Metropolis: Lux Obscura Review for Switch

This City is rotten to the core.  It is a city where money, drugs, and corrupt politicians rule.  In a stormy night, you get released from jail and your story begins.

In Metropolis: Lux Obscura, we take on the role of John Lockhart, an ex convict that gets released after doing his time.  Is he looking for revenge? Is he looking for answers? A second chance? Redemption? These are questions that you can find answers for on your own.

Lux Obscura tells the tale of Lockhart in a noir comic book-style.  The game uses no colors but black and white, except some color to highlight things to be more eye catching like blood, neon lights. and nipples.  The story is told in a non-linear way, meaning that you can choose what to do, and that gives you certain liberty on how to approach it.  You can either get information or get straight into a fight (which will happen often). 

Now here is where Lux Obscura gets more interesting, since fights are presented in a “Match Three” style.  The objective is simple: match three or more icons to dish damage to your opponent.  This will depend on the turns the opponent has to fight back.  Sometimes this is more than three.  Other times it is just one, so it’s important that you deal as much damage as possible during your turn, since most of the time your opponent has twice your health.  You have Punch, Chained Punch, Boot, Taser, and a Green Bottle (I think it’s pepper spray–the game doesn’t explain anything to you) to deal damage.  There are first aid kits to restore health and Rage to raise your attack power. There are also Police Badge chips that if you match three or more, you receive damage, so its not only matching three beneficial chips for you, but also taking special care to minimize the risk of the negative ones. At first, the damage you do is low, for example a three chip punch attack only takes four points of health.  Luckily for you, after each fight, you can upgrade your abilities, like raising the strength of your punches by one level, so instead of fighting with a bare knuckle, you use a broken bottle (so hardcore).  You can upgrade all the way to a knife, but not only there are abilities that raise the strength of your attacks, there are also some that raise your health.  There are also others that raise your critical hits, one that can turn the police chips to rage, one that can make your opponent lose a turn, and so on.  While the story is captivating, the fighting is more fun. Unfortunately, so far is not possible to have all available skills at a time so you have to think carefully which ones to take.  So far, the best combo that I found is raising the punch power all the way to knife and having the enemy turn skip one to level two.  It helped me breeze through some of the harder fights (three against one, for example).

The art style is simply gorgeous.  Each character is well detailed, and the voice acting is top notch.  There are some funny moments like when you encounter Elvis the thief, and some not for children moments.  Speaking of which, I am genuinely surprised that the game did not suffer from censorship.  You can see breasts and nipples in all its glory and splendor.  It’s not like is imperative to have the game go into the lengths of hentai, but if it was censored, some of the charm and dark tone would be lost.  This is not a game about love and roses.  It is a game about what happens in a city where anything goes and  violence and sex are part of their lifestyle.

Bottom Line: Metropolis: Lux Obscura is a interesting merge of non-linear storytelling with match three gameplay.  It contains four different endings based on your choices.  This is something to look forward to, while unraveling the whole story.  The price is just right, and in my opinion, I’m glad that we are getting more adult like games in the Nintendo Switch.