The Awakener: Forgotten Oath PC Review

It looks like we have a new developer who is taking a stroll around the block, but they might be a little lost as to what they want to do. The studio in question is Taner Games, and this studio was founded recently from the looks of it, though there isn’t much information aside from the extra bit about them being based in China. To thicken the plot just a bit more, they only have one release, but that game went through several name changes, genre changes, and release delays… Sadly, it’s not as exciting as it sounds, and the real horror story is still coming.

 

Now, the part you’ve been waiting for, all the juicy details regarding The Awakener: Forgotten Oath. Unfortunately, if you’re looking for a decent story to go with the souls-like gameplay, stick with Elden Ring or Dark Souls. Right from the start, you won’t be greeted by a half-decent cinematic or even just a little voiced narration… Instead, you’re shown two paragraphs of text that are supposed to set the stage for the world at hand; this was already the first red flag for The Awakener: Forgotten Oath.

As for the story itself, it’s actually quite vague – It’s about a rift that was opened, which allowed demons to cross over; with constant attacks and the old gods gone, the new gods quite came to the rescue. The new gods, now known as the Thride Gods, shared small pieces of their power with the chosen ones to make them Awakeners, and they represented the gods and their people in the fight against chaos. Now, to keep their homelands safe, the awakeners created a ‘curtain’ (or veil, the word choices won’t always make sense in the game) that would shroud them and their enemies in a realm called the Nothingness. The Nothingness also houses the Animitta, which makes the Awakeners immortal, but they can only leave the Nothing once chaos is eliminated.

And just like that, you’ll be thrown into the tutorial as the Fighter, Gerasso. You won’t be given any other story-related information, and instead, you’ll just need to survive and get a feel for the combat system. Luckily, the tutorial is easy enough to handle, but it’s also a sign of what’s to come later in The Awakener: Forgotten Oath. Now would be a good time to get your notepads out. What this game so severely lacks in story is that it tries to overcompensate with mechanics and roguelike features.

 

Starting off with attacks, you’ll have your garden variety Normal Attack, block/parry, and a few extras that add a bit more flare to your attacks. Now, things stand out with the parry because parrying at just the right second gives you a boosted counterattack, giving you a chance to turn your enemies’ attacks against them and turn them into mush. Life in The Awakener: Forgotten Oath does become a bit more interesting with Ground Skill and Air Skills though. These are essentially launch and dive attacks, charges, etc. However, while these extra attacks are nice to have, The Awakener: Forgotten Oath strays quite far from the Souls-like genre simply because of how easy the game is. Bear in mind that this is coming from someone who loves the Souls-like genre but has almost no skill to learn the patterns.

Hold on to your keyboards and controllers; The Awakener: Forgotten Oath has more to offer just to give you so much more firepower. This comes in the form of Relics and Artifacts – Artifacts give you a special ability that comes with a cooldown, such as a fire-based cannon, a thunder-based hammer, and so much more, but you can only ever carry one at a time. Relics, on the other hand, are where things become a bit more overpowered, and though these only stay with you for the run, collecting enough of them will basically make your character a steamroller that can flatten anything. Once again, I am not really playing like a Souls-like and going way too deep into Roguelike.

Now, this still sounds like a reasonable Roguelike, right? Well, things only get a bit more controversial with how the runs themselves work. Starting a run is easy enough, but you’re not exactly exploring these huge levels or floors; you’ll be fighting your way through small single-instance rooms. This type of gameplay is usually seen on mobile games because it’s less demanding on the hardware and keeps the gameplay on the faster side. Sadly, it does make The Awakener: Forgotten Oath a pretty fast game, but somehow, it’s also extra demanding on hardware. Optimization issues, perhaps?

 

Carrying on with the runs and finishing a room will also reward you with the many currencies in the game and also elemental Relics or Artifacts. However, you’ll also usually have a choice between 3 different rooms with different rewards after clearing each room. However, you’ll need to keep in mind that some rooms will give better rewards but come at the cost of more difficult enemies or a challenge to complete, while others aren’t for fighting in at all. That’s right, you’ll get the occasional moment of rest at the shop and the shrine. The shops are pretty self-explanatory; you can spend your coin to get a few more relics, upgrade your artifact, or buy other resources. Shrines will offer you a choice to increase your maximum health potions or the healing they give you, along with a free relic.

The Awakener: Forgotten Oath isn’t just an endless slog of fighting mobs; every 10th room will be the good ol’ boss fight. Unfortunately, this was the biggest disappointment of them all, the boss names are incredibly uninspired, their patterns are trivial, and their intro cinematics are short-lived and bland. Boss fights are supposed to be exciting and form part of the story but The Awakener: Forgotten Oath missed the mark by a long shot and instead made them sad and uninteresting. The first boss, Skull Knight, might give you a slight run for your money, but the rest are just painfully short-lived.

Now, you’ll probably die on your run at least once or twice. Lucky for you, death isn’t the end, as you’ll wake up back in the Animitta; home is where you can get your permanent upgrades after all. In this case, home is a gigantic castle in the Nothingness where you can spend Soul Echoes to unlock one of the other 2 classes and get upgrades that would make an already easy game even easier. The Awakener: Forgotten Oath does at least come with a training dummy for you to test out your new class, and you’ll get a chance to swap out your Ground Skill and Air Skills for different ones.

 

Upgrades in The Awakener: Forgotten Oath are actually quite easy to come by, and they can make a hell of a difference when you need them. From attack to extra loot, you can make it all happen if you have enough Void Crystals for it in the Talents menu. However, Soul Echoes aren’t just used to buy new classes, you can also use them to unlock Class Skills. Sadly, Soul Echoes are a pain to get, and the drop rate makes it less worthwhile to get them because of how fast a full run is.

On the visual side of life, The Awakener: Forgotten Oath has some good appeal if you’re not paying attention to detail. The different lands and rooms you’ll be fighting in have a lot of polish, but that’s another red flag. There’s too much polish, and it can make it look like an asset flip game. Prepare yourself for a slight shocker, The Awakener: Forgotten Oath isn’t exactly an asset flip. A good majority of the assets come from Taner Games’ previous attempts and building their first game.

The Awakener: Forgotten Oath started off as something entirely different and was meant to be an open-world game, but development spiraled, and it became a Roguelike with some Souls-like elements instead while reusing the originally planned assets. Sadly, this does make half of what you’ll see look incredibly polished, and the rest just looks cobbled together or hastily placed. Things only look even more grim when you take a closer look at the low-end UI that’s also a mix of polish and cobbled together.

 

Now, don’t get your hopes up for voiced dialogues or inspired cinematics. At best, The Awakener: Forgotten Oath has some great sound effects and voiced grunts alongside creature noises. Sadly, the only sound engineering marvel that stands out is the background music, though that also fades into the background with how repetitive it can become after a while. The aim for a dark ambiance combined with heavy and deep-toned music was executed perfectly, but the lack of variation doesn’t help things along.

Overall, The Awakener: Forgotten Oath can be a good starting point for players who want to dip a toe into the Souls-like pool and get a feel for it, but it needs a lot more polish and time to really shine as a whole. This might actually be one of those cases where you get what you pay for, and The Awakener: Forgotten Oath is priced on the cheaper end, but it still doesn’t draw away from the fact that it would do better as a mobile game instead.

Jay Claassen (@R3GR3T_3NVY)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed