Dust: An Elysian Tail

(About 14 hours to see credits roll on Normal. Played on Switch in English.)

By now, I have seen credits roll on Dust An Elysian Tail twice. The first time was in November,2013 with the then 6 months old Steam port. This review is about the almost 6 years old Switch port and portion of it was played on the twelfth anniversary of this game’s Xbox 360 launch. This game still impresses after more than a decade worth of time.

The United States of Caline “Korea”

Falana is a land populated by sentient furry creatures. A lad known only as Dust woke up in the land’s wildness. He knew he got a mission to accomplish. Along with a talking sword and fairy like flying creature named Fidget, Dust has a fight to finish.

Dust the game tells an archetypical adventure story. Its lead being someone oh the moral high ground with means to enforce his will. Its setting and look took inspiration from ancient or otherwise Korea, from building, clothing and food items for healing, but the spirit here is Yankee through and through.

The majority of cast speaks English with American accent and is modeled after one type of caline or other. Now, you might want to say it’s due to casting, but I would point to the underground dwellers in the game speaking with the so-called Southern drag. There is only one place on this planet where people DOWN South speak like that isn’t there? And there is 2 rats with Irish accent and some fancy pants with French accent.

The game views warfare through a cartoonish lens, but at least not being gun-ho about it. Bosses in this game are victim-turned-menace by war, less-than-helpful anti-war methods, the guilt of war profiting and the one who starts it. Dust is a lad trying to do right things, and he needs to face all sorts of wrongs.

Hybrid

Dust An Elysian Tail is a side-scrolling action role playing game with some Metrovania. As soon as the second screen of the game, there is a place player cannot go until a move is unlocked. The usual set of slide, climb and double jump with the down face button is present here. In total the game’s combat is more vital than this platforming side dish.

Dust usually whacks with the left face button, a well-timed press of which would perform a parry. I do like this design given film fights’ parries look more like strikes than block. Up face button is for alternative whack, either grab and throw mid-air or combined with right face button’s Fidget spell to achieve some high comb count. Oh, there is a bomb guiding thing with holding up face button as well. Dodge is mapped to right stick or the 2 triggers. Where does Dust face is important since he can parry attacks coming at his face. The game does take levels seriously, as in player returning to once challenging places they can cut once threating hordes of enemies like a hot knife through butter.

This game being indie does cut out some bullshit yours truly despise in fully priced games. With limited voice-over, combatants focusing on fighting during combat is good. Then the game has no desire to pat things out with design like repeating bosses, though some mini-bosses do come back as regular enemies. The game allows fight or flight most of the time, though at the end of a screen, engaged in combat would prevent one from leaving. Though be warned, the final boss would pull 5 additional life bars out of his ass after the player grind his first one down, 2 fakes with 3 real ones in between.

Dust’s game world is not inter-connected like Super Metroid or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. There is an overworld then locations can be entered from one to two alternative entrances. Like the 1990s products that inspired it, the game has the usual set of forests, snow place and fire place. .And, in an attempt to be Epic Fantasy, there are giant statutes.

Those places are packed with secrets including treasure keys, treasure chests, challenge rooms and Friends. The 12 Friends in this game are usually cameo from other indie games like Braid, Bastion and so on plus 2 of the game’s 3 composers. Exploration is not exactly the focus not it does change things up a bit.

Being an RPG loaded with NPCs, this game has 21 side quests in total. From the usual fetch quest to one all about using Dust’s move set. Fetch quests here are not grindy, as one can sell materials in demand to a merchant, then said merchant would get enough of those and sell them to the player.

Not quite “one-man show”

Though “A Game by Dean Dodrill” is more accurate about this game than “A Hideo Kojima Game” applied to any Metal Gear Solid, Dust is far from the so-called one-dude game. For one thing, 41 voice cast members are listed in end credits, that is a bigger number than any of Supergiant’s outputs. For another, Patty Klepek did report on the game’s co-writing progress. Not to mention the 3 on sound side of things.

But Mr. Dodrill was still solely responsible for both the “video” and “game” parts of this video game, which is already more than student game and some indie debut had to outsource their art as early as possible. The end result here is rich and lame in the all the right places. The game balances its cartoon origin and epic aspiration well. It feels sprawling without feeling grindy. I can recall the moment I gave up on Witcher 3 Wild Hunt: I was controlling what’s his name with the swords in a fantasy setting with seething ambient in the background. I suddenly realized that this is basically Dust An Elysian Tail but just polygonal, more long-winded and grindy. How I hope “run time” nowadays can do better.