Imagine a chair. Like, a really good chair. The kind of chair your Pop-Pop used to have. The one he would sit in for hours watching Mel Brooks movies and sipping his adult juice. This chair has everything you need. Soft cushions, heating pad, reclining mode and great lumbar support. Now begin to remove all its components, remove everything that does not perform its function as a chair. You have a piece of mace that you can sit on. This is how I would describe The fall of Babylon in its current state: Technically a chair.
Platinum Games recently hosted a closed beta event for The fall of Babylon, where players got a brief overview of what the game looks like and how it feels. The Bayonetta Developer is highly regarded as a development studio that focuses on high-speed, visceral combat filled with blazing flair. The beta test for The fall of Babylon do away with most of everything Platinum Games is known for and mostly showcase their fights, with very little fanfare.
Without the stylized art, the unique characters or the sense of progression, The fall of Babylon is currently difficult to apprehend. If the final game adds everything Platinum is known for, it could be another hit for the studio. If not, it could become the shadow of the studio’s best games.
Build your fighter
The fall of Babylon speaks of heroes venturing into the Tower of Babylon to face the evils that reside there. I think? Knowing very little about the game, I went into the beta test to try and see if I could learn more about the story and the world that encapsulates it. Unfortunately, this did not happen. I was dropped into a disappointing character creator and told to pick a lineage for my character with very little context. Each lineage has unique abilities, but since most of them overlapped and I didn’t know what the tie meant here, I felt completely in the dark.
After character creation, I entered the central city which was populated by other players but had very few NPCs to interact with. This made the hub very hollow. There were a lot of spaces, rooms, and buildings that will clearly have important characters to interact with, but so far it was just empty space. The only characters I could interact with were a store owner I could sell my gear to and the Quest Giver, who didn’t give me a quest and instead asked me to interact with the quest board right next to it. them.
This was clearly deliberate, as the developers wanted us to focus only on the main core of the game: going on a quest and fighting. The quests themselves are a collection of combat stages separated by a few weak platforming puzzles. Once a player arrives at a combat stage, they are greeted by dozens of enemies or a boss, or sometimes both. This is where the beta test really begins and introduces players to the Gideon Coffin, which is essentially the magical reason why players can use four weapons at once. Each weapon is assigned a different button or trigger and will do different things depending on where you place them.
For example, a sword in the light attack slot will be your primary weapon for attacking, while a hammer assigned to a trigger will perform a devastating area of effect attack (A0E) at the expense of the player’s mind meter. Depending on how a player customizes their weapon equipment, they will determine the types of combos they can perform. There are many ways to do this and many combinations that can suit a variety of playing styles.
It did me good to figure out which weapon loadout worked best for me. It was great using two hammers on my triggers to deal major damage to the AoE to engage in combat before seamlessly sinking in a flurry of light attacks from my sword and then taking out enemies with my bow in my heavy attack slot. I could easily execute aerial combos and deal devastating damage if I timing my attacks correctly. If you’re familiar with the fighting styles of other Platinum Games titles, this should be an easy flow to tackle.
No progress
However, once you take it one step further and take a look at what else the game has to offer, you might be disappointed, as there really was nothing else there. The enemies aren’t as inspiring as the regular Platinum enemies, and their rudimentary tactics were blatant and easy to exploit. Combat encounters do very little to differentiate themselves from one another. Besides the occasional flight or enemy from a distance, every encounter looks exactly like the last. There really is no reason to change tactics, as any combo will usually work on an enemy. The platforming aspect of the game is not yet engaging and feels like it is only there to fill the time.
After completing a quest, I was showered with new equipment options to equip my character. In the beta, there was room for customization, but nothing fancy. There were options for lighter armor for faster dodge or heavier armor for more defense. Weapons only offered raw stat boosts, which made progressing boring. The only reason I would look for new gear is to make sure the damage count increases. There was nothing to hope for, or construction to plan.
games like Monster Hunter Risefall into a similar rut, but have built-in mechanisms to help hide these shortcomings. To augment offers a raw increase in equipment, but also has passive effects that can dramatically change the playstyle. Not only that, but thanks to the AI of the monsters, every hunt is dynamic. Even if you hunt the same monster, with the same group, the same equipment and the same location, the combat can be completely different thanks to the actions of the players and the monster they are fighting. In The fall of Babylon, there is nothing dynamic going on in the fights. They start to mix, which leads to mindless grinding.
My experience with The fall of Babylon felt like a combat showcase and nothing else. He simply highlighted the real mechanics of combat and what it feels like to perform them. Thankfully, the combat feels good (as you’d expect from Platinum), but everything around it lacks character so far. No bells, no whistles, no overdone characters and no colored lights. Without these marks, Babylon Falls the fight doesn’t seem enough to hold my attention. However, if these other components lurk deeper beyond the confines of the beta, then this game has the potential to be something special.
