Iron Danger (2020)

My Experience

Imagine you're playing a real-time tactics game with a party of two characters, and you really goof it up. You walk on a spike trap and get one of your characters impaled, while the other, at the same moment, gets hit by an enormous fireball. Although this scenario would normally be "game over," in Iron Danger you can "rewind" and try things a little differently. Therein lies the appeal of the game.

You're often up against a number of difficult enemies at any one time, but the ability to try and re-try various tactics until you're successful allows you to survive these encounters. I loved maximizing my efficiency, while learning the ins and outs of each enemy and its attacks. I especially loved the few levels in which Kipuna controls the automaton, an extremely powerful "golem" with quick and powerful attacks.

If the combat wasn't fun enough by itself, the game has a scavenging element that I very much enjoy. You can not only find oil and fuel barrels to throw out and intensify the damage of Kipuna's fire attacks, but you can find healing herbs, grenades of various types, and mushrooms that instantly recharge the abilities of the character that consumes them. When Lemichen is partnered with you, he can use found resources to create explosive, poison, and enraging (causing enemies to attack each other) arrows as well.

The only issues I had with the game were:

• It could get a little easy, especially once Kipuna gains the heal and enrage abilities. The heal allows you to complete encounters in a sloppy fashion (healing afterwards) and makes the healing herbs irrelevant. Enrage is extremely powerful, especially when coupled with Kipuna's ability to recharge your abilities.
• At one point, the exit would not appear after I killed a boss. I think this was because the boss died to a fellow enemy (due to enrage) instead of by my hand. I had to replay a 20 minute section of the game.
• The game had trouble loading my save at one point. I had to load a different save and then, once in the game proper, load my current save again.
• I could not get the "Ring of Fire!" achievement to unlock after performing the required action. This really wasn't a big deal, but it soured me on attempting to 100% the game.

Lastly, I actually enjoyed the story and became somewhat fond of the characters, even though they weren't tremendously interesting. The ending of the game sets up a compelling sequel, which will be an instant buy for me. This will likely be one of my favorite games from this hellish year (2020).