AI Limit (2025)

I was originally drawn to Ai Limit because of its animeqsue scifi-aesthetics and I can sincerely say I enjoyed the romp from start to end. Mind you, it is a thoroughly flawed game, but not a bad one.

The art-style tethers between the bland and the interesting, Its never ugly or boring, but there's also nothing that makes it truly memorable. Despite this, the mapping manages to make exploration/progress interesting and engaging, with every area being distinctively its own.

For the most part there's ever only one way to go, but you can still miss certain things if you don't search the area you are in thoroughly. This mostly matters in case you are hunting for a particular Ending.

The combat is easy. There's a myriad ways you can make it trivial, particularly if you learn to properly parry, but dodging is more than enough to beat the game. Thats because there's no stamina bar. You are not punished for spam dodging, which is certainly an interesting decision.

There's also no mana bar. The closest thing to it is the sync bar, which can refill naturally to a point, but refills much more quickly by being aggressive and landing hits.

I think more than anything, what drew me in was wanting to see where the game would go, and what would it build with its scifi aesthetics. Ultimately, I found the journey rewarding enough, with its sparse storyline, disparate cast, and oddly endearing english voiceover.

Most of all, I would recommend this game to people who want to play soulslike games but do not wish to get frustrated. Here, more than in many other games in the genre, you can craft your difficulty. Want to try parrying? You can, but you can also beat the game easily enough just by learning timing and relying on dodging (specially with the electric dodge you learn later on). Want to be op? You can wield heavy weapons and just smash, but you can also wield lighter ones and weave and try to survive.

So, yeah. Three out of five, easily. Good game.

It's surprising, given the popularity of both anime and soulslike games, that we've gotten so little of this combination. To my knowledge, only three such games exist, the first one being Code Vein, and the other two came out on the same day this year, six years after Code Vein. The timing was a bit unfortunate for AI Limit, since The First Berzerker: Khazan seems to have had more appeal to gamers. I also thought Khazan was going to be the one I'll like more and, while I haven't played it yet, now I think it's gonna be the other way around.

A reason for my initial prediction was the limited nature of the game the AI Limit demo presented. This impression stayed the same for some time while playing the full game because the first couple of areas don't offer much and the first few bosses are just so easy! My perception began to change when I had to look up the path to an item I was seeing and couldn't easily figure out how to get to. It turned out that I had missed an entire section, with the most valuable item and the toughest foe in the area!

And this is probably AI Limit's greatest strength: level design. I do believe it's the best I've seen in a soulslike not made by From Software. On a few occasions, I felt I got a bit lost, only to soon reach a shortcut to the checkpoint. There are numerous hidden paths with valuable items you can easily miss and even what is perhaps the best boss fight in the game. Visually, it's not as impressive, a lot of the places being pretty cookie-cutter post-apocalyptic scenery. Towards the end, it gets a bit more innovative and majestic, though.

General gameplay is what you can usually expect from a soulslike. Unlike the bosses, most areas are not that easy and you will die a lot if you don't have a tactical approach. To avoid losing too much currency, you can use the banking system (which, unlike in The Surge, works by buying and selling otherwise useless items). How much of your currency you lose depends on an item type you can equip, which also determines how much you gain. There's always a tradeoff between the two and also a tradeoff between equipping these items or selling them for the best weapons. Weapon variety is decent and, likewise, the abilities associated with the weapons. In addition to the weapons, you get "spells" (they are not magic), which you can only use one at a time. In terms of defense, you get three options: shield, parry, and dashing (while leaving a lighting strike behind if you get a perfect dash). Most people will probably go for parry and you can parry pretty much anything. There's also plenty of armor, but one of the worst things in the game is that some items that should be just cosmetics (like long, pink hair) serve as armor. Again on the negative side, every weapon sounds the same, no matter if you hit flesh, steel or anything else.

Which is a shame, because otherwise the sounds of the game are not bad. The somber atmosphere stands out, especially in the depths of the post-apocalyptic ruins. Don't expect big orchestras and choirs on boss fights, but expect some well-made tracks that are in line with the setting of the game. Maybe it's just me, but I thought the English voiceovers were really good, too.

The lore was more coherent than I had expected and it turns out it's a hard science fiction story, with, I'd argue, a rather original take on AI takeover. One of the endings is called "The end of the childhood", an obvious reference to Arthur C. Clarke's classic. Asimov's three laws are also referenced and I wouldn't be surprised if there are more. Storytelling is less cryptic than most soulslikes, more similar to Sekiro than Dark Souls, so, you'll likely have a pretty good idea what's going on by the end of the game. Alas, you'll likely not care at all about any of the characters. The protagonist is not silent, which is something I got excited about it the beginning, but she might well be, hardly any difference, either way.

But I'm perfectly fine with that, as I am with other things. My rating is overindulgent, but I'm willing to overlook all the shortcomings, since I greatly enjoyed it. At the time of writing this, nobody else gave it five stars and I have no problem being the first one. Well deserved.

One more thing, I've encountered no bugs whatsoever. Some reviewers complained about those, but the day one patch fixed all of them, it would seem.