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Ravenswatch

Developer: Passtech Games

Publisher: Nacon

Action
Adventure
Roguelike
Multiplayer
  • Price: $29.99
  • Release Date: Jan 23, 2025
  • Number of Players: 1 - 4
  • Last on Sale: -
  • Lowest Historic Price: -
  • ESRB Rating: T [Teen]
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    Visually lush, and has a pretty impressive array of characters with diverse play styles, but can be hard to love

    Ravenswatch is actually a title I got to preview some time ago on PC that I’ve kept my eye on ever since, in part because it’s simply gorgeous to begin with, but also because of its concept of pairing Diablo-esque action with a roguelike hook. Now that it has arrived on the Switch, it has been nice to get more time to spend with it, running multiple builds through the paces and getting more of a feel for the depth of its action. The result has left me with some mixed feelings, simultaneously impressed with how much the developers have accomplished, but also a bit puzzled by some choices that were made.

    Starting out strong, the game will allow you to choose between four very distinctive characters, which in general fall into pretty well-worn archetypes for this sort of experience, but each with a literary inspiration. There’s Scarlet the Rogue (who is both Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf depending on the time of day), Beowulf the Barbarian stand-in, The Snow Queen acting as the Mage of the bunch, and The Pied Piper who’s more like a Necromancer or other pet-oriented class. Since this is a roguelike, and not an RPG, your goal here isn’t to build your characters from scratch, you’ll instead be quite powered up out of the gate and expected to begin wielding your various skills effectively in short order in order to survive. Your goal will be to dive into as much combat and conflict as possible, leveling up and incrementally taking on new passive skills and perks in the hopes of setting yourself up for success against some intimidating stage bosses who’ll show up after only a few days.

    Since I tend to love the roguelike loop in almost every form it takes, trying to improve my overall skills and hoping for some key meta progression to help me continue to go deeper and deeper into successive runs, for the most part everything does make sense. The problem I had was that even taking into account the fact that most games in the space don’t tend to spell everything out, in this case I tended to feel pretty lost out of the gate. It was a blast to try out each character, and that’s before even getting to the additional ones you’ll unlock as you progress, but I’ll admit that each new class tended to be overwhelming. While starting out loaded with skills would seem to be exciting on paper, in practice I struggled with it for a bit, not sure what each skill was, and sometimes even how best to make use of what it could do. Yes, with some time you can absolutely work things out, and if you’ve played any sort of game like this before it likely won’t take long at all, but it could also be a somewhat needless barrier to entry for more novice gamers just looking to enjoy a game that obviously looks cool and exciting. Somewhat in a similar vein, I found that while playing solo is workable, it feels like the deck is much more stacked against you than if you’re able to join up with others online. Again, this isn’t crippling by any means, but depending on how you play (for instance trying to enjoy your games on the go), it may prove frustrating for some people.

    Taking it all into account, there’s plenty here to enjoy and be truly impressed by. The quality of the artwork and the animations are absolutely outstanding without question. The full array of characters you’ll have to choose from, once you unlock them all, each represent very different and often quite satisfying styles of play to master. While perhaps the meta progression is a bit stingy overall, I really appreciated the care and effort put into periodically revealing more of each character’s backstories the further you go. All that said, I would love to see a sequel at some point where the developers are able to work on improving the game’s mainstream accessibility and polish. It will likely be catnip for the right crowd who already love games like Diablo and general roguelike play elements, but for more ordinary gamers who lack the patience to get fully up to speed through many failures, and some likely confusion, it’ll be a tougher sell.


    Justin Nation, Score:
    Nindie Choice! [8.0]
2025

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