Dust: An Elysian Tail

I'm a weird guy who likes really fucking hard platformer games. Games like Maximo, Crash Bandicoot 2 on 100 percent completion, Another World, Megaman, Tomb Raider, Castlevania, the list goes on. Dust: An Elysian Tail is a clash of all these great games that just happens to have furry characters.

Except, like the others, this game is not what you’d expect. For starters, this game is designed to be played on harder difficulty settings, if that gives you any idea of its appeal. This brings on more focus to light RPG elements, being inventory management and attribute advancement, while the rest relying solely on your skill. Combined with some platformy metroidvania exploration, sidequests, puzzles and learnable techniques, it incorporates more depth to the experience than the simple act of slaughtering enemies.

The combat itself is very much simple to grasp, yet complex. You have one moveset and in reality you only use a few buttons, but every move can be varied and followed up by something else that has purpose in some way or another in battle. The balance in game is well tuned to fight simple button mashing for high combos, implementing character fatigue for powerful move and magic usage, while changing the enemy types to encourage different approaches to combat. The difference here is that enemies do high amounts of damage on harder difficulty levels which really brings out the best in this game and forces you to fight logically, yet with style.

Dust also has his companion Fidget who can cast spells that you combine with your attacks, allowing you to deal ridiculous combos and juggle your opponents. Dust can parry, although this move is usually useful for bigger enemies since you can’t juggle them, and it’s the only way to kill them. Dust’s other notable ability includes grappling and throwing, on ground and mid air. This is not only a great way to attack other enemies and finish one off, but any air throw to the ground is followed by a bounce after performing, allowing you to attack right after. These small things are what keep the entire moveset viable, no matter what move you use. Let’s not also forget that Dust can dodge-dash left or right to avoid attacks and other environmental dangers.

The main truth though is that MOST of your time will be spent fighting and platforming, and you do pull off a lot of it. If you aren’t running around then you are in cutscene. Depending on how much you like this game, this can either get incredibly repetitious or extremely laborious when the save points and stores are sometimes spread just too far apart. This also comes back to revisiting areas or wanting to leave one – you can use save spots to leave, but you are limited to “Teleport stones.” When you want to return, you can only access the beginning or ending of the map and will have to fight your way all the way back to where you can now access or need to continue.

There are also some other technical errors and inconsistencies with the game design. Some moments you can choose what to say or do related to the plot, many other times you can not. Some side quests reward no experience on completion. The Skill Distribution system caps how far you can level certain skills based how caught up the other ones are. There is a reason other RPG games do not do this, and can be severely limiting on how you want to manage your character. This may prove as a spoiler, but only near the end are there great animated cutscenes. I can understand that the development schedule and budget of the maker could of course not allow him to make more, especially during his crunch time (He had three months or so to speed up progress to meet launch date), but as a finished title they seem incongruent with the rest of the game. They’re totally awesome, don’t get me wrong, but I bet for a lot of people the game could use more of these to hold interest.

The story, voice acting and presentation seem innocent and simplistic enough at first, but only as a prerequisite of pacing. Being a fantasy game, Dust doesn’t rely on drugs, blood and guns to tell a mature, dark story that you can get emotionally invested into, but keeps the situations realistic based on the circumstances. War seems pretty cliché these days in video games, but Dust treats it as a serious issue, showing the terrible widespread effects on people who aren’t even actually involved. As things get worse for the main heroes, the voice acting gets to shine, showing real concern, anger, sadness and so on appropriate to the situation, and the writing really reflects this, especially for the character Fidget. When a character dies, you feel the impact.

If all of this sounds too damn serious to you, then don’t fret. Dust is as much of a game about humor as it is story, tossing in tons of references to other games and fourth wall breaking jokes that are quite clever and well placed, but not oversaturated. Character interaction between Dust and Fidget work better than it should for other games of this nature, one particular scene highlighting this during a sequence where you have to make a doll lookalike of Fidget. This is personality that games just don’t have anymore, and for it to even work given the character’s depth and likable assets is a testament that outreaches its quality as a game product.

So really when all is said and done, Dust: An Elysian Tail is a great Xbox Live game with some small imperfections. It’s also great looking, but from what I can tell it’s not for everyone. For those who can get over the look though, I highly recommend this game.

Edit: There's one last thing I forgot to mention. The music and sound design are fucking amazing, often empowering at times. Also, Alexander Brandon worked on some of the music. Need I say more?