Grave Spirit

I had heard rumors about this game for some time. Some of these rumors were good, some of them were not so good. Yet I couldn’t help being at least somewhat intrigued. A dark, atmospheric, minimalist exploration-based adventure game? Surely it must have a great deal to offer! So, with the naivete of a young child I tried this game.

And was I ever disappointed.

The game begins by introducing us to a nameless wanderer who is approaching the ruins of an ancient kingdom on a quest of dire importance. Nobody knows exactly what became of the kingdom or why it fell into decay, but it is now covered in a veil of darkness and evil, which the wanderer has come to remove. The wanderer is guided on his quest by a shadowy, vaguely sinister spirit who has possessed him in order to free the kingdom from its curse. But are its motives good or evil?

Balance 2/5:

This is mostly a puzzle/adventure game, so combat isn’t much of an issue here, however, in spite of this your character still has a weapon and hit points. You can keep track of the condition of your character by looking at the color of his eyes, which of course has the obvious drawback of not working if he is facing up. You main source of taking damage is not enemies, as there was only a handful in the entire game. Instead you mostly take damage throughout the game from spikes, bombs, mines and other traps.

This may seem fine from a distance, but upon further consideration it really adds nothing to the game. I was unsure of exactly what the point of having Hit points was at all, except to arbitrarily give me a game over from getting hit by traps too many times. I assume form a design sense, there is the idea that your character is threatened and you must be cautious to proceed, which certainly has merit, but the truth of the matter is there are very few times you will really feel like your character is in danger.There is no inventory and no way to heal aside from various healing pools that full heal you entirely when you reach one, and there are many of these, so there's rarely any real sense that you need to conserve your HP and be careful while exploring. It seems like a fairly meaningless way to lose progress in a game with so few ways to get injured. It ends up being more of an annoyance than anything that adds to the atmosphere of the game.

As for actual combat, there are only three enemies in the entire game. One of these enemies will not attack you at all and the other two will only fight defensively. You will spend most of these fights just standing around waiting for an opening to hit your opponent, hoping you do some damage before they disappear. One boss essentially consisted of chasing an enemy around a circular track, which had the potential to be great fun, unfortunately this battle suffered a few glitches that ruined the experience.

Level Design 1/5:

Boy, do I have a lot to say here. This game used entirely custom graphics and tiles to create a truly unique atmosphere, which I can appreciate. However, In spite of this, the game suffers from some disastrous design flaws. The biggest problem is your character’s default walking speed is very, very slow. Making things worse is your ghostly guide will frequently stop you to point out useless or obvious things, slowing your progress even further. Fortunately once you acquire your weapon you can execute a dash attack to fly forward a few spaces, which eases travel considerably.

However, the problem is that areas are huge and largely empty. There are really very few puzzles in the game considering the amount of real estate you have to traverse to complete the game, instead relying on a large number of mazes. What’s worse, every time you reach a stone door you are forced to turn around and contact a helpful spirit to open the door for you, meaning you have to traverse entire areas you have already completed twice in order to advance. This seems like an incredibly cheap way to pad playing time. And just to twist the knife, once you open them all the spirit hands you an item that could have let you open the doors yourself at any time. Bitch.

In general, the game is full of hideous design choices, such as a stealth sequence that results in an instant game over if you get caught. Many puzzles have seemingly arbitrary rules. You have two main means of interacting with objects, your action command for grabbing and lighting torches, and your primary attack. It is rarely clear which button you have to use to activate an object, or even if an object can be interacted with. I often find myself blindly checking everything with both buttons in hopes of randomly activating something.

Many areas of the game required traversing large bodies of water, reducing my already snail-like speed even slower. Upon crossing one such body of water I was greeted by a helpful sign that told me I could swim faster by tapping the X button. It was at this point I concluded that the game was mocking me.

The game did have a few redeeming qualities that were sadly underutilized. Early in the game you gain access to a white bird familiar who can scout for you, or solve certain puzzles. Unfortunately, your bird suffers the opposite problem of your character, he simply moves too fast and it is very hard to line him up with the object you want. Sadly the bird was useful for exactly two plot events at which point I was free to forget it existed. The game also featured a number of gold coins scattered about, however these were completely useless past the first five minutes of the game, except to buy a hidden item that was not necessary to complete the game.

When it comes down to it, you'll spend quite a bit of time in this game feeling lost and confused, which is of course part of the appeal of an adventure game. But you'll also often feel frustrated by the mechanics and often downright bored, as though just waiting for the game to end already. The game also has a map function that could have potentially been a great asset to exploration, but unfortunately it serves only to tell what location you are currently in, and doesn’t reveal any meaningful information about where to go or how to proceed.

Characters 2/5:

Your nameless wanderer has no lines and no real personality, although at the end of the game a reason for this is revealed. The other characters exist only to serve as exposition. There was no emphasis put on characters for this game whatsoever so I’m not going to give much weight to this category, but I will note that this adventure could have been made far more entertaining if any of the characters were the least bit interesting to talk to.

Storyline 2/5:

At the beginning of the game you are given only cryptic information about this kingdom and vague hints of your spiritual companion’s connection to it. From there you learn virtually nothing else until the very last dungeon when the spirit infodumps the entire plot on you in one go. This is narratively clumsy and inefficient, revealing information gradually over the course of your quest would have been a far more elegant way to handle it. The game world is also littered with plaques that will give cryptic information about the world around you and occasionally hints on how to proceed, but rarely is any of this interesting or useful information.

Music and Sound 5/5:

This game has one redeeming quality, an absolutely stunning original soundtrack composed by Brandon Abley. Every track is gorgeous and establishes the somber and dreary setting of this game world even better than the original graphics do. The only problem with this soundtrack was, at times, it felt too epic for such a minimalist game. A truly great score, I just wish it had a better game to go with.

Overall 2/5:

I probably came across as pretty harsh in this review, but honestly, I tried to give this game a chance. The lack of enemies didn’t bother me. The lack of context didn’t bother me. The vague instructions didn’t bother me. This game attempted to try something new and inventive and I can respect that, and I kept telling myself that if I just persisted I would be rewarded. Unfortunately, the further I got into this game the worse it got.

Think of it this way. Think of a game like Myst, a game with no combat or RPG elements, but it has great atmosphere, tons of interesting information about the world, several engaging characters, a deep, complex plot, and many clever logic-based puzzles.

This is a game like Myst minus all the elements that make Myst great. What you’re left with is walking across a bleak, profoundly empty world at an incredibly slow pace with almost nothing to do in the interim. And just as a final nail In the coffin, the ending ,while fitting considering the setting, was very unfulfilling and left me feeling like I had wasted my time. If you like lots of exploring and dreary atmosphere, you might like to try this game, I advise everyone else to stay away.