Atlas Fallen PC Review

Slow and steady wins the race, though what if the turtle had rabbit legs for a massive jump forward? Somehow, the same can be said for Deck13 Interactive. Founded in 2001 by Armin Burger, Florian Stadlbauer, Frank Fohl and Jan Klose in Germany, this small steam started off slow with their initial releases. From their forgotten titles like Stealth Combat in 2002 and Carnival Cruise Lines Tycoon 2005: Island Hopping in 2004, further down the line with slightly more well-known releases such as Venetica in 2009, Deck13 Interactive has come a long way and made massive strides in game development.

 

Things changed for this development studio when they created their own game engine known as Fledge Engine, and they implemented it with the release of Blood Knights in 2013, an epic hack-and-slash RPG with a gratuitous amount of gore. However, they just kept moving forward, and their engine kept getting more development, and in a personal opinion, Deck13 Interactive made their mark in the gaming communities with the releases of Lords of The Fallen and The Surge. Though they still pushed ahead with their latest release, Atlas Fallen, that released on 10 August 2023. Deck13 interactive might not stop pushing forward, but they might have found a perfect balance between a story-rich narrative-driven experience and the fan-favored Souls-like combat in Atlas Fallen.

Atlas Fallen falls into several different categories, Action RPG, Adventure, Souls-like, Open-World, etc. Though what sets it apart is just how unique it actually is. So, to cut the rambling short, here’s a little backstory on the world at hand and what to expect. Hold on to your keyboards, controllers, and chairs, it’s going to get a little sandy in places you don’t want sand.

The world of Atlas (Yes, it’s called Atlas) was once upon a time a beautiful and lush land filled with life. This changed very quickly when the tyrant god, Thelos, the Sun God, took over and subjugated the people. He prefers to rule with an iron fist, and while he does enjoy unquestioning faith, he has a second motive, to have the people mine as much essence from the land as possible. Though sadly, this also has the negative effect of draining all life from the land as well, turning it into a desolate wasteland of mountains and deserts. This is only made worse by the massive social divide between the Named and the Unnamed. The Named get to live in positions of power or luxury, while the Unnamed are used as fodder and, in most cases, similar to slaves, forced to toil under the Named. Though this is all Thelos’ doing but nobody can rise against him, not without repercussions that almost always lead to death.

 

When you jump into Atlas Fallen, you’ll be greeted with a voiced cinematic giving you a quick rundown of the world, detailing how Essence is not meant for mortals but Thelos. You’ll also be given a brief explanation as to how Thelos is a tyrant, but the narrator, whom you’ll later learn is the Thousand Year Queen, decided she will no longer bow her head to the tyrant god. A massive war took place, though this is the gamble she took in hopes of awakening someone else who could possibly put an end to Thelos’ rule. The cinematic alone already builds a great atmosphere with how it relies heavily on painted images that look like they come from a desert, and it somewhat prepares you for what comes next.

Direct after that, you’re thrown into an overly chaotic world controlling a character whose identity only gets revealed later, but his part at the start is to give you a taste of what’s to come. However, for now, you’ll need to fight your way through several Wraiths while following a strange voice. It’s wise to use this time to get a feel for the controls and the basic combat system while you can against the smaller wraiths. Things will only get a lot more chaotic after this. The basic attack system you have at first consists of your basic and secondary attacks, along with evading. It’ll expand a bit more into using the target lock, target switch, sprinting and double jumping. Though your most powerful and devastating attack is your Shatter ability.

Sadly, as mentioned before, that was just a small taste of what was to come. You’ll eventually hear Tracker trying to wake you up, but before you wake up, you’ll get to create your Unnamed. It’s not the greatest or most detailed in terms of character creation, and you’ll be rather limited to more natural colors for hair and a few saturated colors for eyes. The rest is pretty standard, though this actually makes sense when you consider that the Unnamed are supposed to be easily forgotten. The closest they come to a name is more along the lines of what they do, for instance – Tracker, who is obviously good at tracking. Smith, a blacksmith. Herder naturally takes care of the animals. That’s basically the long and short of being Unnamed.

 

Now that you have your character ready, you’ll start off as a mundane mortal, just trying to survive with the other Unnamed in a camp in the middle of a sandstorm. You’ll also get to try your hand at the dialogue in Atlas Fallen, this is particularly important because you can get your various quests from the people you talk to, but you’ll also get undocumented quests you can do. As an example, before Tracker sends you off to talk to the other Unnamed, she mentions that she’s hungry. Though doesn’t become a quest of any kind, you can still go talk to the soup maker to get her some food. This can, in turn, change later story events.

