Decay of Logos (Switch) Review – Decayed to the Core

Decay of Logos (Switch) Review

Let’s just cut to the chase. Decay of Logos is bad. Like, really bad. It’s a game that attempts to take the best parts of beloved franchises like The Legend of Zelda and Dark Souls and mash them together to create a sprawling, relentless world that is just as beautiful to the eye as it is deadly. Yet, developer Amplify Creations achieves none of this, instead delivering a game that never reaches the sum of its parts, and is so woefully inadequate when compared to the games it’s trying to mimic that I could never recommend this to even the most hardcore of Zelda/Souls fans.

Decay of Logos begins by dropping the player into its world, without a single line of dialogue or text to explain to the player who you are, what you’re doing, or even how to attack an enemy. I actually enjoyed this though – being thrown into the thick of things with absolutely zero knowledge on how to survive, forcing the player to quickly figure things out for themselves. It’s an effective way to start building the connection between the player and their character, but this doesn’t last long as, within a couple of minutes, the real game begins, and we’re given a much more traditional video game-opening, complete with tutorials and cutscenes.

The cutscenes look decent enough and do a fine job of trying to tell the thinly written story, but once you grab the reigns of your character and start to explore, you’ll see that things look decidedly rough throughout your adventure. At the quickest of glances, the game almost looks like Breath of the Wild. There’s a massive landscape that stretches beyond the horizon for you to explore, seemingly filled with a beautiful sky, crisp rivers, and vibrant foliage but it’s all just bland textures, jagged edges, and enemies that are about as interesting as a prostate exam. The problem seems to be that Amplify Creations stretched themselves too thin and ended up with a world that looks okay from afar, but any up-close exploration and you’ll see just how rough Decay of Logos really looks.

Problems As Far As the Eye Can See

If the half-baked world isn’t enough to convince you this game might not be for you, I can imagine the combat will be enough to get you over the hump. There’s nothing wrong with trying to be a ‘Souls-clone.’ Plenty of games have done it to varying degrees of success. There is something wrong, however, with trying to be a ‘Souls-clone’ and making a control scheme that doesn’t work half of the time. Fans of Souls-like games enjoy them for their incredibly deep, responsive, and rewarding gameplay, but Decay of Logos utterly fails with what it’s trying to do. The biggest issue is that the responsiveness of the controls is severely lacking. I’d often hit my attack button and have nothing happen, which would leave my character standing still, wide open, and extremely vulnerable to an enemy assault. I can’t tell you the frustration I’d feel when this would happen mid-battle, especially because enemy patterns usually devolve into the same attack over and over again. Hence, the timing of your attacks is crucial.

It really can’t be stated enough just how bad the A.I. is in Decay of Logos. As mentioned, you’ll often find the attack patterns of enemies being as simple to figure out as repeatedly dodging the same attack, but it blew me away just how often I would run-up to an enemy, and they would stand there staring at me, not doing anything. These aren’t pacifist enemies, either. This will happen in the middle of a battle, and whenever it did, it reminded me of the lack of quality that was truly on display here. It’s a tough place for a game to be in, when it’s at best mediocre during the times it’s working as intended, and at worst frustratingly unplayable during the times it struggles to keep pace. I can ignore the lack of an exciting story and an excessively bland world, but when piled on top of these things is a game that struggles to play correctly, that’s where I draw the line and say this is inexcusable.

Naturally, with a game like this, bugs and glitches are bound to creep and crawl their way into your playthrough, and in Decay of Logos, they run the gamut from minor annoyances to game-breaking disasters. Pop-in, clipping, unresponsive controls, audio bugs, and so much more will all constantly pester you throughout your time with the game. Still, nothing will ruin your experience like a bug I’ve found involving your companion. There are puzzles throughout the game that require you working with your companion in tandem to, for example, open a door. The problem is that so very often, I would find that no matter what I would do, the companion would not come to me when called. There’s a puzzle involving a pressure-plate in the first couple hours of the game, and because I couldn’t call my companion over, I had to restart the game entirely. This is unacceptable, and after three or four times of this happening, I was about ready to throw my Switch out the window.

Final Thoughts

Forget this game. Move along, and pretend you never heard of Decay of Logos. It tries so hard to be something that it simply isn’t, and it leaves players with a frustrating mess of mechanics that have been done so much better elsewhere. There really isn’t any reason for someone to pick this up. If you’re craving a big, open-world to explore, literally any open-world game will be better than this. If you’re looking for a difficult, combat-based action game, literally any combat-based action game will be better than this. Some of the sound design is actually decent, and I’ve heard worse soundtracks before, but there is no reason you should be playing this game.  Get out while you can.

***Nintendo Switch code provided by the publisher***