Falling flat on a hack-and-slash RPG game must feel terrible; unfortunately, this is the case for The Awakener: Forgotten Oath.
Challenging games are suddenly on the rise of gamers who wish to challenge themselves. Picking up games that have spikes in difficulty is hard, but there is one type of game they always find themselves playing that is deemed as “Souls-like”. If you haven’t heard the term before, no worries; it is a new way of saying hard hack-and-slash games where you encounter different types of enemies and must defeat them with your move sets, perks, and weapons. The general theme of souls-like is always about medieval modes and mystical creatures, as we cannot have something that is in the future, apparently.
The name Souls-like derives from From Software’s popular series, Dark Souls. Despite Demon Souls, their first take on the genre, being revolutionary, Dark Souls made the game even more polished than we know today. There were spinoffs of the series, such as Sekiro and PlayStation-exclusive Bloodborne. Recently, the latest spinoff from From Software, Elden Ring, has stolen the spotlight and is considered the best game of yesteryear. With the popularity being ever so high, other developers wanted to jump on the bandwagon with their take on the Souls-like genre.
The latest one that came out from the craze was Lies of P, which scored a middling “alright”. We had The Awakener: Forgotten Oath on our list next, and I wish it were as polished as Lies of P or any other previous Souls-like game we currently have. The Awakener: Forgotten Oath does seem like a game you’d find yourself thoroughly enjoying, but unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good. Let me tell you first that the game is not what you think it is.
While Souls-like is what I have been comparing to, only the gameplay side of things usually matches the genre. The overall fighting style matches the ones you’d find in action RPGs, where you use certain attacks to deal with different types of damage and have a dedicated part for special attacks. Combos are neat to tie together, and the various attack types you can gather during the gameplay are at least unique. However, the lack of types usually ends up being repetitive.
Once you start The Awakener: Forgotten Oath, the lore behind the fight you are dealing with is gone. As much as I would love to dive deep into the story, the gameplay makes you forget who and why you are fighting for. You could just assume that it has to do with an evil entity trying to break the serenity of the world order, and you need to overthrow the villain’s plans. It will not be easy, though; as with any other action RPG, you need to work your way to the top to become stronger and defeat the evil.
The gameplay consists of your character defeating a set of enemies in a room; after dealing with enemies, you can choose where to go next. The option for choosing the path you take, along with randomly generated rooms thrown into it, started to make me believe The Awakener: Forgotten Oath was a mix of both Souls-like and Rogue-like. The hub, which you always spawn in, has tools to make your character stronger each run. But you have actually to gather some required items for it.
These range from money to soul spheres to diamonds, which allow you to spend on certain abilities. For better sustainability, for example, you have to spend your hard-earned diamonds on new skills to have a higher health pool or carry more health potions. While money and diamonds are easy to come by during your runs, soul spheres are rare. Unfortunately, some good upgrades are hidden behind the soul spheres, making you grind for more and more, leading to even more unwanted repetitive gameplay.
Each currency unlocks a different skill, and you can try out your new skills on the main hub by fighting against a training dummy, which is a good way to grasp the mechanics. Speaking of mechanics, I am saddened to say it is copied and pasted from any other Dark Souls or Souls-like game currently on the market. You got your usual jump, attack, special attack, roll, defend, parry, etc. Parries do allow you to counter-attack, and you can build decks that help to roll to activate the counter-attack, too, which is nice.
The main hub of The Awakener: Forgotten Oath allows you to go through three different worlds with unique styles, but conquering all would take a long time as you have to mandatorily go through at least 30 rooms before conquering one. Each level ending with zero has a boss fight that will test your dodging and attacking skills. However, you might experience some jank in boss fights because they are either not coded well or have a secret phase with no clear indication that you will fight the boss twice or thrice.
Weapons, on the other hand, are hard to come by. I haven’t come across a new one during my playthrough, but there is an equipment page that can change the sword you are wielding. The first option you get is a bit dull and does less damage, but keeping the combos gives you consistent damage toward your enemies; you just need to watch out for their attacking patterns from time to time.
Each enemy in The Awakener: Forgotten Oath has their way of dealing damage. Some of them focus on long-range damage dealing, like bowmen, and some are rouges, which happen to strike a good punch and remove a good chunk of your health. As you keep making better choices on paths and upgrade your warrior in the best deck possible, the first few levels become a breeze to go through.
After defeating a certain room in The Awakener: Forgotten Oath, you come across three different paths to choose from. These range from time trials, in which you have to kill all enemies in a certain time, to mini-boss rooms, regular rooms with normal enemies, sanctuaries to heal you back to safety, or vendor rooms where you can buy goods with your coins.
You might think some rooms sound useless, but before choosing your path, the game clearly indicates what you can earn by clearing the enemies through, which leads to choosing the best path to benefit your plans. For instance, one room can give some amount of soul spheres, but another room might have a rare drop because it has a mini-boss to deal with.
As I stated earlier, each level ending with zero is a boss level that you have to defeat in order to continue your journey. Boss fights are sometimes even and occasionally rough to go through, as you need to be prepared to expect the worst. The controls aren’t awful to handle per se, but some bosses feel straight up not well-thought-out. Not to mention the difficulty spike in the consecutive phases they go through.
Like any other game, you can make out their patterns and act accordingly, but The Awakener: Forgotten Oath gives fewer and fewer opportunities for the player to strike or let them watch their resources dwindle in a matter of seconds. Of course, you need to train yourself in certain ways to overcome these issues, yet it feels unfair to go through most of the fights you come across due to dumb AI or randomly generated paths.
What caught my attention the most was how unbearable some translations were. The company behind The Awakener: Forgotten Oath is Chinese, so it is reasonable to understand why English isn’t as polished, but there were mistranslations and problems with some words. Sitting down and trying to understand what exactly one card does while trying to read the oddly translated paragraph can sometimes be hard to understand, but I can say at least they have tried it.
Visually, The Awakener: Forgotten Oath provided an average showcase despite working with the glorious-looking Unreal Engine. There are some games that showcased an unforgettable feast with the newest Unreal Engine out there, and there is this title, which opted to keep players indoors with little to no detail surrounding players.
Don’t get me started on the music; they had a minute loop going in the background, and you could pinpoint the exact second when the loop would restart. What makes it worse is that the music does not play a huge role, except for the loop part, because that’s where it gets audibly loud before returning to a generic tune.
The lack of achievements and an empty page in your library with no feedback make The Awakener: Forgotten Oath look like a high schooler’s first project for Steam. Although the developers are new in the business, they could take more and more references and apply their unique takes on the genre instead of going similar to what we already know.
I understand that getting the genre dead right is hard, but if you are inexperienced or a new company, maybe taking a different route would be a better option instead of trying to compete with what we consider unbeatable games, those being Souls-like games, of course. In short, an attempt was made.
The lack of polish and structure made The Awakener: Forgotten Oath a mediocre experience. I wouldn’t say it wasn’t terrible, and there were moments where I thought it could work a treat if the developer thought it well instead of maybe going to a quick cash grab off the market with people wanting to dive into Soul-like more and more. I suggest keeping away from The Awakener: Forgotten Oath until it gets some updates and maybe a DLC to make it a worthwhile experience.
