[Xbla] Dust: an Elysian Tail Review

[Lekon]

Dust: An Elysian Tail

Title: Dust: An Elysian Tail
Platform: Xbox Live Arcade
Developer: Humble Hearts
MSRP: 1200 MSP through Xbox Live
Editor: James "Lekon" Barry

What's Hot: Animation and art quality that is rarely seen in games. No one hit kill hazards or bottomless pits. Easy controls that never get in the way of what you need to do.

What's Not: A bit of the dialog near the end gets cheesy.

Odin Sphere, Bastion, The Dishwasher, all games that took a well established game style, added incredible art, and produced incredible results. Dust: An Elysian Tail joins those games in showing just how amazing a game can be when art and fun are not considered mutually exclusive.

In the beginning there was color

In Dust: An Elysian Tail, you play the titular character Dust, along with his companions Fidget the nimbat, and Ahrah the sword of Elysium. The game starts with Dust waking up, almost no memory of his past, and no idea what is going on, aside from the fact a sword is talking to him, and a flying creature is mildly annoyed that he has the sword she was supposed to be guarding. From there, Dust begins a journey that will find you exploring towns, dungeons, windswept peaks, all to find out just what Dust is.

Dust himself is far from a silent protagonist, and throughout the journey Fidget is quick with the quip, often to Dust's confusion. Ahrah keeps quiet for the most part, only talking at rare times, usually to help explain game functions with Fidget. The 4th wall is often dented in An Elysian Tail. Overall, the voice acting is quite good, with Fidget sounding almost exactly like Bubbles from the Powerpuff girls, while the various towns folk give their lines with emotion fitting the scene. All of the voice acting feels right at home for an animated feature from the Don Bluth/Early Disney days. Also, to put everyone at ease, despite Fidget having a lot to say, she never speaks during combat or exploration. If she needs to let you know of a nearby chest or secret, it's done through a word bubble with symbols. There is no "Hey Listen!" in this game.

Throughout the game you'll meet quite the cast of characters, with many of them happy to hand out quests in good old RPG style. A few collect quests, a few hunt down and slay quests, as well as a strange quest involving sheep round out the game's completely optional side quests. The writing is quite good throughout the game, aside from a few dramatically cheesy bits near the end of the game. If you grew up on Disney's old stuff, you have an idea of the type of silliness that can crop up. Overall though, the game has a great balance of serious and comedy to help keep the story moving.

The Dust Storm

While the voice acting and music are great, it's the combat and movement in the game that most will be curious about. Very early on, you're shown Dust's moves consist of sword swipes via the X button, a dust storm move (seen above) on the Y button, and Fidget is able to help out by firing spells through the B button. In the first thirty minutes, you learn all of the combat moves Dust will know for the entire game. There are three or four combos, a parry, a dodge, and aside from Fidget learning some new types of magic later on in the game, those moves are all you have. Luckily, they are all you need. The game becomes about chaining moves together, stringing combos done through timing and reaction instead of rote memorization of long strings of inputs. Not once during the game did I mess up a combo because I forgot what I needed to do next. It's rare to see a game let you control a character so easily and fluidly. Dodges are done in a blink via the right analogue stick, or using right or left trigger. In no time at all you're able to whip around the battlefield dodging enemies, throwing spells, and driving up your combo meter to increase your experience bonuses.

That experience gained through all those nifty combos you pull off feeds nicely into the game's leveling system. On each new level up you can add to your melee damage, Fidget's magic damage, your defense, or your health. Past this, the game has both loot drops and a crafting system for making items based on blueprints. You'll find new sword augmentations next to Buffalo Burgers and Birthday Cakes for healing you back up when you're damaged. Most often, chests or enemies will give you blueprints to make instead of buy weapon/armor upgrades. It is in this crafting system you first start to see just how much Dust values your time.

You learn to parry, or you get stomped

Dust features one crafter, a traveling shopkeeper, and a stationary shop in the main town. All three of them share inventories though. Whenever you sell them a crafting material such as bone chips or iron fragments for the first time, the item is "cataloged" and all shops begin carrying as well as restocking the item on a regular basis. There is no need at all to grind for materials once you've found the material for the first time. Moreover, anytime you need to craft an upgrade, if you don't have the materials on you, it's a single button press to pull up the shop and buy the material, no matter where in the world you are. The game goes above and beyond to make sure your time isn't wasted on grinding when there's exploring and world saving to be done.

The respect for the player continues in the level design, with the game having a complete lack of the usual pitfalls of 2d platformer games. While there are spikes, lava, environmental hazards, and exploding enemies, none of them kill the player in a single hit. (Unless you have not leveled up your defense/health stat at all when you first encounter them). Each level's map also shows which screens/zones have treasures you haven't yet found, so the collectors among us have no need to fear about forgetting where they saw that chest when they didn't have a spare key. The game's secrets aren't limited to items, you'll find other special bonuses if you search high and low.

