While I found Dark Envoy to be a bit of a drag at times, I could not dismiss the game outright and played through it more than I would have expected. It’s a top-down dungeon crawler that has been compared to Diablo and has you controlling a brother and sister duo as they search for ancient relics while staying neutral throughout the destruction of a global conflict. What otherwise could have been a fantastic title was held back because of poor execution in some areas.
Dark Envoy opens up with the story of Jaan, a world of fantastical races where the human race has arrived as refugees. Unable to adapt to the magical nature of this place on their own, humans developed mana-powered technology and built their own civilization on this alien world. Wary of the human race’s ambition, a coalition of other more ancient races called The League declares war on the human Empire.
The trope of ‘humans come to a fantasy world as aliens and come into conflict with the local races’ is one that I like to use a lot in my own stories, so I liked it even if it did feel a bit cliche. In Jaan, human technology has introduced firearms to sorcery, creating a sort of mage-punk aesthetic. However, the storytelling doesn’t really commit to this idea of ambitious human technology, because it’s revealed in the very first mission that an ancient and lost people had similar, if not more advanced technology already. This is shown off with a big scary mech that almost smashes our protagonists. If anything, the elves, shadow, and rock people of the League should have already had the technology they were so scared of the humans developing way before the human race even showed up.
Said protagonists who almost got squished in the first mission are Malakai and Kaela, a brother-sister duo who you get to fully customize. You can choose their class, starting gear, attributes, and appearance. The pair are the employees of a small archeology company run by their parents. They live in a city neutral in the Empire – League war, and the two often hunt for lost relics that either side of the conflict wishes to weaponize for their cause.
Who you side with is totally up to you, with several decisions available throughout the story that bane or benefit one of the sides. The game seems to kind of want you to make up your mind as to who is in the right in this conflict, as Malaki flat out asks in the beginning “if you were to fight which side would you be on?”
The dialogue present in the game is one huge roadblock keeping it from its full potential. Every sentence feels flat, almost as if a machine wrote it. I’m not sure if it’s a translation error, but there was an oddity to the way every sentence was structured that made it feel utterly wrong and alien to me. Not only that but the constant exposition of the world and its story is unnaturally spewed through our main character’s mouths, without any proper build-up or presentation.
Nothing is ever really learned by the protagonists and seems to only be presented for the benefit of the player in a sort of “got it? good, moving on” presentation. Too often our characters say “Wait, this is the thing I heard about” or “You’re talking bout this person I met in the past off screen” followed by a brief summarization of places, people, or concepts that sound like they came off a Wikipedia page about this world.
Conflict, when presented through dialogue and not outright fighting, is far too easily solved. One glaring example of this issue happens early when meeting your parents, who chastise you for doing something highly dangerous and irresponsible that they disapprove of, only to immediately say you actually made the right decision and they’re just happy you’re safe. Conversations with hostile factions, when you choose the ‘peace’ option instead of the ‘fight’ option (the only two you get to make) often go something along the lines of “Why should I trust you?” ‘This is why’ “Ok you’re right.”
Presented alongside the hard-to-read dialogue are hideously animated cutscenes that the game would be far better without. The animation is stiff and awkward, with lip-sync that is fine in some scenes and non-existent in others. The game opens with a wonderfully drawn comic-style cutscene, and the game would have been so much better off with just still portraits of the characters with dialogue written alongside than the horribly animated ‘cutscenes’ they went with instead.
Combat is where the game starts to take more of a step in the right direction. Comparing it to the Diablo series is the easiest way to describe it. You control your character from a top-down perspective and use abilities to kill foes. A unique standout is the ability to control multiple characters in real time, allowing you to take up to four characters into a dungeon with you. You can pause or slow down time at will to make controlling them easier, but you might not notice the difference between slowed and real-time because the attack animations are so jarringly slow.
The abilities are kind of a mixed bag, with some feeling incredibly fun to use and some feeling like they have no impact at all. Combat can take a while, as enemies have pretty large health bars and come in huge waves. Combat can also feel unrewarding, as the XP drop is negligible, making it feel like kind of a waste of time to track down and fight all the enemies in a level. For example, I was able to defeat 60 enemies at level two without getting halfway to level three. I ended up finishing one quest and was rewarded with enough XP to take me to the full level.
Crafting is fun, but not something I think everyone would enjoy. You can craft any item that merchants sell (granted that you have the recipe) with simple materials, and increase the rarity of the item with the push of a button. Crafting an item also creates two randomized perks that increase the item’s effectiveness. I kind of liked the gambling with trying to craft the perfect sword and found myself a bit addicted to seeing the many ways I could gear up my party. There are no class restrictions on gear types, so you can have a gun-wielding heavy-armor-wearing mage if your heart so desires.
Where the game really caught my attention was with the unique skill trees and classes, taking interesting design choices that separated their portrayal of mages and warriors from other fantasy games. For example, the caster class had a ton of self-shielding abilities, making for a battle mage who could effectively tank damage and dish it back out. Skill points, for the most part, went towards meaningful upgrades to existing skills or unique new ones. To use the wizard as another example, one early skill gives them a supercharged attack every few seconds, allowing them to make use of their spell power. The warrior class also had the ability to gain mana on attacks and increase attack speed when low on health, allowing them to spam-cast a self-shielding ability when things got tough.
The real addicting gameplay loop came from my desire to level up my characters and improve their attributes, with each one having a direct and impactful effect on different aspects of gameplay. If you wanted to dump all your points into spell power, for example, you could. This leads to a character that had little to no health but a 60% increase in the effectiveness of their spells. This is how I made a wizard tank that shielded his way out of any and all danger. It’s just too bad that quests were the only meaningful way to gain experience points.
The Final Word
Dark Envoy has interesting gameplay mechanics locked behind some of the worst presentations I’ve seen in a while. It felt like the team behind the game was missing a few core pieces to make something special; With some better writers, animators, and artists, this game could have been a new favorite. As it stands, however, it’s an okay game with a lot of hiccups you have to look past to enjoy it.
6
Try Hard Guides was provided with a PC review copy of this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! Dark Envoy is available on Steam and GoG.
