For anyone out of the loop, generic sounding name aside, this is the latest game from Platinum, published by Square Enix.
It’s an action, hack and slash thing that at some point in development was built into a live-service-always-online-game. The internet has been incredibly harsh to it, and thus, as with Balan Wonderworld, I grew more and more interested as each deep dive popped up on YouTube raging at different parts of its design.
I’m very early into this thing, but: I think it's fine.
It’s doesn’t look great. Many, wrongfully, have said it looked like a PS2 game, but as is always the case, if you're someone who actually regularly plays older games, you know that's not going to be true. It’s perhaps more accurate to say that the modelling and texture work are a little PS3 in quality, though obviously displayed at a much higher resolution and at a much higher framerate than machines of that era could manage. I saw someone say Platinum’s skills basically capped out during that generation, and I’d say that’s pretty accurate given that a lot of their recent successes have come via the Switch and its lower spec. Either way though, the visuals are not the meat and potatoes of this thing, even if it tries (and fails) to implement some sort of painterly filter.
The game itself is a stage based, co-op hack and slash, loot driven affair.
I’m not an expert on this sort of design but it feels pretty good to me. It looks flashy, combat is readable and enjoyable, and even at the early stage I’m at, weapon and gear selection makes encounters feel different.
The gimmick of this game is that you always hold four weapons, two in your hands, and two that are controlled by some weird ethereal backpack you carry around. It means that combos can be expressive, and gear is fun to organise between skirmishes. At the moment I have 2 quick swords for my light and heavy hand attacks, and then two big spectral hammers mapped to the shoulder buttons and therefore the backpack thing, so that I can finish off a flurry with a double hammer blow from distance.
Gameplay then is fine, but a genuine failing is Babylon's matchmaking and online. Given that you can’t play Babylon’s Fall at all without being connected to its servers, it’s a shame that player counts are as low as they are, and its frustrating that matchmaking hasn’t been streamlined and organised to account for this. Searching for a quick match is basically impossible as it relies on someone in the same region and the same server, having set up up a game on a stage that you must have already unlocked in the campaign, within a few seconds of you starting your search. The requirements and the timings of this whole process means that I’ve yet to play with another soul.
Friendlists are needlessly complicated too - the game demands a Square Enix account, and managing other players is a case of using their SE name not their PSN handle, for some weird reason. It's cross play between PS4, PS5 and PC, but still, there must have been a more elegant way to put this together.
Maybe the online is great, maybe its shit, but at the moment I’m having to resort to just soloing stages, but still having a decent time.
It most puts me in mind of something like Phantasy Star Online. I'm not talking PSO in its prime, but rather a modern fan-server version of Blue Burst, or the DC or GC release with their obviously reduced numbers and tighter communities. Babylon's Fall has a hub area to buy and sell and equip your character between stages. There’s a loose story that runs through each stage. And there’s repetitive, but engaging enough combat to keep you ticking along, just as PSO was never really that layered a combat experience.
I’m not saying Babylon’s Fall is a 10/10 must-play or anything like that, but for what my opinion is worth, it’s also not the 1/10 ‘worst game of the year’ that the open jawed YouTube thumbnails would have you believe. Maybe it’s going to die a death within a few months; maybe Platinum will make enough changes to keep things rolling. I just really hope that they're savvy enough to have a rethink on their big bold statement last year that they’d be focusing almost exclusively on live service games like this, because in the here and now, I don’t think they’re quite up the task.
Anyone else playing? Anyone else played? Anyone else *thinking* of playing?
