Eastern Exorcist – Review (PC)
Taking inspiration from eastern fantasy lore and the visual style of Chinese ink painting, Eastern Exorcist takes a fresh approach to hardcore side-scrolling action. Developer Wildfire Games have created a 2D sword swinging title in the Soulsborne vein that will capture your attention with its beautiful visual style and keep it with its surprisingly deep mechanics and harrowing challenge.
Set in a mythical world inspired by Chinese fantasy and folklore, you take control of the sword wielding exorcist Lu Yunchuan. Lu is charged with dispelling his world of infectious demons and possessed mortals. As one of the only people with the ability to combat evil that has swept over the land, you’ll help innocent villagers track down their lost loved ones and aid religious leaders in cleansing rituals. The story in Eastern Exorcist paves the way for traversal to several interesting locales where you’ll battle swarms of varying and unique enemies. What immediately stood out and persisted throughout the game is its use of Chinese fantastical lore. It incorporates seldom used myths and creatures in both boss and enemy design that ties well into the gameplay.
Eastern Exorcist takes the typical side-scrolling formula and melds it with hardcore hack-and-slash that has become so popular over the past decade. As with other games in the genre, it will be absolutely imperative that players master both parrying and dodging, along with blocking and, perhaps most importantly, stamina management. What this all amounts to is a combat system that is complex, stylish, and extremely rewarding once mastered. A basic attack and strong attack are usually enough to spam away at basic enemies. But, before long, Lu will find himself falling quickly to smaller mobs if all tools in his arsenal aren’t put to use. Combos can be triggered with skilled timing of successive slashing. Blocks are useful in dealing with most light attacks. However, stronger attacks, signified by a quick on-screen prompt, need to be dodged. Parries are initiated by triggering at the exact moment an enemy attack is going to land and this timing changes significantly from different enemy types. A Perfect Parry allows for a quick and awesome looking follow up attack and can even trigger certain additional Exorcism Art attacks.
Exorcism Arts are unlocked to Lu as he progresses through his main quest. These are additional abilities, both passive and active, greatly assist in combat. Seven different Arts can be used throughout the game and four of these can be equipped at a time allowing for switching on the fly. What’s impressive is that each Exorcist Art has its own skill tree with upwards of ten different nodes, each strengthening and buffing the ability in creative ways. Arts can be used as you accumulate Mana with landing of successful attacks. Quick switching between Arts is especially handy as you’ll quickly find favorites or Arts better suited for some situations. A personal preference was the Swordplay Spell. This ability spawned a set of flying daggers that attack enemies from a distance. These daggers can be triggered on command, but can also spawn with perfect parries or dodges. Another standout was the Shadow Spell which summons a shadow clone that fights along side you for a short but invaluable period of time.
Where all of Lu’s skills need to come together are in Eastern Exorcist‘s boss battles. Each of these set piece showdowns utilizes a different mythical creature from Chinese folklore to create unique and memorable encounters. Some bosses balance punishing heavy attacks and massive HP pools with slow movement and large attack windows. Others are much more agile with ranged attacks and smaller opportunities to go on the offensive. Each battle required a much different strategy and optimal Exorcism Art to succeed.
Where these boss instances somewhat stumbled is in their ability to quickly drain your stamina. On a few occasions, boss battles were drawn out by the need to constantly run from one end of the arena to the other just to find a safe moment to recharge stamina. This drew out the fight to a point where they became a bit annoying.
Further getting in the way of standard enemy encounters was the game’s insistence on filling an area with irritating wraith enemies. These gank squads float around and shoot at your from a distance. It felt more than a little unfair having to fight larger and harder hitting enemies with these irritating wraiths sniping you with their homing attacks. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that an area can’t be exited until all enemies have been cleared out. What this means is that these more annoying mobs have to be cleared out multiple times if you need to retrace your steps.
A basic leveling system can help to balance things out in your favor. Power is accumulated from each slain enemy much like Souls from the Dark Souls series. By redeeming enough Power at Shrines, you can increase your character level which awards a slight increase to maximum HP and stamina. Power can also be used to add points into the aforementioned Exorcism Arts skill trees. Navigating the Shrine and sub menus in Eastern Exorcist can be a little cumbersome. Inputs between menu options seemed laggy and unresponsive.
Further to this, there are some localization issues. This is mostly an issue in written dialogue between characters and tutorials. It’s bad to a point where the explanation for some game mechanics weren’t comprehensible from the tutorial and just had to be figured out on their own. Luckily, these translation issues have been noted by the developers and are supposed to be patched before launch.
The visuals in Eastern Exorcist are easily one of the game’s best and most defining features. It uses an art style inspired by Chinese ink painting methods. Everything in the game, from characters to buildings and backdrops have an endearing hand drawn aesthetic that help it to pop off the screen despite a mostly subdued color palate. Adding to the distinct visuals is Eastern Exorcist‘s expert animation. Perfect parries and brutal finishers are made all the more satisfying by their fluid and silky animations.
Where Dark Devotion and Blasphemous felt like little brothers of Dark Souls, Eastern Exorcist perfectly fits the bill as smaller sibling to Sekiro. The game flatters with its satisfying combat and deep Exorcism Art system. It separates itself from the pack with its use of ancient Chinese fantastical themes, art style, and animation. Despite some frustrating difficulty and lingering menu functionality issues, Eastern Exorcist was a solid and satisfying sword swinging experience.
Eastern Exorcist releases on Steam on August 14, 2020.
*Eastern Exorcist was given to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*
Check out our Review Guide to see what we criteria we use to score games.
