Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn Review – Soulslike With Training Wheels

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn is an action RPG developed by A44 Games, the developer of Ashen. Taking cues from the ever-popular souls-like mechanics, the game sets out to be an approachable interpretation of said genre. Despite some technical and design dents in its armor, Flintlock sets out and achieves exactly what it is meant to do. 

Developer & Publisher // A44 Games & Kepler Interactive

Platforms // PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Game Pass

MSRP & Release Date // $39.99, July 18th, 2024

Reviewed On // Xbox Series X

A Concise and Well-Paced Story in Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn

The world of Kian houses a massive gate at a location known as Dawn that protects the world from hell known as the Great Below. The Coalition is charged with protecting the gate and making sure Kian doesn’t fall to fearsome Gods and monstrosities. Nor Vanek, the character you play as, is a Sapper in the Coalition, a demolition expert tasked with breaching walls in trenches deep into enemy territories. The Coalition is tasked with protecting the gate that keeps the dead and evil gods from invading the mortal realm. However, the gate is breached, and all hell breaks loose, literally.

During her journey, Nor meets a peculiar foxlike creature named Enki. He decides to tag along and help Nor defeat the escaped gods and close the fate of Dawn once again. However, there are some predictable twists and turns that occur on the way. Luckily, the story doesn’t try to be more than it appears, and fortunately doesn’t it overstay its welcome. 

Most of the support characters are quite one-dimensional such as Baz who is Nor’s monotone father figure and also a Coalition Sapper as well. Whereas Nor and Enki have slight semblances of an expanded emotional spectrum. But for the most part, Nor remains within her angry and self-tortured self, while Enki remains aloof and mysterious for most of the game. 

The game’s pacing was actually well done. I didn’t feel any particular part of the narrative or playthrough got bogged down. On the contrary, the last act and zone clearly wanted to wrap things up quickly, which was surprising because of how evenly paced the first two acts were. But other than that, Flintlock exhibited some solid pacing.  

An Approachable Soulslike

Like numerous other titles before it, Flintlock wears its influences proudly on its sleeves. In the review guide, the developers spoke passionately about their love of the soulslike games. Their vision was to make an approachable take on the popular genre. For the most part, A44 Games were on point, though with so many systems in place.

Instead of bonfires/sites of grace, Flintlock has lodestones and campsites. The latter also houses your companions who can upgrade your weapons and gear. Best of all, you can upgrade your skills any time you’re not in combat, which is a nice quality-of-life option. 

While not completely open-world, Flintlock features 3 separate open-world zones for players to explore. They are quite massive and are filled with different side quests and hamlets to liberate. Though not mandatory, side activities are critical to help make the game easier. Liberating hamlets gives players additional health flasks, while side quests will net you with awesome gear like armor pieces or weapons. I received the fire axe from one of the side quests and it quickly became my go-to as I enjoyed the burn status effect. While interacting with Inaya monuments will increase your maximum health.

Instead of the common shortcuts found in soulslike games, Nor can open up rifts that she can teleport to. These provide quick access shortcuts for getting around and are quite fun to use. There’s even a quite enjoyable mini-game in Flintlock called Sebo. The game has an attack and defend phase where you have to form a triangle to win the round. I usually don’t bother with mini-games, but I couldn’t help but play Sebo whenever I had the chance. 

During my 25-hour playthrough, the pacing felt right and I was never bogged down or bored. The first 2 zones never overstayed their welcome. Though the third and final area, it was clear the game was rushing you to its conclusion rather hastily. This isn’t particularly surprising as it is common in games to hurry up and conclude its final moments. 

Soulslike Combat with Training Wheels

On the surface, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn appears to have a simple setup for its combat. There’s a melee button and you can hold it down for heavy attacks, which you strangely unlock via the skill trees.

Players can also block, dodge, and parry attacks. There is no stamina to contend with and sprinting can result in different types of attacks as well. Overall, the melee combat feels responsive with some decent feedback, but there is a clear gulf when it comes to other titles in the soulslike world.  

Nor has 2 firearms she can use, her primary weapon and her pistol. Primary weapons come in the form of muskets, handheld mortars, and shotgun-like weapons. They have to be manually reloaded and incorporate an active reload mini-game to speed up the process. Muskets are useful if you want to get in a free attack before aggro-ing enemies. Though later on in the game, I didn’t use it as much. More on that below. 

Pistols are very important in the game. They can interrupt any enemy attack, including unblockable attacks. This makes combat far more manageable and accessible compared to other soulslike titles. Though you can’t spam the pistol, shots are limited and every shot is replenished after landing 4 melee hits. 

So Many Systems, Yet Overpower is Guaranteed

Then there’s the corruption magic that Enki can unleash that acts like a posture meter from games like Sekiro. Once the corruption bar is filled, enemies become vulnerable to a critical hit. There are also ultimate attacks known as Withering Attacks that players can unleash once they fill the bar by using Enki’s corruption magic. Players can equip different types of Withering attacks such as health regen, poison, and bleed status effects, and are usually Area of effect based.

