Dark Envoy is an upcoming tactical RPG developed by Event Horizon. Developers of Tower of Time. I am not much of a tactics player myself. But similar to the recently released, DioField Chronicles. This game functions more in line like a real-time strategy game you can take your time with. Where positioning, fixations on abilities, and environmental hazards are key to surviving each encounter. While story details are limited in the demo, here are some impressions of how the game plays. As well as whether or not you should give the demo a try.
War-Torn World and Charismatic Characters
At the beginning of Dark Envoy, you play as both Malakai and Kaela. Siblings who are adventuring through the war-torn land of Jäan. Finding themselves in the middle of a situation after being misled by a merchant to go to ruins where they find ancient foes being awoken that could pose a risk to their hometown.
There is not much to the story from what the demo had. But there is a key focus on the main characters and the choices they make during the story. Such as being able to promise a reward to the guards in front of the ruins and then lying to them about the reward once you return to the main city. Malakai and Kaela both have a natural sarcastic tone that keeps their spirits up during their adventures. I found myself smiling at some of their exchanges, especially when other characters joined the party. Like the captain of the guard for the main city, Benedict.
The game world takes a back seat so to speak. As to not get in the way of the enjoyable characters and their decent voice acting and many combat encounters in between.
The Tactical Combat of Dark Envoy
Before starting the RTS-like gameplay of Dark Envoy. You can customize how both Malakai and Kaela look. As well as choose from four different classes. You can choose from the Warrior, Ranger, Engineer, or Adept classes for both of them. You can start them off with weapons of your choosing as well. Like the warrior either having a sword and shield or a big hammer or dual axes. As well as the adept having magic bracelets for ranged attacks or the standard mage’s staff.
However, what you choose in the beginning does not restrict Malakai or Kaela from using different weapons. As I started Kaela as a shield and sword user and ended the demo with dual-wielding axes. As well as Malakai using a crossbow instead of bracelets. It’s a great touch to ensure you can always upgrade your weaponry to match the challenging combat encounters throughout instead of relying on luck.
You can use Malakai, Kaela, and even Benedict all at the same time and use abilities within the limits of each character’s mana pools against enemies littered throughout each level. Giant scorpions, gun-using bandits, shamans, and even robots are thrown into the mix of the game’s enemy variety. All with unique attack patterns and abilities to work your way around.
Positioning characters can be a challenge, however. As sometimes I would need to double-click the character I needed to move out of an area-of-effect attack to allow me to move them. Even outside of combat, if I did not press the party command button multiple times it would only move one or the other at a time, which became frustrating after a while.
Technical Performance and Closing Remarks
Dark Envoy looks very pretty outside of the cutscenes. The levels are very vibrant and characters, as well as enemies have fluid animation when either walking around or attacking. Cutscenes however are very awkward as characters use lifeless animation during them. It can feel a bit jarring, like the settings menu. They have multiple preset graphical quality settings you cannot alter if you select either one. But if you choose custom you can tweak everything to your heart’s content.
While this does not sound like a bad thing, usually games on PC allow you to customize settings even after choosing presets. There is also a weird option for tiered v-sync. Where it would lower the framerate depending on where you landed with the slider. However, you will need to use v-sync as without it there is some pretty bad screen tearing. I also noticed very slow times even with an NVME SSD. As well as a lack of controller support in the demo. To the demo’s credit, however, there were no graphical problems, framerate drops, or any crashes.
Suffice it to say, the demo for Dark Envoy is in a rough shape. I still recommend giving the demo for this game a try. The gameplay and have a lot of depth to them. Just be forewarned that there are issues that I hope are ironed out. So look out for the demo from the 6th to the 13th during Steam Next Fest and special thanks to the developers for letting us play Dark Envoy early!
Dark Envoy is slated to launch this year on Steam, GoG, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.