Another Time, Another Place – Angeline Era Review (PC)

I was never huge on bump combat.

You know bump combat? Yeah I know you Ys-heads know about bump combat—a gameplay system predicated on the simple act of walking into enemies to deal damage to them—but if I asked the average gamer if they could tell me what bump combat is, they’d probably have absolutely zero idea what I’m talking about.

I was never huge on bump combat.

This is in part because bump combat never really caught on the same way the traditional action RPG format of button based interactions has. It’s probably best known within the Ys series, and RPG progenitors Tower of Druaga and Hydlide. It’s easy to understand why: gaming has sort of inherently leaned towards a more mechanical approach that tries to allow the player as much interactivity as is humanly possible over time. It’s hard to sell a player who’s used to shooting out sword beams whenever they want on the idea of just walking into guys as thrilling gameplay. Compounding matters is the marriage of more intensive action based games into a dilution of the RPG aspect, and a bolstering of more complex player expression. Ys 1 has Dark Fact ping ponging around an arena as Adol flails about trying to just get some hits in, but Ys 8 has ultimate moves, perfect parries, and witch time from Bayonetta, which is, uh, different, to say the least.

Yet there is beauty in the simplicity of bump combat, and Angeline Era is a brave enough game to say “hey, what if things really were as simple as just guiding a guy into different things?”, and I’ve found myself now completely understanding the appeal of the bump.

Every level has a beautiful name attached to it, I love thinking about BugDog.

Angeline Era is a game from Analgesic Productions, developers perhaps best known for their surrealist 3D action series Anodyne, and this is most certainly a work following the same design sensibilities. You play as Tets, a man who has boarded a ship to the mysterious country of Era after being beckoned there by an Angel. Era is filled to the brim not only with various Angels (supposed to have fallen from a biblical heaven), but also all matter of Fae creatures, creating an interesting blend of both Christian and Celtic folklore (with a dash of Buddhism as the game progresses). On arrival, Tets quickly meets an Angel named Arkas, who beseeches him to find a slew of “Bicones”, objects that can be used to reactivate the grand ship that the Angels have fallen to Earth in, and which can supposedly change the world forever.

For the first 75% of Angeline Era, the format is pretty simple. You travel around a world map, searching for the entrances to various short levels that reward you with items for leveling up, and eventually find your way to more linearly designed areas with a boss and a bicone. You find these entrances through an “investigation” button, which can be used on suspicious sections of the world map (the middle of a crop clearing, the foot of a mountain, etc) to access a short first person minigame where you navigate your way through various hazards to properly enter a level. This is a charmingly novel way to gamify what would otherwise be a pretty cookie cutter experience, and it has just enough variety to avoid staleness.

More interestingly though, you can use the investigation button in the midst of the levels proper, uncovering hidden items in suspect locations, obscured areas, or even cute little asides where the camera switches angles to show Tets just chilling out. The investigation button quickly becomes the tool that defines the depth of Angeline Era’s gameplay. Though it’s required at times for puzzles, you can mostly get by on any level just by bumping your way through various enemies until you get to the end. If you investigate thoroughly, though, you may find not only easier ways of engaging with enemies from different locations, but entirely alternate ways of exploration. It can become tedious trying to search on every single out of place looking tile you see, but being rewarded with cute out of bounds areas or useful consumable items usually makes up for it.

Other than that you’re pretty much doing one thing and one thing only in Angeline Era: Bumping.

Some sections of the game actually try to convey bumping as both a tool of conversation and a means of violence.

You bump into signs to read them, you bump into boxes to break them, you bump into people to talk to them and, of course, you bump into enemies to defeat them. You can get a few different weapons than just Tets’ default sword over the course of the game that change animations slightly, but fundamentally you are just bumping yourself into things until the situation is resolved. There are equipment items like Artifacts that allow for temporary buffs, and a gun that shoots enemies above you, but those are also primarily charged from bumping into things, so you better start liking the bump, buddy.

While normal enemies are fairly simplistic, at their most complex when having a specific directional weak point, timing your movement and positioning to avoid getting hit by rogue elements creates a surprisingly novel form of strategy that I really hadn’t experienced since dipping into those earlier Ys games years ago. Almost all action games require you to learn spacing and positioning, but in Angeline Era, the way you try to figure out exactly how and when to move can feel like playing a shoot ‘em up. You become fixated on your hit box, with dodging and maneuvering becoming your main focus since your damage is basically guaranteed. It makes for an interesting action experience, albeit one that treads into a lopsided difficulty at times.

One of the major contributing elements to this is the very strange health system that Angeline Era utilizes. There is no traditional healing from save points or some sort of consumable potion. On lower difficulties, there’s a chance that the enemies you face will drop healing orbs on death, but the healing from these is pitiful at best, and they don’t really factor in situations like one on one boss fights where you’ll take the most damage. For any difficulty above Normal, there is absolutely no healing outside of an optional purchasable artifact that lets you turn potential damage received into healing for a few seconds. In some ways, the novelty of this approach in the current climate of Dark Souls Estus Flask Forever is really interesting, but in practice, that’s one of your two artifact slots (which provide a bulk of the game’s interaction outside bumping) taken up for what’s usually a core mechanic.

