Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn

I came into Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn expecting Ashen with pistols and left impressed by how deliberately A44 chose to trim the Souls formula down to its enjoyable core rather than pad it out. Protagonist Nor Vanek is a Coalition sapper, part soldier, part demolitions expert, who accidentally cracks open the door to the Great Below and releases the old gods into the mortal world. Her unlikely partner is Enki, a fox-like deity with bird feet, monkey paws, and the charisma of someone who absolutely does not have your best interests at heart. The Kratos-and-Atreus dynamic that clearly inspired them is present throughout: these two bicker, grow, and earn their bond across the game's three semi-open regions. The writing isn't Disco Elysium-tier introspection, but the Nor-Enki relationship does genuine work, and the world's flintlock-fantasy aesthetic, colonial-era gunpowder technology crashing into dark gods and walking dead, is distinctive enough to hold attention even when the side quests don't. Combat is the real reason to show up. Nor carries an axe and a flintlock pistol, and the two are designed as a closed loop: axe kills refill your ammo, gun kills restore your armor bar. Filling that armor bar on an enemy lets you detonate a finisher that one-shots regular foes outright. Enki layers on top of this with a button-press command system, eventually letting you curse, stun, restrain, or poison multiple targets and imbue your melee strikes with his magic. There is also a Reputation multiplier that builds as you vary your attack chains, but the catch is you must manually bank the multiplier before taking a hit or it resets to zero. It is a small mechanical wrinkle that keeps you thinking even in routine encounters. Traversal gets a powder jump early on: essentially a double jump powered by a small explosion, which feeds cleanly into aerial dodges and platforming puzzles. Portal shortcuts replace the bonfire-adjacent shortcut design from other games in the genre, letting you cross whole zones in seconds once unlocked. Now for the honest part. Build variety is modest. The skill tree has some filler branches you will unlock on the way to the actually interesting nodes, and once you find a combo that clicks you are unlikely to deviate much. The parry windows drew criticism from multiple reviewers for feeling inconsistent, and enemy AI occasionally lapses into being oblivious in ways that undercut the tension the combat is otherwise building. Boss difficulty is uneven, some late encounters genuinely require you to rethink your approach, but the final boss is reportedly the easiest of the bunch, which is a pacing misstep that stings. The narrative, while pleasant, does not linger. Enki functions partly as an exposition delivery device, and several critics noted the story wraps up before fully exploring the world's most interesting threads. If you are coming in hoping for the kind of lore density that rewards three playthroughs, you will find comfortable depth rather than obsessive depth. The difficulty structure is one of Flintlock's quietly smart decisions. Three modes, Story, Normal, and Possessed, can be swapped at any time with no penalty, and Story mode even offers an optional infinite health toggle for players who want the world without the friction. That flexibility, combined with a campaign that runs roughly 15 to 20 hours at an unhurried pace, makes this genuinely approachable for players who have always bounced off the genre's harsher edges. Souls veterans on Normal will find it comfortable rather than challenging, so go straight to Possessed if you want the genre's signature tension. The game sits at a 7.1 critic average on Metacritic with mixed-to-positive user reception, which is an accurate temperature reading: this is a competent, enjoyable game that does not overreach, made by a studio of around 60 people finding their footing with a more ambitious structure than their debut. Monika, Scout Team