Review for City of Brass. Game for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 04/05/2018 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 08/02/2019
Despite the passing of the centuries, the charm of the tales of A thousand and one nights continues to survive unchanged in the collective imagination. Stories like that of "Sindbād the sailor " and “Aladdin and the genie of the lamp” are now part of mass culture, thanks also to films, cartoons and TV series. The world of video games has certainly not failed to make its contribution: just think of the now classic series of Prince of Persia, which owes so much to that oriental fairy-tale imagination.
Genes, lamps, desires, magical words and cities full of gold that emerge from the sands of the desert: this is precisely the cultural background to which it refers City of Brass, the roguelike developed by Uppercut Games.
The game puts us in the shoes of an unnamed thief who wants to take over immense riches of the City of Ottone. The history of the City is explained to us in the short tutorial, together with the basic mechanics: a place where all citizens, even the humblest, were now very rich thanks to trade and have decided to challenge death, making a pact with the Genes . But making deals with the Spirits, you know, can lead to ruin. Now the City is cursed: armies of undead patrol its streets littered with fatal traps and gold, lots of gold.
The first-person view allows us to guide the tireless protagonist through the streets of the city, in an attempt to reach the center: we will be able to jump, cling to ledges and climb, duck, run and perform short dodges and slides. Movement is almost always fluid, save for the occasional glitch, with a style vaguely reminiscent of Mirror's Edge. We will be guided by an on-screen indicator that will tell us the direction to take to get to the gate that leads to the next level: to pass the stage we will have a time limit, usually quite permissive, indicated by an hourglass. When time runs out, lethal eddies of sand will begin to appear and damage us, often fatally.
Our hero is equipped with a standard starting equipment consisting of a whip, a scimitar and a rag suit that will offer us no protection. The set of movements of the attacks changes according to the type of weapon equipped, there are no combinations or special moves. In fact, the real strength of this City of Brass is the interaction with the environment, this is even more true in clashes with enemies. In fact, we will be able to collect and launch the many types of projectiles present on the pitch, ranging from fire lanterns and bombs to vases and vials full of poison. With a button we can also push the enemies, to make them fall on one of the myriads of traps scattered throughout the city. But all of these actions take on an absolutely different proportion when you begin to master the main tool of City of Brass gameplay, the whip.
The whip is by far the most useful and versatile piece of equipment in the game, and it allows us to perform a great variety of actions: grabbing a distant object, so that we can quickly take and use a bullet or collect a treasure; to grab an enemy, to drag him over a trap; grabbing a ring, using the whip as a rope and allowing us to quickly jump from one point to another; hit a trap to trigger it. With the whip you can also hit enemies directly: hitting them in the head will stun them for a short period of time, the hands will disarm them, while hitting them in the legs will make them fall to the ground. Not bad, right? The only drawback of the whip is the sound it produces: the snap can become very annoying after some time playing, given the frequency with which the whip is used.
The equipment can be improved through the vendors scattered in all levels, namely the Genes: they will offer us every type of service, which can be used only once per level. There is the Healing Genius, the Genius who sells weapons and armor, the one who summons mercenary spirits to protect us. The new weapons and talismans will often prove to be very useful to overcome difficulties: the only way to increase the vitality of the hero, for example, is the Talisman of Life, able to give us a heart more than the four standards. Or the sands of time (cit.), Able to give us another chance after death.
At the Genius we can also buy perks to jump higher, run faster and so on. Each Genius can be upgraded through a wish. The player starts with three wishes, and can spend them both to convert the evil Genes in the various levels to our cause, and to have access to better items and better and more expensive services from the Genie sellers.
Despite the skills that make the protagonist of City of Brass a mixture of Aladdin, Indiana Jones and Prince of Persia, dying in the streets of the cursed city is very, very easy. All kinds of traps await us, from blades poking out of the ground, pools of lava, doors that drop like guillotines and more. Each area of the city (there are four of them) has different traps, and finding out how to overcome them requires patience and a good deal of trial and error.
The enemies are a little less varied in design, and also change from area to area. Most will be former city dwellers, then killer skeletons armed with scimitars, spears or bows, or just their bony hands. As the game progresses you will encounter far more annoying wizards and large whip-wielding jailers, more difficult to defeat. The AI of the enemies is very low, but it is compensated by the quantity: there are so many, and they are everywhere.
Dying, in City of Brass, is not only easy, but also permanent. As a good roguelike in fact, every time we die we will have to start over from the first level, without gold and with the initial equipment. Furthermore, the levels we will face will be similar in design but always different, procedurally generated. However, there are shortcuts: every three levels we will face a boss. If we defeat the boss and reach the end of the level unscathed, a portal will open in the initial area to the new area, which can be activated by spending one, two or three wishes. Boss fights aren't difficult in themselves, but to get the portal you have to complete them and then exit the gate of the new level without dying, which can be anything but easy.
The difficulty of the game, however, can be adjusted through a system of bonuses and penalties (called Blessings and Charges) that can be selected before starting the game. For example, we can choose to do more damage, to eliminate the hourglass and so on. Conversely, we can make enemies more dangerous and complicate our lives even more. This allows each player to give each player the challenge they are looking for, making the game less punishing for newbies and challenging for veterans.
As for the graphics sector, theU does its job, giving us very pleasant environments and a design with a perfect style, but also able to turn on PC lower end.
City of Brass looks like a still immature product in some ways, and will certainly be filed and improved in every aspect by the very active team of developers. Despite its limitations and a certain underlying repetitiveness, however, City of Brass is a real pearl, one of a kind. A fast-paced and fun experience, in a setting halfway between Aladdin and Prince of Persia. So what are you waiting for, are you ready to run towards the heart of the City of Ottone?
► City of Brass is an Action-FPS game developed and published by Uppercut Games for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 04/05/2018 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 08/02/2019