You know, like the, like the,

You can supplement your health with the game’s food system, which allows you to go into one of your attempts at a level with a sizable chunk of bonus HP, but I found this system to be oddly tertiary for what feels like a major aspect of gameplay. Food can be bought from shops, and found across levels, but on lower difficulties it’s rare you’ll find it necessary unless you’re up against a particularly tricky boss, and on higher difficulties you can blow through them so fast it feels like there should be an easier way of getting them as to keep your flow going. I think this system would be functionally decent as a supplement, but I found myself a bit frustrated when I realized that your food can expire.

If you don’t use the food you find over the course of your journey fast enough, it will turn into compost you can use for planting flowers in various places throughout the world. I get the compost angle, it’s interesting to manage an in-game economy in this sort of way. However this meant that oftentimes when I had been holding onto my food not out of a hoarding tendency but as an intentional strategy, I found myself with hardly any to use. Trying to force the player to use their consumables is a challenging task for any RPG design, but this system ends up feeling unnecessary at best, and actively frustrating at its worst. It’s completely out of place in a game where everything else feels so mysterious, so considered.

Especially considered are the aforementioned Bicone sections of the game. While early stages involve a simple narrative conceit to fight a boss, later stages range from exploring mysterious mansions with disturbing diary entries ala survival horror games, or even deceptively elaborate minigames that feel like entirely different works unto themselves. I was especially floored by one Bicone that required me to navigate a puzzle filled mine with its own upgrade system and mechanics. You still bumped, of course, but bumping with a drill and getting locked into place as it does its job created a distinct vibe that helped mix up the format for a couple hours.

I think that’s the strongest point in favor of Angeline Era. Every time you get close to a point of fatigue, or belief that the game has shown its entire hand, it always comes back with a fun idea the developers had, or a novel concept that makes the whole experience feel like a labor of love. Much of Angeline can be seen as a callback to an Era (heyyyyy) of experimentation in games that was once commonplace, and while it doesn’t all hit, neither did those old moments where a JRPG dropped everything to make you do a weird-ass sequence like Chrono Cross’ painted world, or Final Fantasy VIII’s sudden asides to Laguna’s fumbling. In a world with Final Fantasy XVIs that are so afraid of breaking the flow for even a moment, it’s refreshing to play a game where the developers make it clear that this is their vision they’re sharing with you, not something you’re meant to have specific expectations and requirements for.

As the game gets more surreal, the detached mystique of its prose feels even more apropos.

Though if we’re talking about expectations, the back quarter of Angeline Era most certainly falls in line with what you might have expected from the creators of something like Anodyne. Things get surreal, intriguing, and suddenly much more linear than before. There’s a lot you can glean from the more blatantly obvious metaphors, as well as the deeper subtexts, and it feels like yet another feather in their bonnet for replicating the experience of playing something like *Xenogears *for the first time (as an aside, I’ve loved how the experience of Xenogears’ incompleteness has become an inspiration for storytellers across the medium; a failure transformed into an artform).

If I had to critique one thing about this pivot to linearity, it does lead me to believe that I perhaps might’ve enjoyed Angeline Era even more if it had a slightly different structure than as it stands. Exploring a world map and gradually uncovering secrets is really fun, and going through a bunch of levels just bumping about is assuredly engaging, but as the story starts narrowing its focus towards that linear ending it becomes hard to maintain an even flow as you are empowered by a more deliberately designed sequence, only to be dropped back into the free-form format of largely unrelated platforming escapades. Though I readily admit, I struggle to think of an alternative.

Perhaps putting more of those levels in specifically the post-game, or a more in your face narrative with less downtime that makes it so you’re not going off to god knows where all the time. It’s difficult to try and break up or add expectations onto a work that is so stalwartly itself, but the game does feel a bit lopsided as is, and it’s hard to imagine going through that format on higher difficulties as the game’s several options readily encourage.

Broadly though, Angeline Era is a beautiful work unto itself. It’s filled with enchantingly ephemeral music that really exemplifies that oddness and interrupted tranquility of its world. The towns are filled with the types of NPCs that games like Zelda II are remembered for, but with a further level of depth when needed. I adored how the entire game has the vibe of a 1990’s RPG that doesn’t give a single damn about existing in any sort of established or deliberate world. They’ll casually bring up the United States, or more contemporary concepts, even though you’ve been a little sword guy jumping around fantasy Europe the whole time. It’s like if they made a good version of the diabolically evil Working Designs translations of games like Alundra, where you can also talk to NPCs about Martin Luther.

Big fan of all the biblical dissections; felt a notch above the usual “Hey guys let’s kill god!”

If you have any interest or fondness for that bygone time where a game felt like it could maybe be something beyond itself, then Angeline Era will definitely be up your alley. It’s not perfect, but the most beautiful things in life rarely are, and it prioritizes blossoming that feeling inside you over making sure that it’s everything you expected it to be.

4 stars

Enchanting

Angeline Era is a beautifully unique game that echoes the design sensibilities of yesteryear in an entirely distinct way.

About Rose

Rose is the one who gets way too caught up in the sociological ramifications of all those Video Games. She will play literally anything, and especially wants you to play The House in Fata Morgana.

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