Recent reviews by Robb576

tl;dr, very long review ahead
Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is a great adventure fighting game, with more souls-like mechanics than you might initially think. Even though the visuals are striking and one of the biggest selling points of the game, ACE Team managed have the gameplay feel complete as well, rather than just having the artstyle carry. The unsung hero of this game is the level design itself, featuring memorable enemy encounters and top-notch interconnectivity through shortcuts. The game is not without flaws though, as you will run into the occascional bug or polarizing design choice. However, none of them were of any real hinder to me. You can feel the love poured into this game and the sense of exploration never left me during its runtime which led to 100%'ing the game. Easy recommend.

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Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is an action RPG game that has you traversing a weird world while you punch the lights out of creatures with designs not even my nightmares could come up with. Despite of that, the game never feels out of place, as weird as the world itself or scary. You are a fighter, and you can use a mix of different fighting styles and special moves to give yourself the edge, as your final hit sends enemies ragdolling to the ground.

Let's start with the most in-your-face aspect of the game: the artstyle. If you are like me and never played any of the Zeno Clash games (developed as well by ACE Team, set in the same world with the same artstyle, but not prequels), it feels like a lot to take in at first. The world is odd, enemies are grotesque and you look like someone had fun in a character creator and wanted to show their friends how unrealistic their character looks. Despite all of this, there is never any issue with "accepting" the art of this game. Everything I said still applies, but the game is not making a big deal out of it, so you probably aren't, either. You are a part of the world, and so are the enemies. They don't get any special introduction highlighting how many appendages, eyes or other features they have. You just encounter them and you fight them. It allows you to take what you see for granted, and there is nothing wrong with that.


The visuals are good, and the gameplay is good as well. You have your standard action/adventure RPG loop of going from point A to B in a semi-open world. There are no quest markers or anything, but you will probably not get lost along the way. Most of the world is pretty linear, and very specific about where you can and cannot go. While you being stopped by an ankle-high wall or incline is frustrating, an alternative of putting high walls everywhere would take away from the experience even more. You're often climbing or descending through a level, and having the ability to look ahead or back is great.

The level design is on par with the Dark Souls franchise. I do not know how they could improve on it. Every enemy you encounter, no matter how insignifant they are, is memorable. A plethora of shortcuts turn a 3-minute trek up into a 1-minute walk back. While not all of them are as relevant, they make traversing the world a lot of fun. I did grew kinda weary of literally every new door I encountered being unlocked from the other side, similar to your character making remarks about this whenever you try to open one of them.

You will be doing most of your traveling during daytime, and pretty much the entire plot plays out during the day as well. However, you can also visit places you've already been to at night. This changes up which monsters you fight, and some areas are only accessible during this phase. Do not expect a level of "second world" like Lords of the Fallen or Enotria did, but there are some unique collectibles to get. If you die, you respawn at night and have to find your body. If you then die at night without succeeding, you lose all progress you made since the last time you saved. At times, it is mandatory as well to visit places at night to unlock areas for your daytime travels. All of this gives you more stuff to explore which is nice.

Speaking of exploration, through the world you will find random plants and animals that you can put into your healing soup, chests that you can open for goodies and upgrade items in the form of small wooden dolls. In a very odd design choice, these items are only highlighted when you are next to them with your camera aimed at them as well. There is no shiny from a distance. I understand if people dislike having to shove themselves into every wall and corner to see if there happens to be an item, but I liked it a lot. It gave the world a realistic feel, away from a video game. This was further compounded by savepoints being actual campfires that you need to light. You cannot get around the "Bonfire lit" memes, but you can see the smoke from the campfires from a distance. It feels rewarding to push through that one extra fight because you can already see that behind there, you can light a campfire for a savepoint.


All praise for the visuals and world design aside, Clash Artifacts of Chaos is a game about fighting, and the combat is fine. There are plenty of different fighting styles to unlock, as well as special attacks you can do. However, you'll have to come to terms with it at the start, and it will always feel kinda clunky. You can get ganged up on in a corner or use some very cheesy cheese methods to stunlock enemies. It is not perfect, but the combat loop itself is still very fun. It did not get tiresome over the course of the game.

The last gameplay mechanic that is worthy of note is "The Ritual". A game of dice where you and your opponent can use actions to modify the roll results. The winner gets to impose a disadvantage on the loser. It is a fun minigame that unfortunately has too little impact on the entire combat. It is fleshed out well, but I wish more was done with it.

The story itself is a positive. The voice acting is top tier and it has both its serious, cute and humorous moments. It is presented in a fine manner, both in quality and quantity. The main characters are great. There is nothing more I can add to it.

In my 18 hours of playing this game and seeing all of its content, I have only experienced bugs or a frustrating gameplay element a few times. These include flying enemies standing still mid-air, me accidentally getting beneath very large enemies and them standing on top of me, and me walking off a ledge since some cutscenes still have you control your player character even if they are off-screen. Almost all of these gave me a laugh.


The game is definitely not for everyone though. It is the type of game that I expect game journalists to give a 7/10, whereas it sits closer to a 9/10 for me. If you are a fan of souls-likes, you will enjoy the interconnected world, overall exploration for secrets, healing and the death mechanics. If you are a fan of fighting games, you will enjoy the combat and the many approaches you can have to it. If you are a fan of adventure games, the aforementioned exploration and story will be great. And if you like indies, this is one of the most unique artstyles out there, and that alone is also already worth it.


If you got to the end of this wall of text, you are very likely interested enough to buy it. Give it a try, and try to stick with it through the first few hours. It is criminal that less than half of the people owning this game played it for longer than 3 hours.

This game is free and that should be enough to make you consider getting it.

If it somehow is not, then you are missing out on what I can only describe as one of the most carefully put together games I've played in recent times, with a lot of charm, secrets, atmosphere, amazing music and great gameplay. I can't recall wishing this much for a game to have triple the content of what it has at this moment. It is that good.

Trust me, you are going to enjoy this.

If you always wanted to dropkick your friend while he is shooting flying snakes out of a bazooka, surrounded by lava, I can't think of a better game to fit the bill