>> Children of Morta

Played with two players at Normal difficulty until Area 30 Boss on Switch

Children of Morta is an pixel art hack and slash dungeon crawler with rogue-lite elements that tells the story of the Bergsons family struggle and sacrifice against the corruption of the mountain god. While I appreciate not worrying about loot and builds, the overall execution felt flat specially in the long term which made me drop the game.

>> Thoughts

My biggest issue is that the game is mechanically shallow and flat. While the skills and characters are functional and varied, it does not offer modifiers to offer complexity or depth. Without any meaningful options or choices, the roughly 3 active skills quickly become repetitive and boring. Since the game has skill modifiers as item pickups via runes, turning them into options with might be better. Also turning one or both active items or divine relics slots into active skills slots instead can increase depth. The skill progression only offers one tree or build so making it available at the start and provide a different form of progression such as new skill modifiers or items. Simple combat is not necessarily bad but the other half of the equation is not good as well: enemies.

As primarily a ranged player, combat primarily involves pulling the enemies and slowly trimming the herd while deftly dodging attacks. While this playstyle is not bad, the enemy variety and complexity does not meaningfully challenge this model that it contributes to the boredom. Likewise, the generated levels themselves are frequently long hallways that do not offer much in tactics, strategy or positioning. Lastly, the dungeon bosses are decent but not challenging or memorable. Alongside the lack of skill complexity, these factors make dungeon crawling not as enjoyable.

Since mechanical depth and enemy combat are flat, skill becomes less important while statistic more so. Even if I prefer skill be rewarded more than time, the game's execution on both is underwhelming. While I do have minor issues with the narration, audio and presentation, I still respect the game's attempt and would like to see a more polished sequel.