Fallen Tear: Ascension came to me through the recent Steam Next Fest. The mixture of Metroidvania exploration and JRPG mechanics intrigued me to try it out, and the hour I spent with the demo flew by. The game is entering early access, bringing the first part of the game and a promised 15-20 hour experience. The 1.0 release will extend that time to 35-40 hrs, with 80+ hrs mentioned for completionists.
The story that leads us through the game starts out quite powerful and sets up our hero’s mission well, but the narrative does start to fizzle out as you play, so much so that by the end of my time with the game, I had forgotten certain aspects of its story beats. The game starts with you in control of a black beast, with a short section of platforming and battling before you wake up and realise it was just a dream. We meet our protagonist, Hiro, who is due to meet up with his brother for some hunter training.
During this training, a strange attack occurs, and as you rush back to your town, you pass out along the way. When Hiro wakes up, the town is destroyed, and your mum and brother are missing. Everyone blames you for the destruction, but Hiro has no recollection of what happened. This sets Hiro on a journey to find his missing family and to help the land of Raoah to cleanse itself of the darkness surrounding it and Hiro himself.
Doing this requires you to explore the lands, help out its many civilians and find and purge the four gods of Roaoh of their corruption. The Metroidvania side of the game sees many expected features, including blocked paths, secret areas and items to find, and new abilities and upgrades to unlock. Though most of these are implemented in the standard way, there are a couple of exceptions here that play into the JRPG side of the game.
One of Fallen Tear’s biggest draws is its ability to meet NPCs and for them to join your team. Named as Fated Bonds, each brings different skills and buffs with them. For example, Bjorn can throw a heated pan in an arc, bringing 20 damage and burning your enemy for 5 damage over time, and Efiker, the Guild Master, can trap enemies around Hiro, disabling their movement for 3 seconds. Recruiting new allies nets you a trust point, which, when you have enough, will let you gain a new ability.
Unlike in other Metroidvanias, you can choose which ability you want, just as long as you have enough trust points to unlock it. These ‘Ascensions’ are mostly lacking in innovation with the usual abilities you’d expect from a Metroidvania. Double jump, dash, charged attack and charged jump are just some you can earn; I was hoping for something a little more original that would fit this world of magic, sorcery and mysterious creatures more, but maybe that’s to come in the full version?
Let’s also not forget that Hiro is a trainee hunter too, which comes into play by earning Fated Points from completing hunts. Scattered around are hunt boards where Hiro can accept a contract to defeat a certain creature and claim a bounty of points. You’ll earn these points from defeating a set amount of standard enemies too, which can be claimed and used to unlock new buffs for Hiro. These buffs are broken up into defence, attack and health with percentage boosts for their respective areas. It’s an engaging mechanic; it made me want to kill the same enemies over and over instead of just skipping past them like I would do in other similar games.
And there’s plenty more on offer from the game, with an evolving map system, excellent level design, strong and fun voice acting, a journal and help directory and gorgeous hand-animated graphics that bring this fantastical world and the characters of Raoah to life. But if you were to ask me if it’s worth purchasing this in early access, my answer would be no.
When playing Fallen Tear, it can’t help but feel like a game that’s not even quite ready for early access. Transitions feel jarring, there are sound effects missing, music doesn’t play at all in some areas, and I experienced a few bugs along the way. Most notably, when fast travelling from one area to another, Hiro would sometimes respawn in the ground or underneath it, with no way to get out of it unless I reloaded the game. I had other instances where the wrong amount of trust points got taken from my total and some rare instances of some framerate drops which made the game stutter or freeze for short periods of time or completely crash the game.
Fallen Tear also struggles to communicate well with the player. I spent more time than I would have liked wandering around, not sure what to do next. Blocked entrances to new areas are not marked on your map, nor are NPCs that you can’t help when you meet them. This led to frustration, scratching my head trying to remember where I saw them last when I finally had the ability I needed.
Another time I had an item in my possession that I didn’t realise I had until I randomly talked to someone out of pure frustration and a conversation kicked in. I produced this item I didn’t know I had, and I was able to complete that task and had access to a new part of the map.
Periodically a blood moon will occur in which enemies will become stronger and elite enemies will appear through warp gates. These just kick in, roughly, and they stay for quite some time, longer than I would have liked. There’s no warning a blood moon is going to happen, and it does nothing for the gameplay at all. It’s more an annoyance than anything. But I wasn’t prepared for it when it first happened; I had no prior warnings from NPCs or from the game, and it took some time to figure out what was actually happening. I was a very confused player!
I appreciate this is what early access is for – to help the developers to find bugs, suggest improvements and test the foundations of the game – but this feels like it just needed a little more time before asking people to spend money on it. I’m frightened it might hurt the game, especially if people leave negative comments on Steam, as Fallen Tear deserves more, as there’s a very promising, robust and exciting game that the negative comments might bury.
Fallen Tear: Ascension brings two genres together and mashes them together successfully. It has exploration at its heart that leads to time just sinking away. You’ll want to know what’s round the next corner; you’ll just want to explore this little area before putting it down. The JRPG elements are enjoyable too; it was nice to experience them without turn-based battles, while the narrative was just enough to hold my interest. The beautiful hand animation was always delightful; Hiro especially showed much character in his movement, while enemies shared similar detailed movesets. There’s so much potential and promise baked into Fallen Tear that with all the rough spots ironed out and improved narrative beats, I can see this being one heck of an experience, and I can’t wait to see what state the game is in 6 months’ time. But until then, it might be best to stick this on your wishlist and watch its progress from afar.
