Review: Silverfall
Imitation has often been called the sincerest form of flattery, but that rule should have been discredited long ago.
Derivative knockoffs have become a staple in several genres, and it's no less so in the field of action-RPGs where we've seen countless Diablo clones litter the market. The latest example is Silverfall, a game that tries exceedingly hard to avoid any attempt at innovation, or for that matter, any pretense of being fun.
Bet You Didn't See This One Coming
The game begins with an overwhelming sudden attack upon the city of Silverfall, and those survivors that manage to flee from the city make their way into the swamplands that act as the initial area of the game. As you've probably already guessed, the core gameplay dynamics of Silverfall are roughly the same as every other game in the genre, e.g., gather quests, venture into the wilderness, kill a few dozen monsters, grab the resulting loot and quest objectives, and then repeat ad nauseam. If it's already gotten stale in other games, the same is doubly true for Silverfall.
Other games, such as Titan Quest, have managed to curtail the perpetual feeling of "been there, done that," by introducing unique settings or adding a healthy dose of polish to the gameplay. It quickly becomes apparent from the same old dose of Elves, Orcs, Trolls, Goblins, and Humans that the developers haven't tried to take one step towards innovation and progress. Even the individual game zones are of the cookie-cutter variety, encapsulating the same swamps, forests, and deserts that you've traipsed across in hundreds of other games.
Can't We Even Get Back to Basics?
All of this wouldn't be so bad if Silverfall had managed to get even the basic interface right, but they've sadly missed on even this account. Everything about it seems just a little bit off, especially in regards to equipping your avatar, with most aspects either too small or lacking in explanatory information. Even worse are the camera mechanics; the compass marker for your character follows the camera instead of your facing on the ground, making basic navigation far harder than it should be. Other smaller issues can be seen with corpse retrieval--a gameplay mechanic that should have been settled--but Silverfall forces players to reequip their character after retrieving their inventory; not the best idea when your corpse is surrounded by a few angry monsters.
Large as these issues might be, they would have been surmountable had the game been stable and bug-free. Alas, several times throughout the game we encountered broken quests and other smaller issues with the multiple companions players can bring along.
Underneath all of these the problems, Silverfall does bring some interesting ideas to the genre--notably the complex relationship between technology and magic that hasn't been seen since Troika's Arcanum. The nice cell-shaded graphics engine also helps to propel Silverfall forward with great visuals, but these high points are drowned by the overwhelming amount of disappointment put forward by the many problems everywhere else in the game.
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