Animus: Revenant Review (Switch)

I expect veterans of the Animus series will find these changes fine despite the title not breaking much new ground. Gameplay, as mentioned, in Revenant is strongly modeled after Dark Souls. All the hallmarks are there: stamina based combat, lock-on targeting, challenging enemies and bosses, dropping experience upon death, searching for respawn points and fast traveling between them, a similar approach to stats and leveling, and yes – a central hub that eventually provides you means to both level up and improve weapons and armor.

Animus has always been up front about its desire to be the Dark Souls of mobile gaming. The fact that Revenant succeeds at mostly pulling this off in an isometric viewpoint is likely enough for some players. Personally, I think this level of a console-like experience is actually an improvement over the mission-based loop from past titles that screamed “this was developed for mobile” to me. I know some people enjoy mobile titles, I just am typically not one of them.

You’ll begin in Animus: Revenant by making your way through a couple of tutorial levels until you eventually earn the ability to level up and craft/upgrade weapons and armor. Progressing to the next boss, killing it, unlocking the next save point, warping back to your home base to level up and craft is the one and only gameplay loop. Once you have that down, you just rinse and repeat until victory.

Combat

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The long and short of it is that combat in Animus: Revenant is hit and miss. Most areas are short (until late game), and the variety of enemy attacks tends to be underwhelming. Ultimately, for me, the combat doesn’t hit that sweet spot of responsiveness I’ve grown accustomed to from soulslike titles. Beyond this, there are also strange difficulty spikes/dips. I suspect this has something to do with damage type and boss vulnerabilities, but on your first playthrough you are limited on the types of damage you can deal and you just have to make due with what you have on hand in most cases.

Speaking of bosses, a highlight of their design was that each has a second, harder phase. In most cases this means larger AOE attacks, an extra move to their main combo, summoning help, or adding status ailments to their attacks. At the end of the day, there is nothing new or striking about the combat in Animus: Revenant, but there really doesn’t need to be either. The camera, which has a locked viewpoint similar to Diablo, works fine for the most part but doesn’t feel like a big deal. Additionally, the locked perspective affects combat as it means your character may end up in a corner or side of the screen hidden behind scenery instead of being locked in the center of the screen. This sometimes created situations where you couldn’t see yourself at all or where you could trap a boss to trivialize the encounter. That being said, the Switch needs more 3D soulslikes in my opinion, I just wish Animus: Revenant had more lasting appeal.

Character progression is taken directly from Dark Souls. For those unfamiliar, you gain levels by collecting “memories.” These memories can be spent at your hub (once this is unlocked) to add a single point per level to stats like health, stamina, strength, etc. My major complaint about the progression system is that the bonuses for making your sword a +2 or +3 version didn’t affect gameplay. I have a +7 weapon that still takes as many hits to kill basic enemies as it did in its original form. You do unlock bonus skills on the weapons for upgrading them, but don’t expect to ever feel much stronger. I reached level 85 with all my gear at least +6 by the time I finished the story. Ultimately, the systems seem unneeded as they only provide a negligible enhancement to the amount of damage I dished out and received.

Presentation

Though there is nothing actually wrong with the graphics in Animus: Revenant, but…they are pretty generic dark fantasy and feel played out long before you complete the 25-35 hour campaign.

The game itself looks fairly good on my Switch Lite. As I think back over the game, only the dungeon level made an impression and that was because it was so massive. The settings are all bleak. While unique from one another, each quickly feels repetitive within itself. There are few landmarks or unique parts of levels. Adding some would go a long way to improving the level design. Thankfully, most levels are short and this isn’t much of a problem. However, there are a few levels in the second half of the game that are much larger. The game did not adequately, in my opinion, prepare players for the jump in size and need for backtracking that came with these later levels. I’d like to see both some of the earlier levels lengthened as well as later levels shortened to give a more balanced feel. If I hadn’t developed intuitive mapping skills from games like Hollow Knight and Metroid, I may not have remembered the locked doors in previous levels that I would need to suddenly backtrack to about 2/3rds of the way through the game. This could lead to a lot of frustration. Adding an in-game mapping system that marked locked doors would probably help most players.

I’d love to see more work done with the engine to create just a better, more interesting world and level mechanics. Give us unique landmarks that make locations unforgettable. Let our actions produce some change to the world around us so we feel more connected. Give us environmental puzzles with unique visual clues. The tools are there to realize a more engaging and fun game world that doesn’t feel thin. I would like to see the next title in the Animus series do this. It would make your time in the game a lot more memorable as would an in game map.

As for how it runs and performs, I do not think I ever noticed my Switch Lite slowing down as I played Animus: Revenant. Load times were longer than I liked, which makes running back to your hub to upgrade things a bit more work than you might like. A patch did come out while I was playing the game, but other than some bosses getting stuck on scenery, I didn’t encounter any bugs at all during my playthrough – before or after the patch.

Conclusion

Is Animus: Revenant worth the price of admission?

Honestly, the game just went on too long. There are at least 25-30 bosses, maybe more if you find all the hidden optional ones. Only 2 – 3 of the bosses I fought were actually memorable. Most are just a bigger human with a big weapon repeating one or two combos. There was no real looking forward to seeing what the next boss would be like. At least half of the bosses I killed on the first try, the other half took no more than 2 – 3 attempts with only 2 bosses taking me a tad longer. Disappointingly, the rewards for killing a boss end up all being the same for the most part. Biggest difference seems to be that some bosses offer weapons with skills built for one type of damage like poison, while others offer healing spells or buffs. At the end of the day, however, I got through the game with the starting weapons I was given. I bought and upgraded others, just never felt like the skills they gave me were more useful than the ones the game gives you from the get go.

I enjoy seeing a long running series evolve and try new things, so I’m happy with Animus: Revenant in many ways. That being said, it stales late game and the systems for weapon upgrades and leveling up feel incidental as opposed to essential. Part of the fun of RPGs, at least for me, is building a character and becoming powerful. Unfortunately, that experience feels missing in large part here. I put between 30-35 hours into Animus: Revenant, but only the first 20 hours were truly enjoyable.

Looking ahead, I think the series will continue to evolve, and I look forward to that. But, for most Switch RPG enthusiasts, I can say Animus: Revenant does not need to be high on your list of what to play this summer.