El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

UTV Ignition Games travels outside of their comfort zone of localizing interesting games from Japan and develops a new IP from scratch to bring us El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron. The game is a beautiful entry into the character action/ platforming genre from an Ignition built team lead by Takeyasu Sawaki, acclaimed character designer on titles like Devil May Cry and Okami.  This shows from the stylized presentation and the unusual, interesting character design.

You take the role of Enoch.  Accompanied by Lucifel, who spends most of his time talking to God on a cell phone… about you, Enoch is tasked with finding seven fallen angels in order to stop a second great flood that would wipe out mankind.  That’s pretty much the story in a nutshell.  Of course,  it will take you a few chapters to understand since what’s going on can be a little confusing at first.  You also meet a young girl named Nanna along the way that plays a pretty important role in how things play out as well.   As you get deeper into the game, the story starts to make more sense and gets pretty interesting. By the time you get to the end, you may just  get pretty attached to a couple of the characters, regardless of how the look.

The characters are very Japanese in design.  Enoch, as well as all of the archangels you confront, have some crazy armor that they wear and breaks off to show damage.  Since the game has no HUD, you determine how much life Enoch and his enemies have remaining by how much armor is left on the character.  Needless to say, those who can’t get past male mid-drift need not apply.  That said, the armor that the characters wear is cool to see.   The models themselves, from a technical perspective, don’t look incredible or anything. They could use some more geometry for sure, but stylistically, there are few games that are as as El Shaddai.  Did I mention the game runs at a smooth 60 frames per second the whole time as well?

Each chapter you complete represents a level in a tower built by the archangels  and each one is very different.  From a Tron-styled area with fireworks continuously going off in the background  to a gorgeous urban city-scape where you navigate the streets, El Shaddai definitely gets the artistic and stylistic presentation right.  There are times when you will notice that the stage you are playing seems almost painted on to a piece of canvas, much like Okami which Sawaki also had a hand in.

Eyegasms aside, what’s important is the gameplay  and for the most part, El Shaddai doesn’t disappoint.  It’s not as deep as other character action games, but it feels  really good.  Melee attacks are done with a single button, however the timing of your button presses will created different combos with stronger attacks.  Holding down the block button while attacking will often launch enemies into the air, creating more combat options.  The result is a combat system with a really good mix of attacks.

To further deepen the combat, each weapon to have a different style with different combos.   The Arch is your traditional hack-and-slash weapon with average stats all around.  The Gale is Enoch’s distance option.  With it, you can attack from afar, but the attacks are weak.   The weapon  is also very fast, but Enoch’s block is really weak.  The Vale is the big power weapon.  It’s slow, but powerful and Enoch can block just about anything with it.  Each weapon also has different movement abilities as well.  The Arch will allow you to float in the air on the way down from a jump.  The Gale lets you dash and the Vale allows you to move around while holding it like a shield.

The only glaring issue with combat is that you can’t interrupt attacks.  For instance, in other character action games like God of War or Devil May Cry, in the middle of any attack, you can hit block or dodge and the attack’s animation will be interrupted and the character will dodge or block.  In El Shaddai, Enoch will finish his attack animation before blocking or dodging.  This feels pretty archaic while playing. I’m not sure if they did it to artificially increase the difficulty or if it was just overlooked, but it becomes pretty apparent early on that it’s missing.  The combat does get pretty difficult with this fault included, but the game does feature a recover mechanic.  If you “die,” you can rapidly hit the action buttons and you will recover with full health (armor) and pick up where you left off.  Think of it as playing an old school beat-em-up and when you die, you drop back right where you left off with full health.

Combat isn’t always the main gameplay focus.  El Shaddai also has its fair share of platforming, both 2D and 3D platforming.  The 2D platforming comes into play several times and is handled all but flawlessly.  Memories of playing other great platformers like Mario return while navigating the sometimes quirky 2D levels in El Shaddai.  The game also does a great job allowing you to use the advantage of each weapon during 2D gameplay.  The Gale’s dash mechanic is especially helpful.

The 3D platforming in the game is mostly on par with other 3D platformers.  One thing that I think Ignition did right with respect to 3D platforming is approaching this game with a God of War style camera where the player does not have control and the camera is placed in an out of the way position where you can see everything that’s going on.  Usually the game does a pretty good job with placement, but there are some instances where it’s just a little out of place to make the platforming seamless.  But this only happens in a small handful of places.  The good thing is that if you fall to your “death,” Lucifel just snaps his fingers and you end up on the last bit of solid ground you were on and take minimal damage.

It seems as if Ignition just wanted to make a game that was easily enjoyable  and they succeeded.  El Shaddai ends up being a new IP that is beautifully stylized and competent in all areas of gameplay.  The music is gorgeous and fits the game very well.  It’s fun to play and it’s accessible and challenging at the same time.  With a few tweaks to the combat, El Shaddai could definitely be put into conversations with other character action greats.  It’s nice to see that companies like Ignition haven’t forgotten that you can’t make a good series without a good new IP.  I look forward to seeing more from this series in future consoles and portables.