On the ice slick precipice of danger

The game world itself is separated into various areas on a large world map, each area split further into roughly equal sized map chunks. Save points are frequent, and a cheap item from the shopkeepers allows quick exit to the world map from any save point. The enemies themselves are a pretty mixed bunch. Soldiers, imps, demons, strange cave creatures, flying beasts, all try to stop your journey. Surprisingly, aside from one specific enemy, all of Dust and Fidget's attacks work equally well on every enemy in the game. Any enemy can be combo-ed, thrown, air slammed, juggled, and bounced, though some of them can bounce out of the way once you start a combo. Boss fights become more about using what you know best instead of having to learn a bullet hell pattern to win. It's hard to put into words how satisfying it is to piledrive a hover-jet while pillars of flame explode around the battlefield to finish off the jet's allies.

Even the deepest caves are filled with color

The screenshots really help to show just how beautiful Dust: An Elysian Tail is. However, they don't go nearly far enough in showing how amazing the animation is. Every inch of the game has something going on. Ice caves have crystals glittering, caves have glowing moss or flowing rivers, and the woods have bunnies hopping around without a care in the world. Characters in town check the ground or their clothes at random times, and chat scenes are done with full animation of everyone who's talking. Fidget has quite a few animations and oddly charming moves she uses in conversations to help bring a bit of levity.

Combat is incredibly well animated, and not once during my entire play-through did the frame rate dip. No matter how many enemies were being juggled by Fidget's magic missiles, or how many of them I air-stormed through, the frame rate stayed steady, and the animations themselves were a joy to watch. The game features a few fully animated cut scenes as well done in a classical animation style, reminiscent of the Dragon's Lair and the Secret of NIMH. I haven't stopped to just watch a game's characters and backgrounds do their animations since Bastion, but in Dust, there were several places I stopped to just look around and see what little touches were hidden in the background. Along with the art, special note should be made of Dust's soundtrack. Each zone has a few tunes, all quite fitting to the theme of the zone, and all of them worked to help make each zone memorable. Several of the tunes seem to take elements from older games, a few notes of old Nintendo style heard hear and there help give the game a feeling of nostalgia in several places.

To close: Dust: An Elysian Tail is a rare find. Amazing game play, perfectly smooth animation, wonderful characters, a great smattering of collectibles, and a respect for the player's time all come together to make one of the best games I've played this year.


Score: 5 out of 5 CoGs


James says, "From start to end, I was having a blast while marveling at all the little details hidden in the game. Secrets and artistic touches abound for anyone who's ever enjoyed exploring a 2d game. All of the joys of 2d platformer/fighters, none of the annoyances. I have no reservations in saying: buy this game."

[torrefaction]

Great review Lekon....You've probably convinced me to snag this...and I had no idea it even existed.

[Exodus]

And this is why this website is awesome!

[Panthera]

I've been looking forward to this one. Great to hear it turned out so well!

[JayVe]

I've been waiting for this one for years, and now I no longer have a 360.

Hoping for a Steam release soon.

[menage]

Cool. Will buy this Wednesday!

Now i want to play Astal for some stupid reason.

[Lekon]

Originally Posted by menage

Cool. Will buy this Wednesday!

Now i want to play Astal for some stupid reason.

I had never heard of Astal, but after looking it up, now I want to play it too.

Panthera, I've been following it since it won Dream Build Play, and I too am glad it turned out so well.

[PathMaster]

The game looks gorgeous.

[menage]

Originally Posted by Lekon

I had never heard of Astal, but after looking it up, now I want to play it too.

Panthera, I've been following it since it won Dream Build Play, and I too am glad it turned out so well.

Astal was awesome at the time. Gameplay wise it was kinda simple but hotdamn those graphics rocked in the Saturn Days. It made me shell out for the machine. Almost a shame Sony kinda killed 2D at the time

[Psykoboy2]

About damn time!

[Spigot]

Damn, that is one gorgeous looking game. I'll grab it for the art alone.

[Lekon]

Originally Posted by Psykoboy2

About damn time!

And completely worth the wait.

[Darkmatter]

So is this an Xbox exclusive? A timed exclusive? Whats the deal?

[Superman's Dead]

Oh man this looks good.

[Lekon]

Originally Posted by Darkmatter

So is this an Xbox exclusive? A timed exclusive? Whats the deal?

At the moment, Xbox exclusive. The developer has said he can't talk about ports at all for the time being. That's not to say it won't happen, just don't expect it anytime in the very near future.

[Deadend]

I am so hyped for this. Even more so now.
Jesus.
I'm going to go take some sleeping pills so this game will be out when I wake up.

[menage]

Bought it, and yes it's really good. Buckets of coolness.

[Zecon]

Bought it this morning and only got a few hours with it, but It's really good.
Even some of the dialogue can be humorous at times.

[Lekon]

Woot! Glad everyone's enjoying it. Can't wait until you start finding the secrets I didn't want to spoil in the review.

And yes, some of the writing is awesome. Fidget's got some great lines.

[maharahaj]

So, you're saying that it's good? I had no idea this game existed, but will definitely pick it up. Thanks for the solid review.