Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn Review (PS5, Xbox Series X/S, & PC)

It’s never that serious. Unless you enjoy misery, combat doesn’t always need to be tough as nails. And that’s exactly what Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn is trying to offer. Branded a “Soulslite” experience, the game offers a soul-like experience. However, it tones the difficulty down for every gamer to find some level of pleasure diving into. 

Ultimately, you’ll find yourself comparing Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn’s worldbuilding and combat to FromSoftware’s greatest hits alongside imitators that have still managed to hit the mark. In the end, though, it carves out its path. It borrows elements from familiar genre tropes but, at the same time, adds subtle twists here and there that make it a standout title on its own. 

To help you decide whether the new game is worth your while, we’ve gotten our hands dirty for you, breaking apart all there is to love (and dislike) in our Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn review. 

Pandora’s Box

Sealing the world of the living from the dead is a magical door. For some years now, the undead have been creeping their way through the door into the land of the living, wreaking all manner of chaos. The Coalition army, in response, has been pushing back their rot and, finally, coming to an epic standstill against the god Uru at the City of Dawn. 

Uru guards the Great Below, never letting the magical door out of his sight. He’s the most powerful of the gods and the final hurdle the Coalition army must face to restore world order. But things go awry: protagonist Nor Vanek and her comrade soldiers are defeated and scattered across the lands, their fate unknown. Along with their defeat, the magical door rips open, unleashing vicious gods onto the world and, along with their escape, armies of the undead.

So, in a feat to right your wrongs, stricken with guilt over opening Pandora’s box, you set out to cleanse the world of the undead. Traveling across three realms, you’ll fight against all kinds of foes before battling the boss god, who has taken rule over the realm and gives power back to the people. However grand your mission, you do get a companion: a feathery, fox-like god, Enki.

Hard Bargain

It’s unclear why Enki agrees to side with you against his kind. We’re privy to his bargain: bestowing Nor with magical abilities in exchange for accompanying her on her god-cleansing mission. Enki doesn’t really gain much from Nor except for company. Still, it makes for some intriguing mystery, unpacking Enki’s motivations and background. 

Besides Enki, we spend plenty of time learning more about Nor and her personality. She harbors guilt over unleashing armies of the undead on the world, but she is also determined to right her wrongs at whatever cost. Onward, she discovers her strength in battle alongside the player. But unfortunately, that’s where the story’s compelling factor stops.

Cutscenes feature a dialogue between Enki and Nor, yet they feel rushed over. Themes of loss or friendship are hardly explored deeply enough to feel rewarding. Worse, NPCs and comrades joining you later receive minimal focus on their backgrounds and motivations. As a result, the characters are unmemorable, and it feels as though the plot could do without them just fine.

Look But Not Touch

Despite the potential for some nasty business with the gods and diabolical agendas for humanity, the plot ends up falling flat on its face. There’s a cohesion missing that would tie in intriguing character arcs and unexpected twists and turns. We hardly enjoy deep-diving into the lore, despite the attractive pseudo-European medieval setting juxtaposed with high fantasy. 

Perhaps it’s the scarce descriptions of the world around you—how the undead crawling through camps came to be and what it has meant for the survivors. With a lack of environmental storytelling, it feels as though the blissful vistas you come across are purely for sightseeing rather than connecting with. Sure enough, you’ll often perch atop cliffs and take in intricately detailed slopes and stunningly rugged wildernesses. 

You’ll even take pleasure winding through populated camps, running into varied things to do: resources to stack up on, side quests to take on, enemies to decimate, and more. But the environs feel disconnected from the “why,” with only the relatively straightforward—clear the undead and defeat the gods—at the forefront of all your missions.

Slash and Shoot

In any case, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn’s strongest suit is its combat system. Nor kicks off with a one-handed axe in her right hand. She uses a melee weapon to slash through enemies at close range. You can dodge, block, and parry incoming attacks with relatively more straightforward timing and a forgiving window for perfect execution. 

However, enemies may unleash an unblockable attack, which you can interrupt using a pistol you wield on your left hand, Bloodborne-style. It’s your primary ranged weapon that fires limited ammo. You cannot use one or the other because the pistol requires reloading from successful melee strikes. This way, you’re constantly switching between either play style. 

But you can take combat a notch higher and unlock new skills and weapons, including a melee hammer, a flamethrower, a musket, a fire cannon, and more. These pack a punch, with the hammer breaking through armor more efficiently, the fire cannon inflicting more damage, and so on. But you can also wield two weapons and swap between them depending on the enemies you stumble onto.

Level Up

Successful kills net you in-game currency called reputation, which you can use to upgrade Nor’s skills on three skill trees. So, extra buffs, status effects, and so on. Yet, you can speed up the process via the percentage multiplier. So, you can have more successful kills by striking enemies at the perfect time, executing well-timed parries, canceling unblockable attacks, and more. You can multiply the reputation you earn by 5%. 

The more you keep up the pace, the higher the multiplier gets, climbing all the way up to 100%. But you can also lose the reputation you have gained so far if you take damage. At any point, you can pause the game and cash in the reputation so far. It makes it a neat risk-versus-reward system that makes you question when might be the best time to stop. Should you stop the meter at 60% and cash in the reputation so far or risk losing it for the chance to earn more reputation?  

Alongside the tension of losing reputation is the Soulslike feature, which takes away all your reputation when you die. You can retrieve the lost reputation if you manage to find your way back to your last fast-travel point without getting killed. If you die on your way back, you lose the reputation earned forever. Yet, all the risks considered, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn makes it worthwhile. 

Forgiving Soulslite

Firstly, the combat isn’t nearly as brutal as Dark Souls. You can make do with three difficulty options to ease your way into the mechanics. However, traversing the world is quicker, as is the faster-paced combat. You can fast-travel between bonfire rest points. Alternatively, you can fly by air-dashing and double-jumping between cliffs. Or better still, summon Enki’s magical abilities that channel triangular portals in the sky. 

Platforming isn’t commonly featured in Soulslike. And so, to have it well-executed here, with snappy controls and sliding down slopes, is appreciated.

Combined, the combat doesn’t feel nearly as punishing, with its easier difficulty and means to fast-travel. But beyond that, there are incentives all across the map that encourage you to explore every nook and cranny to uncover. It’s rewarding enough to elevate your gameplay and makes exploration well worth the effort. You also enjoy some side quests, though not all of them are as intriguing as you might have hoped. 

Enki the god

In a way, Enki makes your work easier, too. He’s actively helpful in battle, taunting smaller enemies so you can focus on the more-tasked ones. But you can also use him to curse enemies, and when the respective stagger meter fills up, they will become vulnerable to attacks. Smaller ones will instantly die from critical hits, while armored enemies will become primed for powerful finishers. The animation, too, is quite thrilling as the arena pulls in and rolls bright-purple status effects.  

Verdict

Plenty has gone wrong in Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, but also plenty has come as a good surprise. On storytelling, a lot is left to be desired. The pacing is too quick, and character development is missing vital ethos. Fortunately, the snappy combat and deep mechanics more than makeup for it. In no time at all, you’re lost in a cohesive system. It blends multiple tools, including a companion’s help, and creates a rhythmic flow that uses all its moving parts. When you’re not trying to stay alive, you’re galavanting across stunning worlds that can be traversed with the snap of a finger. If only storytelling was as satisfying, the game would have hit the mark.