Elden: Path of the Forgotten Review
In case you’re wondering what stage of protesting we’re at, this last week we hid the “federal agents are ambushing and abducting protesters into unmarked vans” stage, which is infuriating and terrifying to me. I don’t know what’s to be done about it because this situation is more complicated than anything I’ve had to deal with in my personal life, but I do know that I want all of you to be careful and safe when you are out protesting this totalitarian nonsense, whatever forms those protests take. In the meantime, let’s talk about something much less important: video games. Now that summer has really started to work its miserable magic, staying inside is even more advisable than before, which is a perfect excuse to play the latest video games. This last week I checked out an indie Lovecraftian game titled Elden: Path of the Forgotten.
It’s tricky to say exactly what happens in Elden: Path of the Forgotten because one of its defining characteristics is its use of language, or rather lack thereof. Instead, Elden tells its story using strange runes as well as environmental storytelling, a handful of hand-made illustrations, and a couple of cutscenes. On the game’s various websites, it describes this as “like reading an illustrated book in a language you don’t understand” and is actually what sold me on Elden. However, pulling exact details out of the non-traditional storytelling is difficult, so we have to rely on the game’s website for specifics. At the beginning of the game, Elden and their mother are living in a small cottage when the mom makes the classic mistake of reading an ancient tome, which unleashes a Lovecraftian force that immediately abducts her and unleashes hordes of monsters on the land. Armed with all three pieces of the Fire Emblem weapon triangle, Elden must vanquish the horrors roaming their land and rescue their mother from the abyssal creature she unwittingly unleashed.
Unfortunately, the feature that made me most interested in Elden was also the game’s biggest let down. When I first started the game, I was hoping that the made-up language would eventually be decoded through actions I could take, whether simple like translating the Al Bhed language in Final Fantasy X or much more involved like last year’s excellent release Heaven’s Vault. However, nothing like this happens. The only times the fictional text shows up is when a player enters a new area, or at least that’s what I assume is going on based on context. There are no conversations, books, road signs, or any other method that I could use to begin to translate the language. On top of that, the apparent names of new places are only on screen for a short period of time, meaning that I couldn’t take the time to study these strings of characters short of taking a quick screenshot and then setting aside the game to translate the text, which is not something I wanted to do while gaming. Lastly, the game isn’t very long, so I never saw enough of the fake language to notice any commonalities or repetitions of characters to try and parse any meaning. I think the developer might have been better off not including this fake language because the only thing it added was a frustrating sense that information was being withheld from me and I had no way of obtaining it. Compounded with that, Elden doesn’t explain anything else, beyond basic controls, so it would have fit perfectly well if there was never any language at all. I’m already expected to ignore questions like “Where did Elden’s mom get the evil magic book?” and “Why is Elden accompanied by a goose who can learn magic by touching crystals?” so having no answers for what the nearby town is called or what the name of the cliffs near Elden’s house were called would be par for the course.
Like many, many games that have come before, Elden is inspired by the Souls series, specifically in its combat. In that style, players must manage their slowly replenishing stamina, spending it carefully on when to attack or dodge. Though not as dangerous as the combat in the Souls series, players will get messed up pretty quickly if they leave themselves open in Elden. Players can wield a sword, spear, or ax, each with their own pros and cons, and can easily switch between them. The ax deals considerably more damage than the other two but is much slower to attack with and costs more stamina. The spear has a longer reach and attacks much faster, but deals less damage. Lastly, the sword is a happy medium between the two others and was the one I used almost exclusively, because I found moderate damage at a reasonable speed more useful than the alternatives. However, no matter what weapon I chose, I never had fun with the combat thanks to its shallowness. The sword and ax both have only two attack animations, one swinging from the left and one from the right, and the spear only has one, so there were never any real tactical decisions about how to approach a fight. Instead, I simply waited for an enemy to be in range of my sword and then hit them with said sword, at which point the enemy would retreat only to dive onto my sword again a few seconds later. I never had to adapt this strategy to any significant degree, even against swarms of enemies, except against the game’s handful of magic-wielding enemies, in which case I would walk away to a point where the enemy didn’t appear on screen and their AI didn’t understand that I still existed, at which point I would slowly pelt them with shots from my magic goose until I heard their death rattle and could move on. This particular trick even worked against two of the game’s bosses. I was able to beat both by standing in an area where there was some obstacle between myself and the boss and repeatedly shot my goose at them like a berserk ornithologist while their lack of lateral thinking kept them confused until they died.
I’m not happy to say it, but the parts of Elden: Path of the Forgotten don’t really come together to make anything that fun or interesting. From what I can find, this is developer Onerat’s first game so I’m not surprised it’s got its shortcomings. I just hope they can take what they learned from making Elden into their next project to make something really great. I know this developer has promise, because the ending to Elden is one of the best I’ve seen to a Lovecraftian story, and I’m looking forward to whatever they do next.
Don’t buy this game
I hate to say it, but there’s nothing here worth spending your money on
