Developed by Chuhai Labs and published by Kwalee, this souls-like offering with brutal and bloody combat offers us a challenge full of fearsome enemies, tricky puzzles, and gorgeous pixel art. But, do you have enough to stand out above others in the genre?
No Place For Bravery is available for PC and Nintendo Switch.
No Place For Bravery is a souls-like, at this point it is difficult to define what makes a game of this genre. In general, they are accepted as such if they share mechanics with the well-known Dark Souls and the like, whether with challenging combat, stamina management, losing resources on death, indefinite revival at checkpoints, or having a complex narrative to give a few examples. This game has a more direct narrative experience than its influences usually carry, making it feel more like a difficult adventure game than a souls-like one.
A WORLD FALLING TO PIECES
This story begins by telling the tragedy of the family made up of Thorn, Leaf and Rose (whose names are not given that way by chance). Our playable character is going to be Thorn, a seasoned warrior, Rose is his wife and Leaf, their daughter. Together they live a life of relative tranquility in a world tied up with wires. In the west sleeps a colossus, whose sleep is implied to be what keeps the world stable. Thorn is a retired warrior of the Old Order, an organization whose goal was to ensure that the colossus sleeps, but which no longer exists. A New Order was formed to which Thorn does not belong since he does not share his values and is retired, as is the Legion, an army whose goal is to awaken the colossus to make way for a new world.
In a fairly long tutorial, we’re going to see how the story starts (and if we read the lore notes, we can spoil what’s going on, by the way). To summarize a bit, Thorn and Leaf go hunting but are attacked by Hemlins, zombie-like beings that serve as the most common enemy of the title. In the middle of this, a warlock kidnaps Leaf and by the time she finishes this entire sequence, she is never seen again. By killing the tutorial boss, Thorn finds a boy, whom they decide to adopt along with Rose.
Ten years later, Thorn, Rose, and Phid (the boy they rescued and adopted) form a new family without the Leaf. The game tells us that Thorn and Leaf for a time ventured to look for the witcher, but that this was not successful and because Rose has respiratory problems, they decided to leave the search behind and start a quiet life having a tavern in Ossuary, one one of the few places where humanity and civilization still exist.
Phid is a boy who has no mobility in his legs, and the whole adventure will accompany us hanging from Thorn’s back. Another aspect of strong narrative that this title offers, in contrast to others in the genre, is that we can make several decisions, Phid will suggest what he thinks is right, but we can ignore it if we want, Phid will generally choose to take a side or another, trying to avoid unnecessary violence.
In the first part we have an adventure in which we help a friend of the old order, in this adventure the sorcerer reappears briefly, fueling Thorn’s fire to find his daughter. At this moment the game asks us if we want to look for the witch or stay in the town. This is interesting, if we decide to stay we agree to a premature end of the game. In this Thorn stays in the tavern with his family, leading a life of relative tranquility. But there is something still out there very dangerous, which he calls to us ominously.
There are some hints within the tutorial sequence that suggest that not everything we see is real, or that Thorn’s memories of it are not very reliable.
LIFE GOES ON, ALSO THE ADVENTURE
If we don’t make the aforementioned decision, the game is much longer, of course. We continue the search for the sorcerer and Leaf, with Phid on our shoulders. Before this of course we will have already fought a lot and learned the mechanics of the game. After the tutorial they take away the extra weapons that we were getting, as well as the skills, which we will be able to get later.
As I said in the title, the name of the game is misleading, at every step we are going to have to arm ourselves with courage if we want to win. The combat has soul influences, and requires all our attention to not die. Throughout the game we will gradually unlock two other weapons in addition to our trusty sword: the hammer and the crossbow. The hammer serves as a heavy two-handed weapon, capable of slightly more damage and more impact. The crossbow is our ace up the sleeve to give ranged enemies, of which there are many, some of their own medicine. Melee weapons attack in a succession of hits, with the last hit in the combo being the strongest.
As defensive maneuvers we have a block and a dodge. The action of dodging is almost useless before unlocking the ability that gives you invulnerability, luckily it is in the first hours of the game. But it totally changes how we approach encounters. The blocking works by keeping a button, during the first frames of animation, if we are hit, we will be able to execute a kind of “parry”. This happens if we get hit, as far as I could tell, in the frames where Thorn raises his shield and holds it above his head. Hitting these parrys will allow us to damage the stamina of the enemies, it is very useful for those who have a lot of life, and if we manage to empty it, we will leave them dumb for a while, giving us the opportunity to kill them or do a lot of damage.
In addition to our weapons, we have special abilities to be able to advance against the obstacles of this dark world. Some can be bought with coins, which are conveniently dropped by enemies, but most require us to find a book or writing, in addition, to be able to learn it. This makes us unlock them little by little. We also have usable items, in a classic souls way, we have a number of potions that regenerate when resting at a checkpoint. the items are fast and easy to use, so healing us is a pleasure, unlike most games of the style, we do it quickly and without delays for enemies to punish us.
The enemies will almost never be alone, and if they can, they will try to overwhelm us by being many and surround us. This happens even when we walk through corridors, the game poses the encounters as if they were puzzles. Many times we face these situations thinking that they are impossible fights, but on the second try we solve it easily.
Like any game that is defined as soulslike, in addition to the difficult combat, it has other similarities. The devs really created a great flute lore for this game, but the narrative about it is given directly to us, there is not much research to do. Checkpoints are like “bonfires” but you hardly lose money when you die, and you can’t get it back by going back to where you died. For me, it lacks the most role-playing aspect to finish being a souls-like at all. We can’t level so there are no stats with which to become powerful, we only have our tools, weapons and our ability to overcome the challenge. However, the rest of the influences and mechanics make it a game of the genre.
System Requirements
MINIMUM: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system – OS: 64-bit Windows 7 – Processor: 2.8 GHz Dual Core CPU – Memory: 4 GB RAM – Graphics: GeForce GTX 660, Radeon R7 370 or equivalent with 2 GB of video RAM – DirectX: Version 11 – Storage: 2 GB available space – Sound card: DirectX compatible