Have we reached our limit with ‘Souls Clones’ or does AI Limit push the boundaries?
AI Limit is an action RPG with a Anime stylings published by CE-Asia and my personal chagrin aside that ‘souls like’ is now an accepted part of gaming vernacular I was draw to the games visual aesthetic immediately. CE-Asia kindly provided us with a review code and despite my relative inexperience with (heres that phrase again) ‘Souls like’ games, I was excited to give it a play.
I’m going to get the obvious out of the way first, AI Limit isn’t so much a ‘Souls like’ it’s essentially a brazen bordering on shameless clone, almost every single aspect of AI Limits game play is lifted from the Souls games. AI Limit is far from the first and I’m sure it won’t be the last, initially this rankled me a little bit and I was very much of the mindset that I may as well just play one of ‘From Software’s” genre defining masterpieces but the more I explored AI Limit the more invested I became.
AI limit takes place in a post apocalyptic world in which all plant life has become extinct, a foul substance known as MUD has emerged and humanity are struggling to survive. You’ll journey through this world as a ‘Blader’ know as Arrisa. The game begins with Arrisa face down in a pool of slurried water with no memory of whom or what she is (given how long Arrisa is face down in the water it’s fairly obvious she’s more than (or less than depending on your perspective) human.
You emerge from this pool and are lost in a sewer system as the game takes you through it’s tutorials and it does a splendid job of making everything feel very accessible and drip feeds you foes letting you build a little confidence controlling Arrisa. You’ll continually notice where AI Limit has substituted something from a Souls game but with a distinct item from it’s world. The most noticeable with of course be ‘Campfires’. In AI Limit you’re restoring branches, the main purpose of ‘Bladers’ but given the worlds flora-less state this little ecological twist was exceptionally endearing to me and pretty much immediately wiped comparison from my mind and I’m so very glad it did.
AI Limit doesn’t deserve to be compared to games of it’s genre and after all, my role is to review AI Limit and not lazily draw comparisons all day. Combat in AI Limit is accessible yet still demands focus, one slip on concentration and a foe may well punish you for it. Early on you’ll be asked to pick a weapon type, essentially there are three options, one-handed longsword (balanced between attack and defence), dual short swords (weakest of the weapons but much faster attacks) and two handed weapons in the early instance a halberd (slow but the highest attack damage). As always, I value swiftness over power and opted for the two short swords and oh my are they fun. If anything their attack speed is too rapid, so many of the basic enemies would essentially be stun locked a I slaughtered them. You can have two weapon types equipped at once and switch between them as needed granting a versatility that I was glad to have as you enter portions of the game that feature warring factions out the destroy each other just a gladly as they would send Arrisa to her doom.
You also have access to a “Spell” but given AI Limits sci-fi anime setting it’s themed around technology, so rather than a fantastical bolt spell, you have a railgun. You’ll unlock many spells along the course of the game, all of which deplete your sync-rate to varying degrees.
Sync-rate, that’s essentially your stamina bar, but in a nice touch, you’ll do different amounts of damage based on you current Sync-rate, spells and special attacks consume Sync-rate and landing basic attacks refill the bar, which adds and nice level of tactical thinking to combat. You also have “Frame Abilities” to aid you, they vary but one is simply a shield, another boosts your attack power but at the cost of dealing you a not inconsiderable amount of damage.
My reviews tend to be spoiler free and this one is no exception but at request of CE-Asia there are elements of the games narrative they’ve asked us not to mention. Initially I thought “well souls games don’t really do story” (I can hear the souls community coming for me) so this seems like and odd request but of course I would respect their wishes. Not long into AI Limit this request started to make sense. As I mentioned earlier about being endeared by AI Limit, there are moments and characters in the game that really emotionally resonated with me and add tremendously to the world building of Havenswell. Suffice to say that the world, characters and narrative of AI Limit give the game enough of it’s own identity to make investing the time into it to be entirely worthwhile, even with the bugs that popped up during my time battling as Arrisa.
Visually AI limit is a mixed bag, the environments fit the apocalyptic setting well but are rather bland and forgettable with few areas really making me want to stop and pan the camera around to explore. The character design both of Arrisa and that of her enemies are wonderful, Arrisa’s look can be altered by armour and yes, I spent time running around in a maids outfit (it had the best piercing protection). The baddies you’’ spend time dispatching vary by faction but within in each there’s a clear and distinct design that clearly exemplifies said factions narrative. Special mention has to go to the fisherman gangs you’ll encounter, I’d happily watch an anime based around their turf wars. However, sometimes those character models weren’t visible, occasionally after dying they wouldn’t load in once I’d spawned, leaving me wondering around a level of floating weapons, a rather large issue in a game in which one needs to study attack animations, the only way to fix this seemed to be to quit to the main menu and load back in. A similar bugged happed but with attack audio, this was far less annoying but still required jumping back to the main menu to resolve. These bugs were the only performance issues I really encounter, the game ran smoothly and could handle the fluid combat even with multiple enemies battling away at once.
