Vessels of Decay
Review
Duct-Tape, Bubble-Gum, and Prayers
by Samuel Corey
reviewed on PC
A Bit of a Mess
It's normal to expect less polish when you boot up an indie passion project from a first-time developer. This is something I usually factor into the overall grade of a game, and I try not to let issues like occasional crashes or graphical stuttering weigh too heavily against an otherwise engaging experience. Games are more than their occasional screw-ups. Unfortunately, when a game screws up as much as Vessels of Decay does, it starts to get hard to see the game underneath.
There are your usual issues of suddenly crashing or failing to launch altogether, but those are rather mundane and not worth dwelling on too much. Besides they are not all that troublesome as the game's aggressive auto-saving ensures that you don't lose much progress. Far more amusing are the issues like the one I discovered after unlocking the sword throw ability and discovering, contrary to the description of the move, that it completely replaced my light attack. The description of the sword-throw move said that it was bound to a different button altogether! I couldn't find a way to switch it off, so I was stuck relying on the new sword-throw ability and my heavy attack. In another case the game bugged out and thought I wanted to use the heavy attack button to absorb the spirit of an enemy, but said enemy did not exist so I was locked out from using my heavy attack until I finished the area.
Then there are the glitches where your character spaces out and teleports across the screen, or when you disappear for a few seconds, or when the effects of enemy attacks linger long after the attack has ceased, leaving it difficult to tell what is going on. Some glitches are beneficial, like when a large enemy gets stuck on the geometry of the level and just stares menacingly at you as you waltz by, but most of them add some manner of annoyance to the game.
Probably the funniest glitch is the fact that onscreen button prompts do not always correspond to what button you should press. For instance, the game prompts you to press the "LT" button to grab and move a box. However the LT button here does nothing, and instead, you need the "RT" which incidentally is also bound to heavy attack by default. The same button also drops the box, so it's impossible for your character to let go of the box without jumping away and slashing the air dramatically. There are key rebind options in the settings, which is nice but annoyingly if you want to change something you have to rebind every key step by step.
While not a glitch, the fact that you can only target ranged attacks right or left in a game where enemies can attack you from 360 degrees seems an especially glaring oversight. In multiple instances I found myself kiting enemies back and forth from left to right just so I could line up my ranged attacks on them. Honestly, Vessel of Decay is in such a sorry state I feel a bit bad ragging on it. This feeling of guilt is made a bit worse because underneath all the mess there is honestly a pretty fun retro-style action game.
Under the Mess
Admittedly, the game's unpolished state makes it a bit hard to focus on the developer's intentions, but there is some promise here. The story of two sisters searching a post-apocalyptic landscape for eldritch power to revive their dead mother, while not the most original is a fine hook for an action story. It would be nice if the game committed to borrowing ideas from Full-metal Alchemist and made the two sisters more visually distinct from each other in addition to mixing up their play style.
The combat is where the game shines the brightest, at least when all your attack buttons are working as you would expect them to. Each standard encounter nicely walks the line between being too difficult and too easy, so you are seldom greeted with a frustrating roadblock but are still given a tense battle that keeps you on your toes.
The variety of environments is actually fairly impressive, an accomplishment made even more impressive by the fact that they all adhere to a common theme. I believe that the derelict subway tunnels crawling with nameless horrors belong to the same world as the overgrown ruined cities and the lost stone shrines. It all fits together well, and while little is explicitly stated about the nature of this world there's enough here to speculate on the history of the setting.
Less impressive are the enemy types. You will spend a lot of the game fighting only a handful of different enemies. Even more annoying, at least three of these enemy types are all featureless black blobs. Just because Ori and the Blind Forest got away with these shenanigans doesn't mean anyone else should.
I still cannot recommend Vessels of Decay in its current state, but if it gets patches in a few weeks it could be worth another look.
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6.0
fun score
Pros
Nicely designed levels with a lot of variety, Fun combat
Cons
A lot of glitches, Ranged attacks can only be shot left or right, even though enemies attack from all directions, Small enemy variety.
