It’s interesting what time and a different mindset can do to your impression of a game. I played Dust: An Elysian Tail for the first time over a year ago, and I didn’t like it at all. I ended up filing the game under the “Shelved” category of my Steam library, which is where I put games that I’ve played but don’t particularly want to finish. Most games never make it back from that dreaded place. It was interesting, then, when I spoke with two separate people whose opinions I trust. Each of them said they quite enjoyed Dust, and I certainly thought it was visually appealing, so I dusted (hehe) it off and loaded it back up.

To be quite honest I’m having trouble remembering why I stopped playing in the first place, because I breezed through this latest playthrough of Dust: An Elysian Tail (AET) and thoroughly enjoyed it. I always was a huge fan of the visual style and animation of the game, and this time I was drawn right in by the story and atmosphere. It’s a beautiful game in every sense of the word. It’s not the best game, but it’s beautifully made.

For a 2D game, Dust has a great deal of visual depth. the foreground moves independent of the background, which combines with nice Depth-of-Field work to create an almost 3D effect. The motion animations and the way the air seems to bend around a fast moving weapon give a real substance to the setting. All this is the window dressing on an art style that is very artfully done and really makes it feel like you’re playing through a Japanese animation.

You play as Dust, a hero who suffers from everyone’s favourite plot-device/mental-disability, Amnesia! He is immediately joined by a talking sword and fairy-like creature who serve as spiritual guide and comedic relief respectively and off we go with all the minimum standards for a story. The writing really sells itself short with such a contrived opening, but things get much more interesting as we move along.

You’re thrust right into the action, where villages are being pillaged by monsters and a big boss is murdering villagers. Seems pretty black and white, but all along the way this seed of doubt is fed into every event that makes you think maybe the monsters aren’t all that bad, and maybe you’re not all that good. Add in the systematic genocide of an entire race of people, and things actually get very dark quickly.

Gameplay-wise Dust: AET is a hack’n’slash beat-em-up style game with definite MetroidVania elements. You build up your combo meter by stringing combinations of attacks together without getting hit. Things can definitely get pretty button-mashy, as I found that performing the same 2-3 combinations of abilities worked the best. I didn’t really notice any penalty for doing the same attacks over and over, so I didn’t bother changing it up much. You can equip gear that will improve your stats, but I found that most of my money was spent on healing items. It would have been nice if the crafting and gear system was a little deeper, but then again it’s not a long game.

The main story moves forward in a pretty linear way, but there’s a bunch of side quests to do. That’s great and all, but I didn’t do any of them. In fact, I think trying to do a bunch of them is what made me quit playing Dust the first time. Finding where to go and what to do in side quests is pretty annoying, and in terms of rewards you rarely get more than a pat on the back and a hearty thank you. In the realm of video game side quests, there are only two reasons I will want to 100% complete your game. Either a) The side quests are legitimately engaging and fun, with unique story and character development (Mass Effect) or b) the side quests give me meaningful rewards (Saints Row IV).

That’s the draw of Dust, the story. The combat is decent, but repetitive. The visuals are absolutely stunning, but that’s not enough to carry a game. The RPG elements are fine, but shallow. It’s the story that sets Dust apart, and the story is entirely contained within the main questline. Once I realized that and disregarded the side quests, I had a MUCH more enjoyable time. This is a lesson that needs to be learned by more game developers. More is not always better. Sometimes the focus should be on making less content but making sure that every ounce of available content is engaging and worthwhile. Dust does itself a disservice by having fetch quests. It’s better than that. It really is.