Batora: Lost Haven from Publisher Team 17 and Developer Stormind Games is an epic adventure that spans multiple planets and packs a tonne of features into one package. The game has a very eye-catching palette and looks fantastic on paper but should you pick it up?
Sun and Moon
Players will take on the role of Avril, a teenager that gets sucked into a tale of epic proportions that also happens to involve saving the galaxy. Right at the start of the game you and your pal Mila will enter the underground subway in London but Avril falls into a pit and gets knocked out. Upon regaining consciousness, she ends up being approached by 2 ancient Gods. The Sun and the Moon lend their powers to Avril and make her their champion of prophecy – A hero that’s tasked with saving everyone and everything from certain doom. No pressure huh?
The story of Batora: Lost Haven is based on a book and while the game itself has a colourful cast of characters, the voice acting can be a bit hit-and-miss throughout. The Earth’s population has seemingly been cut down to a third and the world seems to be in apocalyptic ruins but Avril still seems to remain rather upbeat about things. There’s also a tendency for some jokes to be thrown around and it just doesn’t seem like it fits in with the tone of the galaxy being in danger but this may be more of a personal gripe than anything else. The story of the game is pretty decent though with the intro sequence hooking you and making you want to play more to find out just what the heck is going on.
Batora:Lost Haven is presented as a top-down action-adventure hack and slasher with diverse puzzles and some light RPG elements. Players will control Avril and move her with the left analog stick while attacking with the right. This effectively makes the game a twin-stick action title but you can also attack using the face buttons on a controller. If you’re playing with a mouse and keyboard, the game plays like a traditional top-down action RPG but we opted to use a controller in our playthrough.
Controlling Avril was fine throughout the game but there are numerous sections in Batora: Lost Haven where the zoomed-in camera view and the environment are not conducive to enjoyable battles. It feels a bit claustrophobic at times but thankfully the game isn’t exactly all that punishing when it comes to defeating foes. Players will be able to hack and slash their way through enemies quite easily here.
Empowered Forms
Since Avril has the powers of both the Sun and Moon, she effectively can switch between an empowered physical form that wields a sword and an empowered mental form that uses ranged magic. This can be done with the press of a button and Batora: Lost Haven makes extensive use of this throughout the game. Players will have to solve puzzles using both forms and both forms are also tied to a sort of, morality system in the game. “Conquerer” or “Defender” as the game calls it plays directly into your choices and these will affect your rune augmentations later in the game. Unfortunately, the whole karma and morality system in the game is rather lacklustre and since enemies are barely challenging in the first place, it feels like the runes aren’t even necessary really.
Batora: Lost Haven is an enjoyable game but the inconsistent writing, brisk pace of going through different areas and the very linear gameplay feels like a letdown. Each of the areas in the game is only around for a little while and you can’t really backtrack and explore them some more despite these areas looking quite visually appealing. A lot of the story is also hidden behind codex entries and players will have to actively go and read these if they want the full experience.
Given the game’s hack and slashy combat and the fact that it does tend to get repetitive quite quickly, it’s probably a good thing that Batora: Lost Haven is a rather short game coming in at only around 8 hours long. Swapping between your Sun and Moon powers is great though and being able to do this on the fly and not really be penalized for it was definitely the right choice. Some enemies also take more damage to either your physical attacks or your mental ranged attacks and these are well-telegraphed to the player with colour coding and damage numbers.
The gameplay loop involves the formula of discovering a new area, speaking to NPCs, taking on some quests and then repeating this process throughout while fighting off lots of enemies and making some mild karmic decisions which influence your play style. It’s quite standard when boiled down to this but there’s nothing really wrong with that since it works for the game.
The soundtrack of Batora: Lost Haven is quite atmospheric with music that suits it quite well. Each planet you visit has its own theme and the orchestral music used in the game’s soundtrack is a perfect match for it. The voice acting, as previously mentioned above though is a bit hit-and-miss due to the inconsistent tone of the writing and Avril’s responses.
Graphically, Batora: Lost Haven looks great with a very saturated and vibrant colour palette. Some areas might look a bit lacking when zoomed in but if you zoom out a bit, there are a lot of details to soak in from the environment around you. Each planet looks unique and has its own aesthetic which features alien races, flora and fauna, with the fauna being the enemies that you fight in most cases. The game looks good with some great character designs in it.
Overall, Batora: Lost Haven is a solid action RPG hack and slasher. It might be linear and does get a bit repetitive but the short length helps alleviate this issue. Unfortunately though, for some inexplicable reason, the regional pricing on Steam seems to be quite hefty in some regions. Batora: Lost Haven feels like an indie title that’s definitely worth playing through. Just don’t expect a Triple-A here. It’s quite clearly a game that’s a little bit unpolished but is still enjoyable.
Batora: Lost Haven is available now at the PlayStation Store and Microsoft Store for £19.99/24.99 USD/€24.99, and will be available to purchase on Steam at the same price.
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X and Series S
Developers: Stormind Games, Stormind S.R.L.
Publishers: Team17, Team17 Digital Limited
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