It goes without saying that during these last few years we are receiving a cataract of soulslike, dozens and dozens of games that try to copy, with more or less success, the formula that made FromSoftware games so special and popular.
In fact, this month I already had to analyze two (you can read here my SALT & SACRIFICE review), and both coincide in one characteristic: trying to give the genre a twist by adding new playable variables. But sometimes, and as happened with the previous title, it is risky to get out of the comfort zone.
DOLMEN It is available for Playstation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series and PC.
IF DEAD SPACE AND DARK SOULS HAD A SON
Like all good Souls worth its salt, the story is quite cryptic and it is revealed to us little by little, almost in drops, as we play. The only thing we know from the outset is that we are a soldier part of a Special Force that was sent to the planet Revion Prime to look for Dolmen (hence the name of the game), a kind of mysterious crystal that has the peculiarity of being able to open cracks between the different realities and universes. On this planet lived a race known as the Vahani, who were liquidated at the hands of other civilizations who wanted to seize their knowledge and resources in terms of space-time manipulation. Before being exterminated, the Vahani managed to hide all their studies, but the opening of dimensional cracks due to this war filled the planet with beasts and monsters from other universes. Our mission, if we decide to accept it, is to descend on Revion Prime and take care of recovering all the material and research we can, and in the process discover what really happened to the Vahani.
WHERE I PUT THE EYE I PUT THE BULLET
By now they must be tired of me explaining the general approach of a Soulslike, to which DOLMEN From the outset it doesn’t escape a bit. We start by choosing our character from a variety of classes, which will determine their starting gear, level, and stats. But don’t worry too much, because then the same leveling system allows us to shape our warrior to suit each one and everyone can use all the weapons and armor. Here there is no editing of physical characteristics beyond choosing their gender, name and the color of the armor. Once this simple first step is finished, we embark on the adventure, which, as we already imagined correctly, is full of very difficult enemies that can lower our life in seconds if we are not attentive enough.
So far nothing I’ve mentioned is new, anyone who has played this type of game before is going to find most of the elements they’ve already seen hundreds of times, so let’s just focus on the things that separate DOLMEN from the rest of similar titles that swarm the market. In the first place, the setting is space, on an unknown and dangerous planet, so that touch of science fiction gives the possibility that our character wears super technological armor worthy of DEAD SPACE or some kind of anime ROBOTECH. The weapons also have their futuristic touch, and of course the scenarios and enemies are taken from the movie gallery like ALIEN or the engineer Isacc Clarke game I mentioned earlier.
Also, in DOLMEN Firearms are given a lot of importance. We have already seen the ranged attack as a concept in a Souls, and applied as the main mechanic in games like REMNANT FROM THE ASHES, although here their use and the damage they do is closer to being a support tool as in BLOODBORNE and not so much our strongest option of attack.
The title also handles two “stamina” systems. In the upper left part of the screen we can see that in addition to our life bar, in red, we also have a green bar and a blue one below. The green bar represents our stamina, that is, this bar empties as we carry out any physical action, such as hitting an enemy, dodging an attack or running. The blue bar equals our energy. This bar is used to recharge our life and use firearms. These weapons have two firing modes, a weaker one that consumes a blue bar as it is used but allows it to recharge over time, and a more devastating attack, which does much more damage but directly erases a part of the energy bar, which cannot be recovered until we consume a battery or rest at a beacon, the “bonfires” of the game. These beacons allow us to transport ourselves to other points on the map where we have also activated beacons, or to our spaceship, where we can level up our character, and create and improve weapons and armor using the resources that we find on the map or that are dropped by enemies. when dying A novelty in this aspect is that all the created equipment can be added “boosters” of choice at the time of its manufacture, which allows us to increase the characteristics of each one that suits us best.
In addition, there are three different types of equipment always to be crafted, each corresponding to a different race, and the more gear we have crafted from a race, the more skills we will unlock in a skill tree corresponding to that same race. In any case, we can also combine our equipment as we like, using, for example, a helmet of one species and a chest cover of another, and so on.
The route through Revion Prime, although you can imagine that it is quite difficult and at times frustrating, is also quite linear. Unlike other much more complex titles that came out this year, such as ELDEN RING, in DOLMEN the environments are much more closed and “corridors”. The path through each area is quite obvious and there is no chance of getting lost. Every once in a while we’ll come across an imposing middle boss that will cut us off, until we reach a much more complicated super boss that represents the final battle of each act. Something interesting is that through a device that is outside the room of each Boss Battle and also in the ship we can repeat any battle with the bosses that we have already defeated by paying a sum in Dolmen fragments, a crystal that can be farmed from enemies minors. In addition to obtaining many Nanites (the item that is used to level up in the game) we will also obtain the necessary materials to make the weapons of those bosses, the strongest in the game, if we have the patience and skill to defeat them several times.
SPREAD A LITTLE W40
Before starting to analyze the technical part of the title, it should be noted that DOLMEN was developed by Massive Work Studio, a small independent studio located in South America, more precisely in the city of Natal, in Brazil. Taking into account the budget difference with other titles of the genre, it is worth saying that the work done is, at least, decent. Graphically, the game gives us designs for armor, weapons, and bosses that look quite interesting. Many of the designs refer us to other space-futuristic science fiction games, movies or series, so more than once we will look at a suit and say “ah, the inspiration for this was taken from such a place”. Revion Prime’s settings are also quite neat, with large structures that represent laboratories or factories where the coldness of the metal is interrupted by the native vegetation that has taken over the abandoned places. From one moment to another, these areas open up to wide places where we move through arid plains or caves full of gigantic spider eggs, to give an example.
At the same time, at all times we will find in our way mutilated, tortured, hanged corpses, to remind us that we are in the place where an interdimensional war caused the extermination of a race. The problem comes precisely when everything is nice little square moves. The movements of everything, including our character and the enemies, is totally rigid and crude. Sometimes it even seems like frames of animation are missing between moves, like when our character does a jump attack. Hitboxes aren’t calibrated correctly, so a lot of times we’re going to deal or take damage in places where that shouldn’t have happened, and we’re also going to not land hits that we swear went through the enemy. Some animations really have very little work, such as the death of an enemy named Zimodont, that once we defeat him his body is put in the same position as standing but on his side.
The most serious problem is that the game has a very ugly and annoying glitch, which is happening to everyone: our character can disappear and the game enters a kind of first-person mode that cannot be released, and in which We no longer see our weapons or position on the screen, which makes playing the game impossible. It happened to me all the time that I wanted to replay a Boss (which is necessary to get trophies and make weapons) and until the moment of this Review it has not been solved.
As for the sound, the voice acting is quite well done and the sound effects also fulfill their mission more than correctly. The music is conspicuous by its absence but hey, it must be for “more immersion”.
ONLY FOR SICK FANS OF THE GENRE
Let’s see, it’s true that there are people who don’t get tired of playing one Souls after another, and that includes me too. It is also true that it is not so easy to copy the formula and that the results are very different. Was it fun to play DOLMEN? Yes, but I can’t deny that it has a thousand mistakes from small to huge. There are things that a patch can’t fix (such as the game’s rustic engine in general), but there are little things that can, and that seem very important to me to make the game a little more cool. In addition to the horrible game-breaking glitch I mentioned earlier, a couple of stamina management tweaks or a reduction in the horribly long time it takes to recharge a battery (necessary to THEN be able to recharge health and shoot, imagine all that in the middle of a combat, we are dead five times before touching the ground), are details that with a little balance will raise the general note of the game.
Today it is a title that “undoes”, that does not invent anything but that has enough elements for fans to give it even a couple of passes.