On the matter of quests, they’re divided into 3 categories, Main Story, Side Quests, and Errands. All quests will usually give you a reward in the form of Tributes, Essence, and even new gear or Essence Stones, but sometimes you’ll come to a standstill with one quest because it needs you to complete another first. However, to make the most of what you can get, some quests are not worth completing, while others will give you some much-needed Essence or equipment. You’ll need to weigh out your options. Though when you look at the bigger picture, you can easily get to most of your quests as you explore the lands before you.

After talking to the other Unnamed and rallying them with Tracker, Knight Captain Morrath will take notice and try to pick a fight from the looks of it. What he doesn’t know is that he’s also the one that starts you off on your journey to free Atlas from Thelos’ reign. Instead of an uprising, he’ll tell you that you need to go out in the wilds and find a thief who stole a broach from him. Shortly after leaving the camp, you’ll hear the voice of the entity you played with earlier, leading you to him. But instead of him, you’ll find a glowing gauntlet that talks to you. The voice will tell you to use the gauntlet and that it’ll give you the strength you need to find the Wraiths that just came after you. After the fight, you learn his name is Nayaal… Though he can’t remember much else yet.

 

The story just keeps unfolding, and it’ll definitely keep you sucked in with its heavily narrative-driven environments. As for how you’ll survive, you’ll need to fight, of course. Fighting in Atlas Fallen has some magic and takes a few notes from the Souls-like genres. Since you’re not just swinging a weapon or whip around, you’ll also need to build Momentum. Momentum works similarly to an attack multiplier with extra perks, and the more your attacks hit, the more momentum you’ll generate, which will change your weapons visually but also how much damage they do.

Momentum serves two more purposes. Each tier of momentum (there are 3 tiers) will boost your attacks, which is always nice, but one of its other uses is to power a Shatter attack. You’ll have to spend your entire Momentum charge for one massive strike that’ll demolish smaller Wraiths and deal some amazing damage to bigger Wraiths. Each tier of Momentum will make your Shatter attack so much more destructive. Though that’s not all, your momentum plays another role in your survival.

This comes in with Essence Stones. Atlas Fallen doesn’t use XP for leveling or skills, and you are instead given access to Essence Stones. These can come in the form of passive and active abilities. However, you can’t just equip all the Essence Stones and expect it to work. Your gauntlet has 3 color slots for Essence Stones, Bronze, Silver and Gold. You’ll need to match your Essence Stones to the colors and then build your passive and active loadout from there. Unfortunately, this still doesn’t mean they’ll always be active or usable. Remember that last purpose for Momentum? This is where it comes in, and your Essence Stones need to be awakened with Momentum, so raising your Momentum will awaken the Stones as you fight and give you even more power to work with.

 

Luckily, awakening your Essence Stones isn’t difficult since you just have to build up Momentum. Obtaining, upgrading, and crafting them is where things become tricky, to say the least. Getting more Essence Stones is a matter of hunting down bigger Wraiths who will drop Essence Stones and Essence for you, this can be dangerous work if your armour and loadout aren’t up to scratch. Crafting Essence Stones is a bit simpler, but you’ll need the required materials, most of which can be found all over the world. Upgrading is a nightmare; you’ll need the required materials and a decent chunk of Essence. Unfortunately, Essence isn’t exactly easy to come by in the beginning, and you’ll need it for other things too. You’ll have to be willing to sacrifice one or two things for other upgrades.

There is also the matter of what you’ll be fighting against…. Wraiths, the monstrous creations of Thelos that were born from sand and always have an unholy ferocity to them. Smaller Wraiths are usually just simple distractions, but the bigger Wraiths are what you need to be careful of when fighting them. They’ll usually have what looks like armour plates, but this is also what makes them come to life, their cores. Destroy the cores and the Wraith goes back to being sand. Unfortunately, they won’t make it easy, so you’ll need to be creative with your attacks or they’ll smash you into the ground.

As mentioned before, Atlas Fallen doesn’t have an XP or leveling system, not entirely anyway. What sets your level is your armour, and your armour gives you the other half of your buffs, stats and the odd bonus if your Essence Stones match the requirements. This is the part of Atlas Fallen where you’ll need a ton of Essence, to upgrade your armour. They usually start at a base level and gain level for each upgrade until they hit max level, from there if your Essence Stones match what the armour requires, you’ll get a nice bonus. However, not all bonuses are useful and sometimes you’ll have to use the armour set as a stepping stone.

