Ravenswatch Review (Early Access)

Heading into the early access of Ravenswatch, expectations were high due to the solid debut title from Passtech games, Curse of The Dead Gods. Taking their cell shaded art style, solid combat mechanics and infusing it into a very challenging top down action roguelite using the world of folklore and fairly tales seems like a strong foundation. There are still some short comings from their previous title that are still looming including minimal lore and repetitive environments, but with two more chapters and more characters due by the end of early access, hopefully all of the issues will disappear.

You play as heroes and legends of folklore and fairly tales including Beowulf, Pied Piper, Red Riding Hood and the Snow Queen. All of the these characters have plenty of parallels with classic ARPG classes like Barbarian, Necromancer, Witch, and Demon Hunter.

One of the highlights of the game that feels like they have only scratched the surface on is the night/day cycle, which works similar to how the light and dark worked in Curse of the Dead Gods. The shift to darkness will alter the game in smaller ways including certain enemies being stronger to drastic changes like Red Riding Hood, evolving into the big bad wolf at nightfall. Hopefully Ravenswatch dials down on this aspect during the next year.

Sadly, one thing that didn’t follow from their first game was the parry ability. The only class that has a shield is Beowulf and adding in parry would have made for a more rewarding combat system but also given the player a way to defend themselves instead of just running away and evading as most classes must must.

Most of the issues with Ravenswatch revolve around lack of information given to the player. I can’t pull up the map on full screen, enemies don’t have names, and you never know how many dream shards you have collected, which would help the decision process at the Sandman’s shop. (Shards have already been addressed in day one patch, which bodes well for the future of the game). You also move fairly slowly, a slight increase in speed would be ideal because it would help evade combat but allow you access more parts of the map, including dungeons, before the nightmare awakens.

Good Night

Ravenswatch has just entered early access and will remain there for at least a year. If the history of other roguelites such as Have a Nice Death, Hades and their debut title Curse of The Dead Gods tells us anything, then the good news is that all of those games, just like Ravenswatch, started out with a very good foundation and only became much greater during this period. At the moment the offering could be a little slim for some, but thats what early access is for and Passtech has already revealed a promising road map for the next year.

Ravenswatch has the beginnings of not only something special, but something that can be expanded upon greatly with nearly unlimited inspiration from fairy tales and folklore for new heroes, environments and lore. It will be exciting to see where Ravenswatch goes from here.

VERDICT

8.5