Decay of logo’s is an anime styled colourful adventure game designed to be challenging but not unfair much like dark souls, where you will want to take enemies on individually rather than allow them to group up as together they will be an overwhelming force especially at the beginning. You will go through the game with your creature companion who is supposed to level up as you progress and gain more affinity which will allow it to help out in battle as your bond grows closer however for me nothing seemed to happen despite doting on the creature looking after it and feeding it every lullaberry that grew in the kingdom, and it will also act as a secondary inventory to store your items as you progress through the game although it’s space is very limited too.
There is a couple of major hurdles to overcome for newcomers to the game, but as long as you’re aware and plan around these you can enjoy the game to the point where it opens up and allows you to explore and gather treasure without the constraints of your inventory and weapon’s degrading. The first major hurdle is the fact that every hit you take will reduce your stats and unless you’re aware of the location of rest points to recover your stats and where to find them you can end up in a situation where the challenge just ramps out of control to impossible levels, and the game doesn’t make it clear where you can rest because it teaches you that “shrines” are save points, which aren’t like bonfires you cannot rest at them and recover your lost stats, instead you need to keep an eye out for circular ringed area’s which you can sleep at and replenish your stats to full and the first one is at the bottom of the hill at the beginning once you know this life becomes a lot better and this can be easily missed and bypassed leaving you with a huge challenge to get through fighting across the upcoming area’s and challenges that will befall you, especially as a boss will stand between you and the main hamlet of fons central area.
Weapon storage and degrading is the next major haurdle to progressing, as initially you may wish to explore and find all the loot however you can only hold one big weapon, one small one and a spare inventory slot, and your creature can only hold one of each type too so whilst treasure may be abundant if you explore for it you will not have the room to store all of these items until 1/3rd of the way through the game, so you may wish to plan to just plow forward through the game until you’ve got the room to store things and only collect new weapons as yours degrades to unusable levels as you won’t get the ability to repair these until after the first boss either.
Having said all of this the game does do a good job of making you think you’ve explored everything and you’re coming towards the end and then you open up a whole new area, and then this will happen time after time and although it’s a fairly small map with 3 main area’s to explore they do often intertwine and loop around in unexpected ways and I like how the game does provide a little refreshment with these new area’s every time you think you’re coming towards the end.
It took me around 17 hours to get through the game although some bugs and problems with the creature on certain puzzles and others being a little problematic to navigate and me exploring everywhere and everything may have lengthened the game beyond what it might take to go through now that things have been fixed to a greater degree, though there do seem to be secrets I somehow missed like there’s supposed to be 3 spells you can gather to use but I only got the one you have to get from the first boss and all the loot chests were often disappointing for the backtracking and effort I went through to get them providing weapons which were all pretty much of the same levels and usefulness rather than being any specialised loot as the chests seem to randomly drop items rather than being set and special treasures to gather.
As long as you persist to the hamlet of fons the game opens up and becomes a lot more approachable at that point, and definitely knowing how to use the rest points which aren’t ever explained and are hidden away providing only a few opportunities to sleep here and there is definitely required to be able to enjoy the game too. I did also have an issue with the end credits where if you waited past them to see if there’s an after credits scene you aren’t provided with the option to then begin new game + but instead forced to liveout in the world without quests or anything to do after you’ve done it all (and the main plot characters also leave the hamlet) which I found unapproachable, and I tried going back to the end boss and it’s already defeated and no option there, and I ventured around the world to no avail, though bringing this up to the devs resulted in a very harsh response and immediate thread locking, claiming I should’ve just clicked in the end credits and not waiting and how stupid I was to not know that the very rare statue save points offer you the option to go to new game + (where at this point in the game I used the rest circles and ignored the statue savepoints because they were pointless at this stage as they don’t allow you to replenish your stats) but how was I to know this insider knowledge, just seemed a little harsh, but sure apparently there is the option but it’s not given to you on screen after the credits if you miss it or wait it out, and it’s not on the pause menu or anything userfriendly, instead you’ve got to treck a significant way from the hamlet you spawn back in to get to one of these statues to go select to new game + and you have to know this because the game will by no means lets you know this and how would anyone have any clue, sorry I asked I guess. Wow.
All in all the game and story are pretty good, there’s only 4 bosses including the final boss, though there are some miniboss challenges like all the brutes, the knights and some hidden creatures to go slay, the variety pool of enemies is pretty slim too and the area is quite condensed but as a colourful soulsesque game it’s pretty fun and it’s a very reasonable price for what you’re getting, just the hurdles to enjoyment and gameplay do have to be overcome and a lot of people might get frustrated by the lack of well storage and repair options til later and the very hidden healing points you have to venture into and discover yourself with no tutorialisation or hints towards such rest points. I feel that if these lessons are learnt then the game is good and a sequel as far fetched as it would be because of the plot changing and adapting things and being a lot bigger could be a very interesting title. I can see why they make the statue saves so it’s more challenging and prevents you from healing back up immediately upon death at certain points but the mixing of save points and rest points and just outright hiding the rest points makes it so difficult to approach without this knowledge as most people might get so weak they keep dying and just stop playing and the devs expect people to just know way too much (including that the statues let you go to new game + if you didn’t select it during the credits)
Get Decay Of Logos for yourself on steam now at https://store.steampowered.com/app/759570/Decay_of_Logos/?snr=1_1056_4__curator-tabs&curator_clanid=6860437