Iron Danger – Review (PC)

By Dave Lambden Last updated Mar 24, 2020

The use of strategy in video games generally involves assessing your own strengths and weaknesses against that of your adversaries. The player takes a close look at their resources, tactics, and opportunities to formulate a plan of attack that gives them the best chance of victory. What’s also common is that once your plan is in motion, all the player can do is react. If the enemy takes an unexpected action that catches you off guard, there’s no changing your level of being prepared or unprepared, and all you can do is react.

But what if you were able see that unexpected action and wind the clock back to ensure you were prepared? What if you did have the opportunity to reverse bad moves or correct errors based on mere inches. Iron Danger is the latest release from Action Squad Studios and gives its players just that ability. Bringing with it a story steeped in Nordic folklore and endearing characters, this promising action strategy adventure delivers on its lofty expectations.

Iron Danger opens as our main character Kipuna has her quaint village leveled by an incoming army. This army is made up of steampunk inspired baddies known as The Northlanders who bring with them heavily iron clad soldiers and massive steam powered animal inspired tanks. As Kipuna is attempting to escape the Northlander barrage, the ground beneath her caves in and she falls to her death. However the cause of her death, the sharp peak of a shard plunging through her chest, also serves to fuel her resurrection. The keeper of this arcane shard known as The Aurolith explains that Kipuna has been imbued with magical abilities that allow her to manipulate time at her will.

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Using her new time shifting capabilities, Kipuna alters the past just enough to prevent her plunge to death. Soon after Kipuna crosses paths with a blacksmith named Topi. Topi becomes Kipuna’s impromptu protecter throughout the journey. Topi acts as almost a second main character as he is controlled in tandem with Kipuna for most of the game. A quaint but kind gentle giant of a blacksmith, Topi introduces Kipuna and her new found magical talents to the ruler of the land. What follows is an adventure that takes Topi and Kipuna to all stretches of the Kingdom of Kalevala to both defeat the Northlanders and uncover the mystery surrounding the Aurolith and her six Predecessor Shards. The story’s heavy inspiration from Nordic folklore help to add depth and provide a unique personality. The relationship between Kipuna and Topi quickly strengthens as their exploits bring them as close as father and daughter. A few unexpected plot twists along the way aid in maintaining intrigue throughout the campaign.

What sets Iron Danger apart is its use of time manipulating mechanics in combat. The system revolves around ‘Trance Time’ which triggers in instances such as battles, puzzles, or when damage is taken from the environment. When this happens, a timeline appears across the bottom of the screen that displays events such as attacks, movements and damage taken. Each segment of the timeline represents one heart beat, or half a second. Players will need to pick and choose both their attacks, defenses and movements based on how the enemy comes at you. You’re given the ability to rewind or fast forward the timeline a fair distance. This allows for correcting of bad moves, or getting a clearer idea of what happens next. The rewind feature was most heavily used as it facilitated the trial and error needed to craft the best possible combination of inputs.

The Trance Time system undoubtedly takes a while to get used to. Iron Danger does a good job of teaching players how this complex system works, but doesn’t hold your hand for long. This sink or swim approach may be a detractor for some. However in our experience, the payoff was massive. Once you really get a hang of the combat, fights play out less like skirmishes and more like a choreographed ballet of bloodshed. Expertly incorporating strategies and combining knock backs, debuffs, environmental hazards and HP draining attacks made for some of the most rewarding victories in recent video game memory.

The different character archetypes must be used in near perfect tandem to ensure you come out alive. Our protagonist Kipuna unlocks mage like abilities following her first encounter with The Aurolith. These are primarily elemental ranged attacks, buffs and status effect inflicting debuffs. Topi, on the other hand, acts as more of an up close and personal tank. Topi wields his massive axe to deal huge amounts of damage to both individual enemies or groups of baddies silly enough to stand too close together. From a defensive standpoint, Topi has the ability to block melee and ranged attacks while Kipuna can only dodge. These may seem like simple differences but have a massive impact in the defensive strategy of Iron Danger. Both these defensive and evasive abilities must be perfectly placed in the timeline when an enemy attack will land for them to be of any use.

While the majority of your time in the game will be spent within the Trance based strategy battles, there is some variety in how the time bending system is used. Puzzles are seldom encountered but are a welcome addition and perfectly complement the Trance system. One early example requires both Topi and Kipuna to stand on enchanted stones at a very specific point in time. By carefully timing and coordinating both characters movements, you can reveal a hidden stair case and solve the puzzle.

There are also stealth sections that prove to be a not so welcome addition to the game. Due to the inaccurate nature of the ‘click to where you want to go’ movement in Iron Danger, it’s easy to accidentally move out of the shadows and get detected. Luckily these scenarios were only occasionally compulsory. There is also an impressive degree of variety in the enemy factions you’ll face off against. Alongside the humanoid soldiers of the Northlander army, you’ll also come across pesky poison damage dealing Keyu’s, supernatural Revenant’s and mysterious and versatile Razics. Each one of these factions has several different enemy types – each with different attacks and weaknesses that drastically changes your approach in a fight.

The game is a fairly linear adventure. Choice only seldom presents itself such as at the conclusion of each level where you are given a choice of what abilities to upgrade. Other than that though, there isn’t much flexibility in how Iron Danger is played. You are led along a critical path without interruptions such as side quests, branching dialogue options or confusing skill trees – and that is perfectly ok.

Recommendation: The main selling points of Iron Danger are the Norse mythology influenced story line and unique time bending based strategy combat system. The developers decision to focus on these two key aspects of the game has paid off in spades and it’s made for a focused and fulfilling experience. Fans of both action and turn based strategy games should not miss Iron Danger when it releases on Steam on March 25th.