I have a love/hate relationship to roguelikes. I have a similar relationship to Soulsbornes. Some, like Hades and Elden Ring, scratch a certain itch even though I absolutely suck at them. So when I first saw the announcement for Ravenbound, I suspected that I would be feeling that itch once again and the game might serve to scratch it. Well, as it turns out, I was only half right.
Developed by Systemic Reaction, a group within Avalanche Studios (Just Cause, Mad Max), Ravenbound puts players in the pseudo-Scandinavian world of Avalt. Ages ago, the gods were stabbed in the back by one of their own and sealed away in tombs guarded by their betrayer’s henchmen. But, like all good storybook villains, the Betrayer overlooked someone: Raven, a weapon of the gods who wasn’t quite finished before the final backstabbing. Now, Raven’s essence flits from Vessel to Vessel, choosing a champion to throw themselves at the minions of the Betrayer in an effort to free the entombed gods and defeat the Betrayer once and for all. And if the Vessel dies, well, there are plenty more where they came from.
Visually, Ravenbound is pretty good looking. Using Avalanche’s APEX engine, players are treated to an open world map of various biomes, scattered about with villages, giant monuments, and the cyclopean tombs of the gods they need to free. It’s comparable to Unreal or Frostbite in terms of visual fidelity, detail, and eye candy like fire, smoke, and various other particle effects. The Scandinavian influences are thicker than lingonberry jam and just as delightful. From fine details like swords and shields to structures like villages and ruins, you can’t help but soak in the Viking vibes. Character models are equally detailed and equally interesting, from the three possible player species (human, the lupine Ulvar, and the cervine Simlar) to the variety of enemies you face like Draugr and Trolls. However, APEX isn’t always 100% on populating the map like it’s supposed to, and in several instances, locations where I had to go to battle enemies were visually empty but chests and such wouldn’t open because the game swore they were there. Least I didn’t have to fight invisible enemies, but having to log out and log back in to get them to populate was a bit of a pain point.
The audio on Ravenbound is quite well done. The clash of arms and grunts of your enemies before putting them out of your misery are deeply satisfying. The soundtrack is minimalist but nicely played, whether it’s flying around or facing off against one of the Wardens who will invariably kick your ass. Aside from the opening cinematic sequence, there’s a dearth of voice acting, which does kind of disappoint a little bit. I’d like to be able to hear the different deities as I rescue them (perhaps for the umpteenth time), as well as the different villagers who send me off to get beat up for their benefit.
When it comes to gameplay, Ravenbound demonstrates a serious disconnect between what it’s showing us and what it’s telling us. We have this very large open world area, probably comparable in size to that found in Skyrim at the very least. We have all manner of small camps, plundered villages, and crumbling ruins filled with people and creatures that mean us ill if we happen to get within conversation distance. Defeating these enemies drop Fragments which (after collecting three of them) you can use to obtain potential loot in the form of weapons, armor, or trinkets to improve your lethality.
Unfortunately, you are relying on the luck of the draw, literally, about potentially getting a good item. Each time you “empower” Fragments, you’re given a hand of three possible items. And even if you get it, there’s no guarantee you’re able to equip it. Equipping items requires Mana. When first starting out, you’re directed to a Tear of Hatred to square off against a low level guardian of some sort. Defeat the guardian, the Tear is cleansed, and you gain Mana. You want more Mana? Sucks to be you. You might get it as a drop, but there won’t be another Tear of Hatred pointed out to you until you beat one of the Tomb Warden bosses. From what I can tell, there’s not another Tear of Hatred even generated until after a Warden is defeated. It may look like an open world, but it’s one which punishes the player harshly for trying to explore in any meaningful fashion. The lack of a map we can use to consult only adds needless aggravation to this, since the bulk of the area appears to be the same every run with only minimal differences in terms of Tear locations and camp denizens.
Aside from Mana, Tears of Hatred also “cleanse” the immediate area of the overarching resource known as Hatred. This notionally allows you to get at nearby chests for early gear drops. And you are going to build up Hatred no matter what. Kill bandits for a village quest? Gain Hatred. Open up a seething red chest because there’s no Tear of Hatred which takes away the glow? Gain Hatred. Have you killed enough enemies and opened enough chests that a fraction of your Fragments bar is permanently locked? Gain Hatred. Every time you empower Fragments when you’ve got part of your bar locked up with Hatred, you automatically buff all elite enemies and bosses with a 5% bump to damage and health. So you’re penalized for defeating enemies by getting a smaller selection of item drops AND making harder-to-beat enemies. And when you’re buffing your enemies, you basically have to hope and pray that either you’re better at killing them than they are in trying to kill you, or hope you managed to get the drops needed to heal yourself either at a village or immediately by using a card. That’s right. There’s no mechanism to heal outside of combat save for a card drop or coins from a card drop. If you’re broke and almost broken, there’s little chance you’re going to beat a Warden.
The actual combat is pretty solid, though it’s not without flaws. Each Vessel will roll up with at least one trait defining a favored weapon, such as sword and shield or twin axes. Some will roll up with two favored weapon types. This is not always good, since your favored weapon type will affect the types of items which might drop, as well as potentially hampering your ability to inflict damage under certain conditions. Strong attacks are supposed break an opponent’s guard, but you often end up having to whack away at an enemy a long time before their guard finally does break. Meanwhile, if there’s a mob, your chosen target’s buddies are making their presence known and beating you down. You can notionally recover health in combat by successfully damaging enemies, since damage is “temporary” (marked by a gray section of your health bar), but if you take damage on top of the gray section, the total health is lowered. It’s a system which sounds vaguely similar to the one found in Thymesia, only it applies to you and not your enemies. Boss fights are, invariably, a slog. Certain trait combos can make it go a little faster, but you’re not one-shotting a boss anytime soon. And since you’re having to defeat the same Wardens all over again every time you start a new run, it gets old very quickly.
As a final insult, you’re forced to log into Systemic Reaction servers in order to play what is very obviously a single player game. There’s no multiplayer component at all, and no potential for such a component anywhere on the horizon. The officially stated reason is to be able to respond to “player feedback” quickly. But quite frankly, if your game is so damned twitchy it needs to be monitored like an ICU patient, and you can’t somehow glean the critical information you need from a simple dump file which you can politely ask players for, maybe you need to do some more work to get things running smoothly instead of kicking it out the door. There’s no good reason for requiring players to log into a server for a single player game. It’s a shameless effort at data harvesting and it hurts what’s already a troubled title.
Ravenbound could have been a much better game than what we got. It could have provided a novel twist on the open world formula of Skyrim, or it could have put a decidedly Viking spin on Hades, or even added Elden Ring-style fight mechanics to a solid God of War clone. It did none of these things. It almost feels like the developers couldn’t quite make up their mind what they wanted to make, with the end result being deeply unsatisfying despite its visual prowess. And it’s a damned shame this happened. I’m always going to be excited about games which tap into the adventure and tragedy of Norse myth and sagas, but that excitement has been killed by Ravenbound‘s punishing design choices and ridiculous data harvesting schemes.
Axel reviewed this game on a PC with a code provided by the publisher.
