Duskfade Review
Weird Beluga’s Duskfade channels PS2-era 3D platforming in a slick, modern package with gorgeous worlds and fast, fluid traversal.
Duskfade. Credit: Weird Beluga / Fireshine Games
Weird Beluga’s Duskfade is a beautiful, modern love letter to PS2-era 3D platformers. The gorgeous presentation keeps it from feeling dated like others I’ve played, and moving through the world feels unusually good. Combat and story, on the other hand, leave quite a bit to be desired.
When a catastrophe spawns a massive clocktower and plunges his home into darkness, Zirian must find a way inside to rescue his sister and his town. A villain named Despair pops up to stop him. I laughed at her name, probably not the developers’ desired reaction. Cutscenes revealing the events in Zirian’s family prior to the disaster try to strike an emotional tone, but trite writing and voice performances that are irritating at best made me just want to skip them all. I probably would have, if I wasn’t reviewing the game. Conversations with NPCs that dot the world are inconsequential and not worth your time.
Thankfully, you can choose not to engage with the story at all and focus on the joy of the game’s movement. Zirian can zip through levels and cross huge gaps with double jumps and dashes. A dodge roll ahead of a leap sends him even further. Combo that with wall jumps, grappling, and rail grinding, and you can chain different moves together without losing momentum. Zirian is fast and agile, and the controls are tuned perfectly to make him feel like an extension of yourself through the controller.
Duskfade. Credit: Weird Beluga / Fireshine Games
Levels are fundamentally linear, with each region pushing toward a boss, but there are enough optional detours along the way to almost make the game feel like a collectathon. I never really cared about the collectibles because the extra paths and platforming challenges to get them were some of the most fun bits of the game, a reward unto themselves. Traversing the world is so exuberant that I wanted to see every bit that I could.
Combat was an annoyance that halted momentum for me. It’s isolated to rooms that block your progress through a level, small gauntlets along your path. Despite some abilities you earn along the way, fighting regular enemies becomes a boring melee hit-and-dodge pattern fast. Higher difficulties make those fights harder without making them any more fun, so I didn’t bother challenging myself and just tried to get through combat as quickly as I could. Boss battles were the exception to the rule. The fights include platforming challenges during boss invulnerability windows, forcing you to reach targets to break through their defenses. Those sections turn the encounters into dramatic platforming skill checks rather than just more combat.
Duskfade. Credit: Weird Beluga / Fireshine Games
Duskfade looks fantastic. Rich colors, dramatic lighting, particles, detailed environments, and dynamic, fluid character animation make the game look distinctly modern. It wears its Kingdom Hearts influences on its sleeve, perhaps a little too proudly. Zirian's design, his sword, and the enemies evoke Sora, the Keyblade, and the Heartless too strongly. It makes Duskfade feel derivative when it doesn’t need to. I wish the artists moved a little further away from that inspiration to make something more unique to fit how good the game feels to play.
Duskfade is such a joy to explore that putting up with its lesser qualities is worth it. Ignore the story, bear its combat, and focus on how good it feels to launch yourself over massive gaps, swing from grapples to reach new heights, and explore every corner of its world.
Duskfade
Duskfade feels so good to move through that it's worth putting up with its dull combat and lackluster storytelling.
Weird Beluga modernizes the PS2-era 3D platformer with a gorgeous presentation and joyful, fluid traversal.