Earthlock Review (Switch)

  In my life, I have played through hundreds of RPGs.  A rich story and some casual strategy is a nice break from the usually frantic twitch games that exist now.  Earthlock by Snowcastl looked interesting and so I picked it up on the Switch and gave it a try.  It's hard to nail how I feel about this game.

A Pretty Standard Adventure

   Earthlock is a story of a scavenger who gets caught up in an adventure do to a sketchy job his 'uncle' picks up.  Through the game, you will pick up 5 other allies with their own personalities and abilities.  The combat is turn-based and comes with an interesting stat system.  Rather then just putting points into stats you will have a board where you can place cards you find in game.  On this board, you have slots for special abilities, stats increases, and character-specific moves.  This system was legitimately really cool as it let you customize your character for fights you were having issues with.

  While most RPGs are pretty heavy on gear, this game is not.  You can find new weapons to craft for your characters but it's usually more a stat shift then a full on stat increase.   Another way to increase a character's skill is to have them party with different members.  After so many fights their bonds grow unlocking more points to place cards down and buffs.  I found the lack of gear heavy gameplay pretty unique and it made it more about fighting then a constant search for the right weapon.

  The pacing of the game was ok with combat being dictated by approaching or running away from visual enemies on the map.  There were several locations in the game where it felt like incremental steps of difficulty and then a giant brick wall where the boss sits atop to piss on your once proud party.  Your only option is to either find the perfect counter team with the perfect counter moves or grind.  There is no autosave so a death will send you back to when you thought about saving or even had a chance to save.  There are places where the save spot is at the entrance and you have to fight to even get to the boss or mob that killed you, which made for some pretty aggravating moments.

Some Minor Grievances 

  If you are looking for the story don't look here.  It exists but it's not very deep and the dialogue isn't great.   It feels like they are speaking in quick phrases to rush it along, which I can understand being nice for some but I like a story.  If you want to cut the story down for those who don't care, create a skip button. Just have a skip button in general so we don't have to suffer the same cutscene of a boss that is giving us hell.

  The art style is simple yet well made.   This doesn't look like a bunch of asset flips and the backgrounds to some areas is really well done.  This is accompanied by a pretty good music score that I enjoyed listening to through the game.  It never became repetitive and contributed to a sense of adventure.

  The boss fights gave off this feeling like they were thought out but not flushed out.  With some of them just having very frustrating moves that were counter to what you thought could happen.  I found a lot of abilities saying one thing and doing something else.  For example an ability, called cloak is suppose to make you non-targetable for a few turns.  Not only did it tick faster than the character's turn but bosses could hit you out of it.  This would have been nice to know.

  In the end, Earthlock comes off like it stratles the line of the good and a not good game.  There were several times in the game I was enjoying the combat system and other times found it incredibly obnoxious for the sole purpose of being obnoxious.  It's not great but not a terrible game either.  If you are hard up for an RPG on the Switch go in but this might be a good discount buy beyond that.

TL;DR:

  Earthlock has such a good underlying potential but just feels like it misses the mark.  It's not terrible but it's lacking in story and deeper gameplay.