I love Metroid-style exploration games! And apparently I’m not the only one, as there are tons of them flooding the market right now, especially in the indie scene. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if the count was up to several per month now. In fact, I just recently took a look at a wonderful one called Cathedral less than two weeks ago! They’re that frequent now! And now here we are again with Dark Devotion from The Arcade Crew and Hibernian Workshop!
Dark Devotion, as you may have inferred from the title, is a religion-oriented title and it’s, well, rather dark. You play a female Templar Knight and that alone had me chafing a bit. There were no female Templars and the order explicitly forbade women from joining. There were two exceptions to that rule in history, but I’m not at all certain they were combatants and that’s a fairly obscure historical point. Essentially, they didn’t exist and it was certainly an odd choice to have a female protagonist in that particular role.
Regardless, you’ve been cast down into some sort of stygian abyss of a dungeon where Templars eventually end up and you have to fight your way through, suffering eternally and resurrecting back in the Filthblood Sanctuary every time you perish. This felt like some sort of eternal purgatory and I’m not entirely clear if it’s a commentary on the questionable ethics of the actual Templars or just a vehicle for gameplay. Much like Dead Cells, every time you die, you’re lose everything you were carrying. Conveniently, though, you are able to unlock weapons that the blacksmith can then forge anew each cycle and equip you with. As you progress, more weapons and items are added to the forge and you can start out better equipped each time, allowing you to plunge deeper into the depths of the dungeon system.
Dark Devotion has some unique mechanics, unlike almost every other game of this style I’ve ever played. First off, you can’t jump. Not at all. I didn’t think it would be a big deal, but honestly, it’s a game changer. It’s incredibly hard to adapt to not being able to jump and the initial trepidation you feel running off of the first drop and knowing you can’t get back up is pretty intense. Wherever you go, you’re trapped until you can find another way out because you generally can’t go back the way you came. My first 10 or 20 deaths were mostly entirely from trying to jump when I couldn’t and not adapting to the dodge mechanic, which is quite clever. Yes, I said first 10 or 20 deaths. You will die a lot in Dark Devotion. Pretty much all the time, as any enemy can slaughter you easily, especially in the early parts of the game before you build up some gear.
You start out with two health and two armor. It seems ok, but even the first enemies can kill you in about 3 hits, and the only way to avoid them is timing and dodging. You can use the A button to dodge on the Switch controller in whichever direction you’re facing, or you can dodge left with the L button and dodge right with the R button, which I found much more difficult considering ZL is your secondary weapon and ZR is your primary one. Dodging makes an enemy’s attack miss and you can dodge right through them. You’ll have to learn this fast, as you won’t even survive to the first boss without it. Shields work, but only to a point and they’re hard to block with. You can block, but it’s an expert level skill in a game that starts off on expert level to begin with, so I don’t recommend it.
Someone’s fired an arrow? Dodge it. Tripped a trap? Dodge it. Giant enemies are swinging huge axes at you? Dodge right through them. It’s extremely effective, but hard to get used to. Eventually, you’ll get new gear that has more armor and more health and things won’t seem as dire, but you always have to be on guard in Dark Devotion. Mis-time a swing of your sword just once and you’re dead. Dodge the wrong direction and you’ve fallen into a pit of spikes. Dead. Walk down a dark hallway and get impaled by a giant swinging axe. Dead. The game is utterly unforgiving. Thankfully, it’s not a roguelike or no one would even have a chance of surviving it. And don’t forget all the spinning traps and enemies that drop down from the ceiling to attack you or have backhand attacks as you dodge past them. You’ll learn fast not to rush or take chances in this one because you’ll be dead every single time.
That’s not to say that Dark Devotion is impossible. It’s just very challenging and requires persistence. It’s definitely got more than a hint of Demon’s Souls dwelling within it, and much like the Souls series, you also collect energy from dead enemies and use it to bolster your character’s stats and abilities. Killing bosses adds to those abilities too, as do Runes that you find strewn throughout the labyrinth. All of those things are permanent buffs and help you squeak by the next time you try to survive a particularly tough area.
Dark Devotion is also really, really dark. I had to crank the brightness up to around 9 just to play it on the Switch portably. It’s a dim game and that’s kind of a shame because it’s gorgeous. The pixel art is fantastic, the character designs are excellent, and the backgrounds are compelling. It’s a simply beautiful game that you can barely see without wasting an inventory slot on a torch and you’re rarely going to want to do that. Inventory is at a premium in this one, with only four slots for items and you can’t pick up more without using something you have. Often, I found myself ditching attack items for healing and armor ones, even though I could have sorely used them. The same goes for weapons, as you can hold two sets of armaments, but a two-handed weapon precludes the use of a shield or magic tome in the off hand. You’ll definitely have to be choosy, as there is a vast array of weapons available and not everything with higher stats is better. Generally you’ll lose most of it too, and it seems like it’s fairly random what you’ll pick up that gets added to the forge’s inventory, so don’t get too attached to a particular weapon as you likely won’t be using it long.
Bosses are just as well-designed graphically as the rest of the game, looking suitably gruesome for a Templar purgatory, but they tend to be a lot less deadly than they appear and are often easy to beat within one or two tries. Several bosses I fought, I managed to beat on the first try and for a game that’s this hard, that almost felt like a mistake. On the other hand, just getting to them was so grueling that I needed the break anyway. The map is huge, convoluted, and spans multiple areas that link up all over. Most of the time, dying is the only way to return to the beginning and find a new area, but after a while, if you want to burn the inventory space, you get a magical warp stone that lets you return unscathed to Filthblood Sanctuary. It’s not that useful unless you go the wrong way though. Damn it would be nice to jump occasionally!
Aside from the easy bosses, the design across the board for Dark Devotion is solid and well-made. Even the music is suitably sombre and compelling. The game simply oozes atmosphere out of every pixellated pore and it’s a pure joy to play if you have the chops to face it down and some patience to get than hang of it. The game doesn’t hold your hand at all though, and you’re left to figure out what everything does pretty much entirely on your own. Talking to the denizens of Filthblood won’t get you far, but they’re occasionally helpful and after a while, you’ll get the feel for the game.
It’s hard not to love Dark Devotion, even as dark and twisted as it is, because it’s simply fun and the challenge is high but fair, a refreshing change from the dearth of easier games that seem to be coming out at every turn. It’s not as hard as a Souls title, but you’ll still be sweating in combat depending on what enemy subtypes you might encounter. At $20, it’s not cheap, but it’s not overpriced at all for the amount of content and gameplay you get and it’s well worth the cost. It might be a slow burn getting started, but you won’t regret entering the world of Dark Devotion!
This review was based on a digital copy of Dark Devotion provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. Dark Devotion is also available for PC and PS4. All screenshots are from actual gameplay. Templar history is one of the most fascinating eras of Western history and if you’re not familiar with it, you should definitely check it out! You can start by reading a bit more about the Poor-Fellow Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (also known as the Knights Templar) here. After that, the sky’s the limit as there are tons of historical research, conspiracy theories, and fiction about the Templars permeating our culture! Enjoy!