Its inane story and placeholder characters should damage the whole undertaking, but, for my money, they actually go some way to making it feel even purer. There's no sense that Swordigo's trying to pass any of these ideas off as its own, of course: this is just an RPG about RPGs, a game built on established traditions and rituals.
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I haven't seen this chunky kind of bare-bones 3D since the likes of Pandemonium. There are dungeons filled with spike pits, swinging blades and bats, and there are nods to Zelda absolutely everywhere you look - in the hero's green tunic, in the reference-riddled dialogue, and even in that little ringtone of positive reinforcement that greets you whenever you open a chest or unlock a door. They're fun enough in their own right, but they work most appealingly as pace-setters: they feel less like upgrades and more like the simple beats that keep you bouncing down the track from one 2D environment to the next. Levelling in Swordigo sees you picking between more health, more mana or stronger attacks, and every now and then you'll get to buy a new item back at the shop, or learn a new spell - a lightning blast, perhaps, or maybe the ability to conjure a fizzy little bomb. Dash around, leap from one platform to the next, engage in the odd block puzzle, and hack your way through all manner of storybook beasties. The village is threatened, your mentor's taken one for the team, and only you can save the world: it's a straightforward setup and it draws you into a straightforward adventure. It keeps you smiling, though, with a guileless and wonderfully primitive PS1-era art style, and real-time combat that crunches along in a blizzard of simple swipe attacks and the odd burst of magic. Swordigo's so traditional, in fact, that if it was any less cheery it might be a little boring.
#Swordigo final boss dialog series#
Even at the genre's simplest - as with Swordigo, for example, which is simplicity itself - they offer the warm reassurance that often lurks within a familiar structure, and the series of tidy little pleasures that come with levelling up, unlocking a few new tricks, and opening all those gleaming treasure chests.īosses can send you into a floaty knockback, which is a little annoying.
If there's a better kind of comfort game than an RPG, I haven't found it.
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