 

Upgrading your armour comes with a second perk though, and each upgrade will give you a skill point you can use for a different set of passives. They’re closer to world passives, like a nice boost in speed when you pick up a plant while Sand Sliding or boosted starting momentum when you enter a fight. They might not seem all that useful at first, but they can make a world of difference if you sink your points into the right passives.

So, you’ve gone out and gotten a little roughed up, which means your health is somewhat devastated. Lucky for you, Atlas Fallen has you covered on recovery. Your easiest form of recovery is through your Relic. Though limited on charges, it charges up as you fight, at least. It’ll give you an instant boost in health on command and can save you in a tough situation. Your relic can also be replaced with others for different effects like faster charging, regeneration, temporary attack boost and much more. The alternative if you need a quick heal or if you want to restore your charges is to visit an anvil.

You’ll see that there are anvils all over the world; awakening a new anvil will unlock a new piece of Nayaal’s memories as a start, but they also serve as a place where you can upgrade your armour, fast travel, assign skill points and unlock Essence Stone Slots. However, you’ll also need the anvils to upgrade and reforge your gauntlet with the fragments you’ll find hidden throughout the world. The fragments in question will unlock the gauntlet’s power which you’ll need to progress the story.

 

The powers in question are Raise, Air Dash, Reveal and Crush. All are somehow related to the sand, but each one adds a unique twist to combat and exploration in Atlas Fallen. Raise will allow you to raise objects that were buried under the sand, Air Dash is essentially a flying dash that you’ll need to cross huge chasms. Reveal and Crush come in much later, and you’ll need to discover those to see what they bring to the table.

As for the last but not forgotten part about Atlas Fallen, the world itself. The world in Atlas Fallen only gets bigger as you progress through the story, each new power or upgrade you get will make it a little bigger and you’ll have to experiment a bit with getting around. On the exploration front, you’ll discover that most things are either hidden or buried under the sand. Getting to it all is easy enough, and you’ll just need to keep your eyes open. However, if you’re not completely on your own, you’ll meet the Traveling Merchant quite early on, and he’ll sell most of what you need as long as you have Tributes, the mortal currency in Atlas Fallen.

One of the more attractive things in Atlas Fallen is the lore. There is a terrifying amount of lore to be found through journals, sand echos, paintings, and even just general dialogue. Though all the lore comes together and can also expand the world even more so because of all the hidden secrets in the form of treasure maps and the occasional riddle. There’s quite literally never a dull moment to be had in Atlas Fallen and there’s almost always another quest to do that might take you that one step further.

 

Aside from the gameplay and captivating story, the sound engineering, music and voice acting are what make Atlas Fallen stand out above all else. The music, in particular, takes massive strides from contemporary and epic to build a great atmosphere. The voice acting just adds that extra dash of wow factor to go with it all, and you can definitely hear the emotion behind each different voice. Combine it all together, and you have a nice balance of music and narrative to drive the immersion along.

On the visual front, Deck13 Interactive really outdid themselves this time with the unique character and beast designs. The Unnamed doesn’t quite stand out as much, but they are all very different from each other. The Wraiths are where the real work went in. While you might come across several of the same wraiths, it doesn’t always mean they’ll follow the same attack pattern or that their core pieces are in the same places. Then there’s also the matter that they progressively change visually as well as their level rises which just keeps them from going stale. There was one small snag on visual for Atlas Fallen and that is a sort of sandy grain when the sand gets kicked up or while Sand Sliding. Yes, the world is mostly sand but this grain looks more like an overbearing film grain combined with pixilation.

 

Overall, Atlas Fallen might be Deck13 Interactive’s crowning achievement with its story-rich and narrative-driven environment combined with the Soulslike aspects in combat. The combat and level mechanics are a refreshing take on how things should be done, and it definitely keeps you going. Even if fighting isn’t always your go-to pleasure, there’s a brilliantly crafted world and mountains of lore to explore too, if you really want to go all in. Atlas Fallen is definitely one of those games that would be approachable by anybody because of how forgiving it can be while also being challenging for veteran players.

Jay Claassen (@R3GR3T_3NVY)
Editor, NoobFeed