The entire story is wonderfully narrated by Doug Cockle, who played Geralt in the Witcher games, which helps to set the tone for the game. The intro segment has you playing through a tutorial that teaches you the basics before your father, the King of Mice, is overthrown by the evil Frogs, and a cycle of war begins. Tails of Iron from Odd Bug Studio and United Label is a beautifully animated game about you, Prince Redgi, who must set out on a journey to rebuild his Kingdom. And you’ll need all the help you can get, whether that’s new meal recipes, blueprints to forge deadly weapons and armour, or even a land-chugging, armour-plated mole mobile! As Redgi, heir to the Rat Throne, you must restore your broken Kingdom by banishing the merciless Frog Clan and their ferocious leader, Greenwart.Īs you explore the deceivingly charming world, you’ll encounter a cast of unique companions, ready to aid you in your adventure. I only tried to deal with what was absolute necessary, with Doug’s voice being the lullaby that alleviated my stress along the way.Set in a grim land plagued by war, Tails of Iron is a hand-drawn RPG Adventure with punishingly brutal combat. I started to loathe any incoming combat section, and thus, I started to avoid picking up sidequests or even trying to venture out of my way.
I’d always feel like I was way too weak and too slow, even with light gear, being unable to handle many foes at once.
#Tails of iron rating full#
It did elevate the overall tension, as I’d never know when I should act defensively or go full Leroy Jenkins into those barbaric frogs (you can thank the lack of enemy health bars for that), but it never resulted in an entertaining tension. It shares the same issue that made me dislike Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice when compared to other FromSoftware games: artificially jacking up the difficulty by forcing to juggle against a lot of enemies in cramped spaces, instead of crafting tough, but fair battles.
Tails of Iron loves to shove you in small rooms with more than two or three enemies at a time. The problem is that the game goes out of its way to ensure you’re not going to enjoy a natural progression in a brutal, but fair manner. Enemies initially telegraph their movements in a fair way: if they flash red, you have to dodge their attack, and if they flash yellow, you have to parry with your shield. When the level design cooperates with you, the damn thing works like a charm. That should work, right? As I said, it does, in theory. It’s all about precise dodging and parrying, all while dishing out slow-paced but heavy blows onto your opposition, and healing yourself with limited supplies of medicine. This is a 2D sidescroller that borrows a lot of elements from other 2D Soulslikes such as Salt and Sanctuary and Blasphemous.
There’s nothing wrong about the controls themselves, or even the gameplay in theory. You almost treat his narration as the reason you want to keep playing the game, because sadly, I did not like Tails of Iron‘s gameplay that much.
I can’t stress how cool it is to have one of the most recognizable voices in the industry narrating the entire thing to you, being almost worth the entire admission ticket. Now imagine having this entire story told with storybook visuals, in a “cute by also super gory” kind of way, all while having the entire story narrated by Doug Cockle, the voice of Geralt of Rivia from the Witcher series. Imagine how cool this premise sounds in your head. Aw, what a cute game! I’m sure nothing out of the ordinary will happen in the next ten minutes…