Batora: Lost Haven XSX Review 6.5/10 🌳🎋 @stormindgames #IndieGames #GameDev

Batora: Lost Haven was a game that really caught my eye when I first saw the trailer, I hadn’t played an ARPG in some time and fancied getting hips deep into some demon-killing action, and if there was a narrative to suck me in, all the better! 

Set after a seemingly worldwide catastrophe, you play as Avril, a woman who makes a living scavenging the ruins of civilisation for supplies. One day, as she is out with her niece, she ventures somewhere unfamiliar, and ends up being gifted with incredible powers bestowed by the gods of Sun and Moon, who tell Avril that she has a very different destiny to the one that she might think…

Using a colour-based pick ‘n flick combat system, Avril’s Sun / Moon-based powers effectively mean that the enemies that she comes across in her quest are best attacked by using either her Sun (melee, physical) or Moon (ranged, magic) skills, dependent on what colour the foe is.

As you make your way around the - genuinely gorgeous - alien landscape, you’ll also come across various characters, side quests and markets which can be explored, so it’s not just mindless shooty-shooty swipe-swipe all of the time.

With a soaring soundtrack, tasty visuals and incredibly smooth 60fps gameplay, Batora: Lost Haven has a lot going for it, unfortunately, there are some issues that affected my enjoyment of the game. 

Avril - the protagonist – spends the vast majority of the game snarkily quipping every chance she gets, and it makes the dialogue a bit of a trudge as she either underplays the gravity of every situation or feigns disinterest. It made me as a player drift away in terms of my engagement with the narrative.

The other concern for me was the repetitious combat. As the game is largely linear in terms of the directions that you can travel in – there are several routes, but all are effectively intertwining paths/passages – I found myself engaging groups of similar enemies on the way to an objective, and then taking them out again, as they respawned on the way back.

You also can’t just peg it past a group of enemies if you don’t fancy fighting them, as magical barriers raise around you to cause an arena-like effect for the battle.

In summary, I feel like Batora: Lost Haven is one for those who enjoy whimsy in their games, don’t mind familiar combat – and find the thought of a pretty snarky protagonist appealing.

The ARPG genre is incredibly rich, and Batora: Lost Haven just wasn’t strong enough to fully engage me.