of the three main characters are real killing machines – Hopper Rowley and Lo Feng often fight alone and single-handedly chop everyone into cabbage. At the same time, Hopper seems to be suffering from a curse, which can gradually influence him more and more (depending on our decisions), reducing the hero’s parameters, but in return he is given a couple of frankly “cheating” skills, with which the wandering doctor is almost nothing to fear.
But the authors introduced elements of a collectible card game – all the way we collect, buy and use cards in battles that serve as an analogue of spells. The trouble is that there are many of them that are useless and in fact all the time you will be using the same deck with slight variations.
My own director
However, further I am forced to say a banal thing – and yet, despite the above, play Ash of Gods: Redemption Interesting. What is happening is gradually tightening up. Gradually – this is as the game world opens up before you, you learn more details about it and the characters, you begin to empathize with them, find differences in their motivation and even in the manner of speaking.
As events take an increasingly interesting and unpredictable turn, new, truly colorful characters appear, like two mercenary sisters or Lo Feng’s battalion of girls. Yes, and the battles may be a little, but they become more difficult. Yes, I still practically didn’t lose in them, but at least they made me think, try different options and tactics, and gave me a feeling of deep satisfaction after completing the fight without losses.
The picture here is invariably pleasing to the eye, and the gorgeous music written by the creative team under the leadership Adam Skorupa (Adam Skorupa; he composed for "The Witcher"), makes me want to buy the soundtrack separately.
But most importantly, in Ash of Gods: Redemption there is real nonlinearity. The decisions we make affect not only some local events, for example whether they will steal your resources or, on the contrary, you will earn a little extra money, but also the course of the plot itself. Not only are the endings different, but different players can get different stories.
U Ash of Gods: Redemption full of shortcomings, but this is the best thing that has happened to Russian game development since "Space Rangers" And King’s Bounty. Yes, taking other people’s mechanics as a basis, the studio AurumDust by and large, she was never able to bring into them something truly of her own, important and high quality. Yes, the battles lack complexity, but in future updates you can introduce a hardcore mode. Yes, the work of a scriptwriter, writer Sergei Malitsky, cannot be considered an example of the best fantasy in the world.
But remember how often we scolded domestic games for clumsy texts. And now what, let’s turn our noses up at the not ideal, but overall not bad, literary stories and characters? The very opportunity to create history, coupled with the presence of three truly different main characters who can play opposite roles even within the same playthrough, makes it interesting to play Ash of Gods: Redemption further. And replay. And wait for new works AurumDust.
Pros: interesting world; three different main characters; a fascinating and truly non-linear plot; beautiful picture; great music.
Cons: a lot of water in the dialogues; battles lack complexity and often logic; there are errors in the texts.