Exodus - Escape Fort Bullwark

Exodus - Escape Fort Bullwark is, from a storytelling perspective, a great first chapter in what has the potential to be an amazing series. Unfortunately, it also has a few significant issues related to combat and overall pacing which, especially during the second half, may leave players feeling outright bored at times.

Although this is the first chapter in a series, the story starts in medias res as the Tantalus-esque group of pirates/rebels known as Gadabout set out on their flying airship to free prisoners from Fort Bullwark. Although the main character of the game is Fuchsia, a new Gadabout recruit with a connection to one of the prisoners, Exodus - Escape Fort Bullwark does not put too much emphasis on character development during its roughly three-hour duration and instead focuses on establishing the world and the factions within it; this approach would not have worked well for a standalone game, but is a great way to handle a first chapter in a series. There are some spelling and grammar errors, most notably some oddly-placed commas, but these are rarely excessive and are balanced out by the nice touch of important and emphasized words being color-coded.

Exodus - Escape Fort Bullwark also does a wonderful job of capturing an epic, larger-than-life, and somewhat whimsical tone. There are many impressive cutscenes throughout the game and events at Fort Bullwark rapidly escalate into a chaotic frenzy. Although it seems to be entirely RTP-based, the music chosen for this game also goes a long way towards establishing its tone and ranges some fast-paced and energetic to subdued and somber; the choice of "Positive01" for combat music is especially interesting as it has a relatively neutral yet 'heroic' quality to it which fits surprisingly well. Thus, although RTP assets are frequently used for both the graphics and sounds of Exodus - Escape Fort Bullwark, they are utilized well and in unusual ways which make these much-used assets seem fresh and new.

Gameplay outside of combat starts out varied, but loses momentum in the second half. Players will navigate around spike traps, jump across gaps, find hidden floor switches, and avoid guards via stealth and disguise. Or, at least, they'll do all this in the first segment. Unfortunately, none of these things are present in the second half and players will instead spend their time going back and forth across Fort Bullwark collecting various types of keys. There are also plenty of items to find and chests to unlock with "Tiny Keys", which can be bought for a low price or simply found, and each save point even allows players to change the window color, but flavor text is sadly lacking, which is even more of a shame than usual since Fort Bullwark is filled to the brim with various abandoned notes on top of desks and counters and being able to interact with these would have been a great way to further flesh out the world from within the confines of the fort.

However, combat is where the biggest pacing issues lie. Although Fort Bullwark is a fairly compact location and an above-average encounter rate makes sense, it is simply far too high as enemies generally are encountered within three to five steps of each other. Combat early in the game can be challenging as Fuchsia is more of a healer than a damage dealer, but later on it simply becomes tedious as Fort Bullwark becomes populated with enemies which much more health and which frequently appear in groups of three to five. There isn't much strategy to the combat as Fuchsia quickly becomes worthless as an attacker and the third party member, whom focuses on elemental attacks, never seemed to do much damage so both normal fights and boss fights devolved into a repeated pattern of Fuchsia group healing every round, the third party member tossing her an MP-replenishing item, and the second and fourth members spamming their strongest attacks. Combat is made even more tedious by the fact that of the five save points in the game, only three of them are within the walls of Fort Bullwark and players will need to slog through a dozen or more fights simply to be able to rest up and save; one particularly baffling segment has players fight through two boss fights, a small dungeon, and part of Fort Bullwark which they have already been through (but with much stronger enemies) before they can reach a save point. Although it helps that the chance to escape from combat is extremely high, the frequent, repetitive, and all-around tedious encounters greatly hinder the game and I found myself escaping more often than actually fighting simply to save some time.

In the end, Exodus - Escape Fort Bullwark is an enjoyable start to a series which gets most of the important things right, but which is ultimately brought down by some very unfortunate pacing and combat issues. Still, it has created a world and characters which I, and likely many others, definitely want to see more of in the future and, with a bit more polish, future entries could really turn into something special.