rogue spirit | Review – An interesting and stylish adventure to be revived

Is death really the end of everything? For the late prince of the Kingdom of Midra certainly not.

In villain spirit We dressed up as poor ghosts forced to wake up from his not forever rest to face the terrible evil that has afflicted his land: without a physical body is the hero of the adventure forced to take possession of the corpses of the enemies to wage a long and grueling struggle to rid the world of chaos.

This is the premise of villain spiritnew Action-adventure with stealth mechanics and rogue-lite gameplay developed by Kids With Sticks and published by 505 games.

Set in feudal Japan, with a wide variety of Scenarios that remember in every way this little miracle of Kena: Bridge of Spirits (which you can find on Amazon at a reduced price), villain spirits is a fun ghostly adventure designed to test the skills of the player, who must often and willingly, and according to the renegade mechanics, find that he must do so repeat whole levels to continue with the story.

play at villain spirits we explored ten scenariosencountered a variety of enemies, all different from each other, and learned a long set of skills that allowed us to do so achieve the goal with great satisfaction.

In short, the adventure of 505 Games has put our skills and patience to the test without however never stop having fun. And in the review we talk about it in a little more detail.

action and attitude

Before the advent of chaos Midra was the classic green and thriving land of ancient feudal Japandotted with many small colorful villages, with wooden houses, flowering trees, small temples and majestic statues of deities.

Now, evil reigns supreme: The world is darker and filled with fearsome enemies. For this reason, the kingdom’s ancient keepers have decided to awaken the late prince from his slumber: just like his ancestor, the nameless ruler will face a long line of dangers restore the balance between good and evil in his own kingdom.

The plot of the game is revealed very quickly and succinctly by the keeper at the beginning: the earthly manifestation of chaos is a powerful beingknown as the Demon King.

During the eternal war with humans, the demon decided to do it split his forces among four allies – terrifying monsters called Aspects, as well as real-world representations of people’s worst fears.

In order to defeat the Demon King once and for all, the Prince of Midra must do it urge him to refocus his essence into a single being. As? By defeating the four horsemen of the apocalypse and making the great enemy vulnerable again.

With a bit of history Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, villain spirit It presents itself to the players in a simple and effective way through the short (and often funny) dialogues between the guardians and the spirit of the prince, which often made us smile between one game and another.

Learn from others to save the world

How can a ghost save the world? The entire gameplay of villain spirit it is based on the spectrum capacity of Own the bodies of enemies and acquire the basic parameters (Health, Strength and Defense points) and mimic their fighting style.

Taking possession of the corpses of defeated enemies helps the prince ad learn new techniques in battle and regain valuable health points. However, this last ability depends on the spirit bar located in the upper left corner: during our journey we can collect spirit points by pressing the action button near some small temples.

At the same time we will be able to acquire some temporary skills breaking some stone tombstones on the way. The latter is ours as long as we “live” and is instead lost with each game over.

At the beginning of the game we will wake up together with our protagonist in the Forgotten Monastery, the last quiet, peaceful and safe place in Midra where we can train. buy permanent skills and other upgradesraise our pets and choose which body you want to face our enemies with.

Every time our hero is defeated, we will return to this place floating in space and time.

Here because villain spirits it’s a real challengevery roguelite style: after each game we have to start our journey from the beginning and start again from the first level.

However, every time we return to the Forgotten Monastery we can breathe a sigh of relief and improve our character by spending the coins found along the way. The latter will be included in some specials Chests visible only to the ghost version of our hero. During the journey we can also earn extra coins by accepting the challenges that the different levels offer or by solving some simple puzzles.

In battle, we can rely on the fighting style acquired by owning the bodies of the gods 18 enemies availableeach with unique abilities, weapons, and combat styles.

We’ll be able to catch some too familiaror rather small magical animals that will accompany us in our adventure and support us in the fight. We will too on the way Acquire new temporary skills and collect mines of different types.

Each fighter that we own offers us three different types of attacks. It will also be possible to dodge the attacks of enemies, always being careful not to consume them completely stamina bar top left. We will also encounter some elemental or stronger and difficult to defeat enemies, called “epic” by the game.

Once we return to the Forgotten Monastery, we can also set gods game modifiers able to give our character some very interesting special abilities and completely change the gameplay of the adventure. In short, from the point of view of diversity, which every now and then also offers some interesting ones Challenges with bosses with an intriguing and well-made designwe were very satisfied,

What happens when you successfully complete a level? The spirit of the prince will be able to rest recover health points thanks to a magic pond (but only if we accumulated enough Spirit Points along the way) and buy some permanent skills.

Defeating them will be a real challenge as well as a great satisfaction able to face the next levels with a little more good humor.

A stealth game, but not too much

During our adventure in villain spirit we can alternate stages of stealth gameplay embodies the spirit of the Prince of Midra, more action phases, in which we’ll use the enemies’ bodies and skills to defeat the threats present in the levels. All this at the push of a button.

Paradoxically, The game’s stealth stages are the fastest ever: By embodying the spirit of the Prince of Midra, we can move very quickly and use some very interesting skills. For example, we’ll be able to locate some ghost boxes and follow a glowing thread that will take us straight to the portal at the end of the level.

Also embody the ghost Enemies will not be able to detect usunless we enter their field of view by staying there for more than a few seconds.

So let’s forget the game modes à la metal gears and continue secretly with ours super fast ghost to the next portal.

An oriental fairy tale for lovers of challenges

villain spirit tells us all the beauty of the Orient with a great variety of settings typical of feudal Japan Anime style graphics Inspired by Studio Ghibli, with a vibrant palette of styles The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wildand a really impactful soundtrack.

It was a real pleasure to open the game menu and listen to the calm and peaceful music while hearing the much more rhythmic and faster tones of the battles They helped keep our spirits up in the toughest challenges.

Aside from that, the PS5 version that we have reviewed offers very fast loading and which completely eliminate any kind of waiting time between one game over and the other.

Notice how it’s managed loresince it is possible to find overview sheets in the menus: It was nice between one run and the other, Stop to read Legends of the World of Midraget to know the guardians and enemies in depth, learn very important game terms to play better.

villain spirit And available for PS5, PC and Xbox Series X|S from March 7, 2023. The game is available in many languages ​​including the Italian.

Verified Version: PS5