There are even grenades that include ones with different status effects, like burn and poison. However, I rarely used them as I became so powerful in the end. Each weapon has different rarity tiers and players can upgrade them with crafting material at their camp sites. I stuck with a flaming axe and default pistol as they were consistent and complimented my status effect build that became quite overpowered mid-way through the second zone. 

Because of the multitude of systems in the combat of Flintlock, it can be overwhelming at first. However, the critical attack-cancelling nature of the pistol makes combat far cheesier than I expected. I would go into a routine of mashing the Enki magic button, using the pistol to interrupt incoming attacks, and dealing a few hits to deal with all types of threats, including bosses. Though some enemies might attempt to throw off this pattern, like armored and ranged enemies, they all fell to Nor’s axe with little effort involved. It was the equivalent of a soulslike with training wheels. 

Serviceable Graphics

When it comes to the graphics of Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn, they look decent overall. The use of HDR worked well as the colors were vibrant and popped, even in my more natural color setup. Character models are competently detailed, though it was clear most of the attention and effort went into Nor and Enki. In contrast to the zombie-like enemies that just looked generic.

Environments can look phenomenal and captivating at times, especially in the second zone, Wanderer’s Rest. In the desert, and clearly Middle Eastern-influenced area, there were massive carvings of different figures littered across its narrow valleys that just looked spectacular.    

Character Design

Flintlock is a mixed bag when it comes to character designs. The Coalition characters are clearly inspired by Napoleonic fashion sense and quite frankly are unique and distinguishable. In contrast, most of the other humanoid characters look quite generic from typical high fantasy-inspired settings. 

Creatures include giant spiders and scorpion-like things. However, the most interesting character designs are the merchants in the coffee houses and the bosses. The former have multiple arms and carry a mask as it is their face. While the bosses look ripped straight from legends from Mesopotamia with their sharp mask motif ever-present. 

Animations

When it comes to the animation department in Flintlock, it’s competent considering its price tag. Most combat animations were on point. There are even specific sprint-related animations like axe strikes or firing your pistol that are common in soulslike titles. Traveling in the rifts is quite satisfying both from a visual and feel perspective. 

However, don’t expect Elden Ring-level of animation fluidity. Though when Nor sprints herself, it looks quite comical, similar to Syphon Filter from back in the day. Moreover, the falling animation is susceptible to locking up, which can be hilarious at times. Luckily, these animation hiccups weren’t enough to break immersion or spoil any story moments.

Flintlock does feature ledge climbing as well. However, the lack of feedback and guidance when climbing ledges makes it a frustrating ordeal. I cannot recall how many times I fell off a ledge that I thought Nor would climb.  

Overall Consistent Performance in Flintlock

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn provides players with the now staple quality and performance mode options. I opted for the latter, as I prefer a smooth 60FPS gameplay experience. For the most part, the frames held up with little dips here and there. Most of the dips occurred when multiple enemies were present on the screen while casting Enki’s corruption magic. 

There were some noticeable texture pop-ins, especially in faces. But when you equipped Nor with a helmet, those rough textures weren’t an issue anymore. 

Terrible Audio Design in Flintlock

Voice-over work was competent though largely one-dimensional. Nor Vanek was portrayed by Olive Gray – Dr. Miranda Keys from the Halo TV show. She did a decent enough job and showed a slightly larger emotional spectrum compared to the other cast. While Enki was voiced by Allister Petride from Star Wars: Rogue One, and also did a commendable job, when he was audible.

One of the strangest audio bugs I encountered in Flintlock was the jarring disparity in voice-over volume. Nor always sounded loud and crisp, while other characters were barely audible — especially Enki, who is such an important character and accompanies Nor throughout her journey.

Enki’s volume is essentially relegated to near background noise. Naturally, this severely impacts key moments that are supposed to develop Nor and Enki’s relationship. The voice-over volume disparity was stark. Especially in the last act where large segments had no voice-overs at all. However, I had to make sure to test this issue properly and the bug still reared its ugly head across both headphones and TV speakers. A44 Games did note the visual and audio issues in the review guide and it’s likely they will be addressed at or soon after launch.

Soundtrack

As for the soundtrack in Flintlock, the game mainly consisted of orchestral pieces. No doubt the tracks complemented the set pieces well. Though don’t expect to be humming any of the tracks any time soon. 

Accessibility Options

When it comes to accessibility options in Flintlock, most of the options focused on subtitles and in-game hints. There were no colorblindness or any motor-related accessibility options to note. In contrast, the controller would rumble when Nor is beside a rift console, which is a nice touch. 

Final Thoughts on Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn is a competent soulslike game. For its modest price point, there’s a lot of enjoyment to be had. However, some technical hiccups and game design choices put a few dents on its armor. Despite that, A44 Games achieved its objective of creating an approachable soulslike that doesn’t overstay its welcome.  

Note – A key was provided for the purpose of this review.

Final Score: 7.6 / 10