This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
The art style is this games biggest selling point. It's an absolutely gorgeous love letter to the gonzo "horror and heavy metal" aesthetics of infamous 90's titles like Blood and of course Doom. These are the games I grew up on and seeing that kind of art style given a beautiful and bloody new shine was my favorite part of this game. The soundtrack, too, is a delicious blend of thrash, death, and symphonic elements that never sounds like a generic "heavy metal soundtrack" pulled from a C-List Kevin MacLeod. The composer clearly has a love or at least a genuine appreciation for the genre that shines through the various stage themes and it obviously fits the aesthetic perfectly. As a metalhead who cut his teeth on Sepultura and Cannibal Corpse: I approve.
Unfortunately, the rest of the game is a tire fire of lazy design and palpable contempt for the player..
Slain has a reputation for being hard but that's not entirely accurate. It's more like this game is pointedly goes out of it's way to be unfair. The term "artificial difficulty" gets bandied about when it comes to the Souls series but this game is the true exemplar. The protagonist, Bathoryn (an obvious nod to the legendary black metal outfit Bathory), is played up as some sort of unstoppable killing machine who mows down the legions of Hell with his massive greatsword. In reality, he's a bearded ponce with a LARPing boffer who can't take more than a few hits before exploding into a galaxy of gore. And you will get hit. A lot. And you will die. A lot. Don't ever expect to make it the next checkpoint in a given stage without 3/4th of your health gone, your mana bar empty, and your patience in roughly the same sorry state. This is trial and error gameplay done wrong. This is Super Meatboy with corpse paint and none of the addictive play or, you know, fun.
Dark Souls does trial and error correctly by allowing the player to approach a particular area or enemy in a multitude of fashions. You can "git gud" as the proverbial basement dwellers would say and master the minutiae of the fighting mechanics. Or you can cheese black knights in a doorway and peg them with sorcery, arrows, or pyromancies and then move on with your life. Not so with Slain. Slain provides zero room for any strategy aside pure attrition or dumb luck. While you crumple in a few hits, enemies walk-through or shake-off your attacks like the bad ass harbingers of death you're supposed to be. Most have move sets that are unpredictable or require precise timing that is all but impossible to achieve when surrounded by the utter bedlam of environmental hazards, respawning flying enemies, and moving platforms that is Slain's MO.
Case in point: the final encounter in the Blood Tower prior to the boss room is with a rather strong hellhound enemy. The strategy is like every other projectile firing mob in the game: reflect the shots until you get a stun animation and then power-strike them. Which would only commit the sin of boredom if the timing of each projectile was slightly predictable and closing the gap between you and the hellhound didn't lead to either a fireball to the face or it firing up its invulnerable screen-length charging attack. Did I mention you are to do this while surrounded by hazards that sporadically shoot columns of flame that the hellhound is really good at juggling you into since Slain's devs decided that the 6 foot bounce-back from being hit was their favorite part of Castlevania? Oh, and that proceeding boss fight? It's just a pincer attack by two of these god damn things in a similar hazard-ridden environment.
This is not difficulty. It's a middle finger to the player and their intelligence. It's a try-hard dev literally cramming all of the annoying **** he can remember from his days of bingeing on early Castlevania and Ghosts & Goblins and calling it "old school gaming" without really understanding what made those classics fun and addictive. Slain just keeps the screen busy and your character as meek and ineffectual as a basket of kittens in the hopes that you believe this game is a loving throwback to games of yore. It commits the biggest sin you can in metal: it's a poser.
Tl;dr Don't let the pretty visuals and bravado from insecure nerds fool you. This game sucks. Save your money and just Google the art and soundtrack if your curious.… Expand
Slain: Back from HellYour Score0 out of 10User Score
