XEL

XEL is a top-down action RPG from Tiny Roar that wears its Legend of Zelda inspirations openly, setting you loose on a strange, fragmented world as Reid, a young woman who wakes up with no memory and a crashed ship behind her. The sci-fi framing is genuinely interesting at first - the world of XEL is built from debris pulled out of time, which gives the environmental design a pleasingly weird, patchwork quality. If you like the idea of a Hyrule assembled from salvage and held together by temporal anomalies, the premise has real pull. Combat is real-time and built around a sword, a shield, and gadgets you unlock as you progress. The time-manipulation tools are the headline feature: you can rewind objects and, later, interact with past versions of puzzle elements to open paths or trigger switches. On paper, this is exactly the kind of mechanic that should make dungeon exploration feel clever. In practice, the puzzles rarely push the concept far enough to feel satisfying, and the combat itself is serviceable but shallow. Enemy variety is limited, boss encounters are uneven, and the dodge timing window is the kind of thing you either make peace with early or resent for the entire runtime. The writing is where XEL loses me most. The amnesia hook is a well-worn RPG device that can absolutely work if the reveals pay off - think of how well Planescape uses it. Here, the character work stays surface-level, and the dialogue rarely gives Reid or her companions enough texture to make you genuinely invested in what happened before the crash. There are threads of something more ambitious underneath, but the game does not always have the budget or the script depth to pull them through. Side quests lean toward fetch-and-return structures that pad the runtime without adding much to the world. Technically, the game launched in a rough state that explains a significant chunk of those mixed reviews. Patching has addressed some of the worst issues, but performance hiccups and occasional quest-blocking bugs are still reported. The art direction is cheerful and the soundtrack does solid work establishing atmosphere, so the moment-to-moment experience is not unpleasant - it just rarely rises above competent. XEL is the kind of game that would appeal to players who have cleared every Zelda they can find and want something with a slightly different setting, and who are willing to extend patience to an indie production working above its weight class. If you need strong writing, build depth that evolves past hour ten, or a combat system with real mechanical richness, you will likely tap out before the credits. There is a game here worth finishing for the right person, but that person needs realistic expectations going in.

Monika · Scout Team

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