How many times has anybody thought that some video game genres could never mix? I, for one, did so quite a few times and have been repeatedly proven wrong. If there’s one truly limitless thing, it is human creativity and ingenuity, which has made it possible to create compelling gaming experiences by mixing together genres that, on paper, could never blend.
This is exactly what developer Systemic Reaction did with Ravenbound. By meshing together a relatively typical roguelite experience with an open-world setting, the Swedish development studio managed to create an engaging experience, despite some issues here and there that damage the game a bit.
Ravenbound is set on the island of Ávalt, a once peaceful island with a Nordic Fantasy theme (directly inspired by Scandinavian Folklore) that is being ravaged by the Betrayer and its minions. All that stands between what is left of life on the island and ultimate destruction is the Raven, who has to rebuild its power through its vessels, free the Gods of Ávalt, and take down the Betrayer for good.
While the story is hardly the main focus of this experience, Ravenbound uses it cleverly to set the tone for the entire adventure. Rather than falling into the typical trappings of high-fantasy settings, developer Systemic Reaction delved deep into Scandinavian Folklore, faithfully recreating creatures like Trolls and Draugr and plenty of traditional stories, which often involve getting lost in the woods to make unexpected and dangerous encounters. Runestones found in all of the biomes further develop the history of Ávalt, so players have the chance to learn more about the lore and the traditional stories that inspired it if they so desire.
Getting lost along the way to make unexpected discoveries is also the theme around which the gameplay of Ravenbound is based, which makes it rather engaging as it incentivizes exploration like few open-world games manage to do.
Right before the start of a run, players must choose one between three different vessels. At the beginning of the game, they will all be humans armed with sword and shield, but eventually, they will be able to unlock other races, traits, and weapons by using Legacy, a special currency awarded by performing well during runs or discovering the aforementioned runestones scattered all over the different biomes. Races and traits influence the experience considerably, as they somewhat dictate the vessel’s playstyle for that run, in combination with the deckbuilding system.
By taking down enemies scattered all over the open-world biomes, players can obtain fragments. Once three are obtained, they can be empowered, producing three different cards which can provide players with all sorts of improvements, ranging from better weapons and armor to Relics, special accessories with a variety of beneficial effects. These cards, however, can only be activated by spending mana, obtained by opening up treasure chests in enemy camps or by purifying a special location found in all biomes.
Purifying this location is extremely important due to the Hatred mechanics that prevent players from hoarding cards and mana. At the start of each biome, treasure chests are cursed by Hatred, and opening them while they are in this state, will force a Hatred card to spawn, which increases the health and attack power of elite enemies and bosses by 5%. Hatred cards are also produced after empowering fragments set amounts of times, forcing players to choose their options and plan their builds carefully, as resources are not unlimited. By purifying the aforementioned locations, however, Hatred from select treasure chests will be removed, granting players the ability to obtain powerful cards without being forced to activate a Hatred card as well.
These mechanics also dictate Ravenbound’s gameplay loop, thankfully without taking away the sense of freedom granted by the open-world setting. The huge biomes, which come with an amazing sense of scale, can be freely explored right from the start thanks to the Raven form, but even on foot, the handy grappling hook makes scale mountains and so on pretty easy to do. Players can take on the many challenges found in them in any order they wish, although, as mentioned above, following the main mission marker to purify Hatred and the sub-quest marker which leads to villages with different facilities and coin-earning opportunities should be the first thing players should do at the start of any biome.
Sadly, the freedom Ravenbound seems to grant at the start of the game doesn’t translate into a varied gameplay experience. Despite the beauty and the size of the open-world biomes, they don’t feature a big variety of activities, as the whole experience revolves around combat, and things get a little repetitive fast, despite the surprisingly solid combat mechanics.
Ravenbound’s combat system is a straightforward system that gives players offensive tools like light and heavy attacks, which can be charged, and defensive tools like blocking and evading. Combat has a sort of rhythmic element to it that is reminiscent of character action titles like the Devil May Cry and Bayonetta games, as enemies are only staggered once enough stagger damage has accumulated, and they will continue attacking the players even in the middle of their own attacks, forcing them to use well-timed dodges and blocks to activate special effects such increased attack power and critical rate, and invincibility respectively. These mechanics, and the decent variety of enemy types, make combat surprisingly fun, although, as I already said, they don’t help fighting enemies eventually become repetitive, as the Vessels’ movesets cannot be expanded in any way during the course of a run, and weapon types are not that different from one another. Due to enemies attacking from off-screen with only easily missable sound cues, fighting enemies in Ravenbound can also be a little frustrating.
Being a roguelite, Ravenbound also tones down the genre’s brutal challenge level by employing some sort of progression system that provides players with more tools to make the experience more manageable in subsequent runs. The progression system, much like the rest of the experience, is centered around the deckbuilding system, as it unlocks new cards when players complete challenges, ranging from defeating a set amount of enemies with different weapons to clearing enemy camps without taking damage to defeat a biome’s boss before a certain amount of time has passed and so on. There are quite a few cards to unlock, so completionists will have plenty to sink their teeth into. Those looking for a much bigger challenge can also increase the Hatred tier for stronger enemies and other limitations in proper roguelite fashion. All these features are nicely crafted, but I feel not many will return to the game after defeating the Betrayer once due to the aforementioned lack of variety in the open-world biome.
Despite being a smaller production, Ravenbound doesn’t look bad at all. While the biomes aren’t particularly varied when it comes to visuals, featuring a predictable array of forests, mountains, backwater villages, and so on, their sense of scale and draw distance makes flying around in Raven form and exploring them on foot incredibly satisfying. On the other hand, character models don’t look as great, as they are rather simple and not particularly well-detailed, but this is hardly surprising, given how the game did not have the same budget behind it as most AAA open-world games released in recent years.
Unfortunately, the huge sense of scale and high draw distance comes at a price. Despite the visuals not looking particularly demanding, I couldn’t run Ravenbound at anything higher than 40, 50 FPS at 4K resolution on my system (i7-10700 CPU, RTX 3070 GPU, 16 GB RAM). At 1440p resolution, however, the game fared much better, managing to run at an average of 100 FPS, all settings at max. The lack of support for upscalers like NVIDIA DLSS and AMD FSR is disappointing, as they have become a necessity for most games to run at higher resolutions and acceptable performance without top-end hardware. Speaking about stability, the game does suffer from some crashing issues, which often happen during combat, but thanks to the game’s auto-saving feature, progress is never lost.
At the end of the day, my war against the Betrayer, which took several attempts over 15 hours to win the first time, was definitely enjoyable. Despite the lack of meaningful and varied activities in its open-world biomes, Ravenbound proved that roguelites and open-world can mix, and when they do, they do it well.
Review code provided by the publisher.
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