Ashes to Ashes, Dust to "Dust: An Elysian Tail" - A Review

This review has been in the works for a long time coming. By that, I mean I haven’t really played this game since I first bought it upon release because of my schedule, other projects, girl(s), that guy who’s always trying to kill me with elaborate deathtraps in his moon base, and pie. But I’m finally here and ready to get around to reviewing Dust: An Elysian Tail.

Initially released on XBLA and then again on Steam, Dust is an indie game made by (from what I’ve read) a single person or, at least, a small team of people. You play an anthropomorphic creature (like, part dog I think) named Dust. He has no memory of who he is and he must find out. To find out, he must use a talking sword named Arah, which says it will guide him on his coming journey. Forced baggage with the sword is another Navi-like fairy creature named Fidget. She has her moments of actually being funny or genuinely interesting, but is just another one of those side-characters you see in games designed to help you and is shoveled lots of dialogue to make them funny. When, really, they just get annoying after a while. The three of you fight a large assortment of creatures through a fair amount of environments to uncover the truth of Dust’s past and save the world from monsters and warfare.

Character wise, nothing sticks out as being amazing or as failure. Either a character just feels flat or their only somewhat interesting. Dust, of course, is the most fascinating once you press farther into the story and find out more about him. But it doesn’t really do a good job of making things seem like a mystery early on. I certainly would have preferred more clues (subtle ones, obviously) giving us some indication as to who he was. Without going into spoilers, I guarantee that no matter what clues are given, it would have been impossible to really figure out who or what Dust is actually supposed to be. But, like I said, if you stick with it, he actually does become an interesting character that a little more fleshing out would have improved.

Beyond Dust, there aren’t a lot of great stand outs. You have a few antagonists that really do grab your attention but leave almost as quickly as they appear. One of my favorites is Fuse, a Moonblood creature that goes homicidal and tries to destroy entire villages. There wasn’t really any build up to him. You explore a dungeon-y area, fight some monsters, and eventually he shows up. No hints of what to expect. No earlier meet up to characterize him better. We learn more about him later, but that doesn’t really help his character when he first appears.

Additionally, some of the more sinister characters sort of lose their impact on their design. While everything in the game looks really good (more on that in a bit) I feel like the characters who are bad guys look too nice and cutesy animal-like to really make me feel like they’re a genuine threat. But that aside, no character is truly offensive in any real way. And those that come close aren’t around long enough to really matter. But same is true for characters that are genuinely interesting and it is a shame some of them can’t stick around longer.

The reason they’re getting booted out so much is because of Dust and Arah. The game is an side-scrolling adventure game in which you hack-n-slash your way through various hordes of dudes. You can build up combos to maximize your experience and treasure gains as well as just challenge yourself to get as high a number in the combos as humanly possible. Eventually you’ll find yourself getting a 500-hit combo if you’re quick to learn how to use the skills you’re given.

The skills I’m referring too are various projectile abilities that combine Dust and Fidget’s skills. Heavy use of it can drain their energy and even hurt Dust and break him out of his combo. But skills like the Spark-Duststorm allow you to build up combos really easily and damage multiple enemies at once. This makes it easier for you to level up and increase your damage output to fight tougher enemies. That said, the rewards system in this game really breaks most of the challenge. Once you figure out the best method to get combos and know the best spot to deal with enemies (or the best enemies to build combos on) then leveling up is a since. And once you level up your damage output, everything suddenly becomes a tad less threatening.

Granted, this is the power balance of the game. It’s just like in Metroid Prime when fighting Shegoth was a pain in the ass, but once you got the plasma beam, it was a walk in the park. This isn’t me saying that this is overly bad, but that once you find a combination of abilities, skills, and enemies to get the highest combos and level up quickly, much challenge will swiftly be drained. But if you want to challenge yourself there are harder difficulties and you can always just limit yourself to what you can do.

In fact, going back to my Metroid comparison, this game really does have a lot in common with the Metroid-Vania style games of exploring large environments for upgrades, enemies, loot, and story events as well as re-exploring areas with newer upgrades to find more secret items and loot. I remember playing through and getting frustrated, knowing that certain items were just around the corner but just outside of my reach. It takes a while before you get all the abilities needed to really start treasure hunting, but it’s still fun to do. Though some of the challenge there has been taken away because the map will indicate rooms that still have treasure in them. But Fidget will also alert you to a room with treasure upon entering, so I guess you would have known either way. Indicating it on the map just prevents you from needing to re-explore EVERY room and waste endless amounts of time.

And the environments are fun to explore, regardless. There are some really slow sections like when you’re wandering around in the caves underneath Amoura. But then you have really well thought-out sections that actually set a really nice tone and pace like the Haunted Mansions you have to explore later in the game. But each area is still unique in their own right. Many of puzzles utilizing the game’s physics with the world’s environment which is pretty fun to figure out. And the game really encourages players early on to explore everything everywhere. If it looks like there’s a path or a cove, it probably leads to more treasure.

The story isn’t anything overly impressive. It’s your amnesia story with a war, assassins, racism, ghosts, and magic swords. So it’s at least entertaining when it needs to be. As I mentioned earlier, the Haunted Mansion section was good to explore, but it also had an interesting bit of lore behind it for both the overall game’s story and just the story of that area. Not all of it is golden. And it doesn’t help the voice acting doesn’t feel quite as polished as some other aspects, but it is fun and kid friendly so that the game can be played by anyone.

The one thing I want to praise this game for over everything else is the visual design. Yes, it’s a 2D game, but I’ve never seen a game that put so much polish into the visuals as this. According to what I’ve read, everything in this game was drawn by the designed for the game, literally by hand. Yes, digitized for the game later, but that’s still a lot of work for one person to do. AND it’s amazing that for it all being one person that it looks so good. If I had to make any comparisons, the art style reminds me of Avatar in terms of it having fluid animations, colorful palettes, and unique game-world structures, plants, people, and objects that it allows it to stand out from other games. That’s something I like to praise games for is when they choose a visual design that stands out rather than following the grey-brown and gritty trend games like Gears of War seem adamant to stick in.

There aren’t too many faults with this game overall. The story, characters, and dialogue aren’t solid all the way through, but they are enjoyable overall and are still fun. Being a game aimed for kids, that is something to be expected. The gameplay is very solid without any real glitches or issues to make a mention of. The only complaint is that it seems like it’s a bit too easy. Again, perhaps higher difficulties resolve this, but if that’s not an issue for you or your kids, then maybe you’ll enjoy it all the more. If anything, check it out because you don’t see games this good this often. It’s not Bastion level of cool-looking indie games, but its damn close. Expect to see me bring this game up again for a top ten post later this year.