I vaguely remember seeing something about Flintlock a few months before it came out. I remember thinking that it looked kind of cool, but then I forgot about it. Fast forward a few months, I'm listening to The Besties podcast, and Justin McElroy is talking about Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn. He talked up the movement as a selling point, and when I realized it was on gamepass, I decided to give it a try.
Flintlock is set in a world that I feel should have a lot more lore than it really does. But anyway, the dead are pouring out of this big pit, and the living have joined forces to avoid joining them. You play as Nor, a sapper in the Coalition army. In reality a sapper is a combat engineer with jobs such as bridge-building, mine clearing, and demolitions, but in Flintlock, they seem to be basically Jedi Knights, at least in terms of how much people revere them.
When Nor leads a daring raid into the heart of the Dead invasion, she accidentally releases a giant evil god and teams up with a nicer, tinier god to stop him. Nor as a character I found a bit endearing. She's very determined, a trait that I like my PCs having, makes me feel more immersed in the story, but she herself feels a bit half baked. Kind of like the world, I feel like there's a lot of history with her that we're not privy to. She mentions at one point that she had been a "trapper" which I almost misheard as "sapper" and I was like "Yeah, Nor, I KNOW." She and Enki, the little bird/dog god of death are a decent par, though. I would say together they make one passable protagonist. There's one kind of effective side mission where they light funeral pyres for fallen soldiers.
The gameplay, though. The main thing about Flintlock is the combat. Ax in one hand, gun in the other, mix in a long range rifle, and an occasionally grenade, and that's kind of all of your equipment. Enemies spice up the encounters sometimes needing specific types of damage to down them, like armored enemies which need to be stripped before they lose acceptable amount of health. There is an upgrade that allows you to parry with the pistol, which, like, the game is kind of over once you get that. Gunshots interrupt enemy attacks anyway, and being able to get a parry off if you get the timing right just makes it maybe the best powerup in the game. Bosses fell before me like easily parried children. So I guess just children.
The final boss, though, is a FUCKING NIGHTMARE. He's huge, does a lot of damage, and jumps around like a jumping spider wearing Moon Shoes. On top of that, he has two phases, and completing the first phase doesn't start you off at the start of the second phase if you happen to die. I don't think I'd care as much if not for the fact that you're stripped of some powers in the second phase for story reasons.
Overall, I was impressed with Flintlock, even though I don't think it will really stick with me. It's kind of a Double A game. An impressive amount of effort was put into a small package. I'd like to see a sequel.
