Dust: An Elysian Tail PC Review

By – Mike Bezek

I find myself progressively entranced about the simplicity and artistic freedom of the past. Games were largely the collective effort of a small group of people, sometimes no more than two or three, of whom were not faced with an overbearing publisher breathing down their necks. Unbridled creativity flowed, unforgettable characters were born, and market analysts did not stifle developers ability to take chances. Dust: An Elysian tale borrows a page from this wild-west gaming era mentality while being an exhibition of how 2D games can be indecipherable from movie quality animation. Anthropomorphic characters, quirky dialogue, and fourth-wall breaking tendencies spit in the face of modern gaming conventions, and Dust: An Elysian Tale does it beautifully.

The most interesting factoid about Dust is that it was developed largely by one person, Dean Dodrill. While this may seem to be commonplace in the indie market, there are a very few titles of this creative magnitude that have the blood, sweat and tears of one individual which makes its gears turn. Watching Dust in action is much akin to viewing a Miyazaki film and then informing the audience that its totality was the work of one person – it just doesn’t process. Leaning back in their chairs with a sense of shock, some would posit that a reputable animation team like Arc System Works must have dabbled in the gameplay animation due to its incredible fluidity, but it simply is not the case. Dodrill wrote, programmed and animated this labor of love over the course of four years, and it shows in nearly every aspect of the game. It would be criminal to not admire and appreciate how seamlessly the action meshes together, almost allowing a brief moment to forget you are in control of the chaos.

The world of Dust is brought to life by incredibly deep and colorful backgrounds that seem to span for miles. Whether it be the boundless forests or the bio-luminescent cavern system deep below, the attention to detail breathes life into these impressive landscapes. The feeling of playing an interactive iteration of a high profile animated series is inescapable; the large cast of characters that compose the supporting cast gives the impression that Dust has a long history of previous installments. While the game has its fair share of endearing characters, the relationship between Dust and his unwitting companion, Fidget, is where most of the player-character connection takes place. Reminding the audience that the game doesn’t take itself overly serious, Fidget will make constant nudges towards the player with fourth-wall breaking comedy and self-referential humor.

Story sequences play out in an aside, with fully animated sequences resembling that of Guild Wars 2. It was rather shocking to see the sheer variety of voice actors involved with this game as every bit of written dialogue is fully voiced. However, some of the performances do tend to get a bit awkward with some very forced emotion and melodrama, but overall, the core voicework is rather solid. The only true complaint is that Dust himself seems to be a direct descendant of William Shatner – when he speaks, he places irregular emphasis on certain words and randomly gives pause mid-sentence.

Playing a 2D breakneck pace hack and slash on the PC is quite the novel experience, its something usually reserved for consoles. With that said, Dust is best played with an gamepad/XBOX 360 controller as it was originally developed as an XBLA title. While using a keyboard is manageable, the whirlwind of movements that fling you around the screen are navigated much more easily with an analog stick.

When you get down to the nitty gritty, gameplay in Dust is very simplistic, but the frantic combat is highly polished. Your range of attacks is rather limited, but the variety of ways you can dispatch enemies is what prevents the experience from becoming shallow. A heavy emphasis on juggling your enemies is what keeps the action flowing and interesting – the feeling of breaking the 1000-hit combo is rather satisfying. The only way to achieve these insane numbers is to utilize Fidget and Dust’s sword, Ahrah, to create a whirlwind of destruction which supplements your melee attacks. Throughout the game, Fidget will acquire different projectile techniques in which Dust catalyzes with Ahrah to create massive storms that span the screen, sucking up any enemy unlucky enough to get caught in it. Utilizing this technique to string massive combos together is what makes the combat shine.  It is a visual maelstrom that never fails to add an appropriate level of freneticism to the battlefield.  If your carpal tunnel was acting up before, just wait until you start button mashing away to new levels of wrist burning pain. At least the suffering is worth the bonus Exp.

Once you have become adept at controlling the chaos, slicing through dozens of enemies in a torrent of fire and lightning is very rewarding. The game does a good job at throttling players from becoming too flamboyant by mixing up the enemies just enough to keep combat fresh, even with Dust’s basic capabilities. Once you have grown tired of beating up massive giants, you will be facing off with spontaneously combusting zombies and necromancers capable of summoning entire armies. These encounters are to reinforce your commitment to mastering the parrying, dodging, and whirlwind techniques to perfection. Staying on your toes is key and false moves will sometimes cost you quite a bit of progression.

Serving as a way to slightly slow the pace the game, light RPG elements provide depth and replayability. The game is governed by typical statistics like HP, Attack, and Defense, and the only way to properly progress is collecting massive amounts of supplies to craft new equipment which supplement your organic leveling of stats. The first few hours of the game are rather simple, monsters are literal material-filled pinatas while not actually dealing much damage to elicit a need to craft better equipment. At first, I was considering turning up the difficulty to due my almost effortless path of destruction, but Dust apparently puts the stop to unprepared players at the halfway mark with enemies capable of taking them out with one shot. The sudden, steep increase of the difficulty curve made the experience much more enjoyable and gave much more incentive to don new armor.

Finding the appropriate materials for the newest equipment is relatively painless, and more than likely, you already possess the needed items to craft an item from a newly obtained blueprint.  What makes the process almost too easy is that you can purchase missing materials from within your inventory, and what’s more, simply selling the item to a vendor makes it available for purchase at any time. While this system seems to be in place for the sake of streamlining, it ultimately dooms crafting to be forgettable. The game would have been better served to force the player to seek out missing materials instead of allowing instant purchase as powerful armor requires negligible amounts of work to obtain.

Softening the blow from the rather simple crafting system are the hidden challenge areas and optional quests that will push your skills and lust for adventure a bit farther. I had a good deal of fun dodging flames and testing my twitch abilities in the pursuit of a high score in various Challenge Caves. While the side quests boil down to a variety of fetching various items from around the world, it still adds value to the experience by fleshing out the denizens of each village just a bit more. Believe me, there are plenty of quest givers who will attempt to divulge their life story more than a few times.

Is It Worth Your Money?

I think we have already reached a conclusion here, and you know what my answer is. Dust: An Elysian Tale is a game that speaks to not only to older gamers, but invites new ones to indulge in the virtues that make 2D gaming a very relevant platform. But what’s more, Dust is something to appreciate and respect as it serves up an experience does not beget its near solitary development. If anything, it is a reminder of how much fun can be packed into such a simple package. For $15.00, not only is it a stellar example of a PC port done right, its a literal steal as double the price point would still leave me satisfied for months to come.