Developers from Friv2Online Studio together with THQ Nordic gave a second life to the project that started the post-apocalyptic role-playing shooter Remnant: From the Ashes. What it turned out to be - we tell you in Chronos: Before the Ashes review.
To begin with, it was Chronos that opened the portal to the fantasy worlds of Ashes. The friv game was actually released in 2016 and became an Oculus exclusive, where it was met with honor and ranked among the platform's best-selling games. It's fair to say that it didn't have many competitors at the time, and souls-like action in virtual reality is an exotic thing.
But it wasn't desperate, no. Friv2Online Studio themselves are very cool friv game-makers, which is eloquently evidenced not only by Darksiders III, but also by the successful launch of Remnant: From the Ashes. And already on the main playgrounds, pushing the opponents with butts, it escorted us to the tastefully decorated halls of suffering, and also allowed us to take our friends with us.
And then Chronos received a talking subtitle Before the Ashes and was relaunched on PC and consoles under the THQ publishing house. Probably, the developers counted on the Remnant audience, because "here you are not there", the competition for Chronos is too high. True, against the background of its cooperative counterpart, it looks like a raw prototype. After all, in the sequel and the mechanics were finalized and plunged into the story, while in Chronos the gameplay was sharpened for VR and the changes did not touch it.
In the very beginning we, sitting with other children on the floor, listen to the old woman-shaman that tells about the old world and people that once lived united in high towers, until the monsters from other worlds came. And these monsters were guided by a dragon, which we have to destroy. And that's what we're supposed to do.
After the introduction, our hero (or heroine) of 18 years of age finds himself in the territory of block 17, where he restores the power of the great stone and jumps into one of the first worlds. There the protagonist soon meets a suspicious tree, which is very interested in the success of our venture.
The plant grants us special powers to use magic stones and strongly recommends us to destroy three powerful guards before challenging the dragon himself. Thus begins our triumphant march through the worlds that many of us have already visited.
If you expect that the friv game will put the most ferocious minions on you, every careless step into the unknown will threaten you with death, and before the fight with bosses you will have to persistently pump your character and sharpen your armor - I will disappoint you. There is nothing like that in Chronos.
It can even be attributed to souls-like games very conditionally. Stones in Chronos do not restore health and do not revive creatures on the level, equipment is reduced to the choice of weapons, of active items only hearts, no shooting or throwing equipment is provided. Still, it is realistic to pass the friv game with minimum deaths even on medium difficulty level.
In general, a distinctive feature of the project is represented by the aging system. With each death the hero becomes a year older and while he is young strength and dexterity prevail, but closer to old age the main characteristics get penalized and all that remains for the elderly warrior is his wisdom, that is knowledge in the field of magical arts.
However, this is not at all the sorcery I was hoping for after learning about this feature. All magic in the friv game is reduced to imposing a temporary effect on weapons. For example, enchanting it with fire, as a result of which the character fights faster and hurts more. And before you can use the skill, it still needs to be properly charged on the carcasses of opponents.
If the prospect of turning into an elderly battlemage stresses you out, there is a mitigating circumstance - the battles in Chronos are not difficult at all. Even the very first midboss from Remnant will give an impressive head start to most of the strongest monsters here. The reasons for this are hidden in the mechanics of combat - exclusively melee.
The hero is always equipped with a one-handed weapon and shield, and his main characteristics are strength and dexterity, where the first is responsible for the quality of blocking and damage of weapons tied to strength, and the second - affects the skill of evasion and weapons tied to dexterity.
With each level, the character is awarded characterization points, which can also be allocated to health points or magic power. The amount of stamina is always the same and is used only for sprinting and shield block. There are special perks that are unlocked at a certain age. The first bonus is given when the hero reaches the age of 20.
So, the combat system is extremely simple. There is a normal attack, power attack and charged power attack. There is a parry followed by a counterattack, the agile ones have a perfect evasion instead - there is no difference. From not included in the textbooks: a few simple combos and a lunge after a jerk, rebound or lunge, that's basically it.
Most of the even larger opponents are surprisingly open to stunlocks, and since stamina is not wasted, many of them can simply be covered in an endless hail of blows. Bosses are a bit more difficult to deal with, they have phases and are hard to knock off balance, but after Remnant they seem almost like dummies for punching.
And it would seem that the limited number of hearts and the inability to heal at the stone will gradually deplete your meager health reserve and lead to inevitable death, but with each level gained, the character fully recovers, and he gets levels with enviable regularity.
And yet, traveling through the world of Chronos is very exciting. This is largely thanks to the work of Friv2Online Studio designers and artists, who in some incredible way manage to create such atmospheric worlds with simple tools.
The friv game has beautifully staged scenes, very strong soundtrack and non-standard architecture of the levels with the design, in which sometimes you can guess something close to the cultures of our antiquity mixed with something quite alien, and this is frightening.
The arenas here are much more modest than in Remnant, and the locations are riddled with labyrinths of corridors and passages, in which it is easy to get lost for lack of a map. The puzzles are simple and clear, and behind each locked door there can be hidden not another room with useful consumables, but a whole unexplored area with new enemies and secrets.
If we consider Chronos: Before the Ashes in isolation from the franchise, then we have almost classic role-playing action, assembled and drawn more than well. But the friv game lacks the combat variety to stand alone and its story presentation definitely suffers.
Unlike Remnant, where the files of old PCs and diary pages contained huge stories, and in dialogs, with all the informativeness, there was room for a mysterious dotted line, here there is one continuous understatement. But the view of what's going on will be different if you're familiar with the sequel's plot.
If you evaluate the friv game as an element of the franchise, it is very inferior to the second part and differs from it in everything, despite the similar scenery, setting and enemies. And it is made with a lot more assumptions, such as impossibility to change the control for gamepad, stubby Russian font, which is lost somewhere beyond the window borders, and very slow character.
Chronos: Before the Ashes is entertaining enough for a one-time trip on moderate difficulty, especially if you're hooked on Friv2Online Studio worlds. But you should not expect from it the level of a serious ARPG.