Welsh here we go again!
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/67883/the-land-beneath-us-switch-review
From developer FairPlay Studios, The Land Beneath Us is a Welsh folklore-inspired roguelike that blends dungeon crawling with turn-based grid combat and has you methodically planning your every mythological move.
You awake as the Ultimate Soul Harvester 001, a robot preferably referred to as Sven, and are informed by your very own AI hal pal “Main PC” that the creator and inventor of yourself and “soul tech” (humanity’s cure-all for everything), has been captured by the lords that dwell in the underworld below, dubbed Annwn. You need to brave the deep and fight through four worlds and seven lords of Annwn to learn of “The Creator’s” fate.
Each stage you descend through on your spelunking adventure has 30 floors, broken up by a mini-boss every 10 floors and a stage boss battle on the final floor. Clearing a floor unlocks a reward, either a Relic, Weapon, Gold, or Soul Points. Each floor may have multiple doorways and a corresponding reward symbol so you can plan your route accordingly. Of course, it wouldn’t be a roguelike without an event stage that can provide a chance visit from merchants to buy or upgrade gear or relics.
You will need to be armed to the teeth to face the nightmare ahead, with relics and weapons being your main arsenal. Relics offer stat bonuses to attack or critical hit percentages or more specific use case items such as preventing death one time. These are permanent passive bonuses that, unless otherwise stated, won't be removed unless you replace them or your run ends.
Weapons tie directly to your movement. Each weapon you equip gets mapped to the D-pad, allowing you to make that attack action any time you move in the corresponding direction. Your starting weapon, a fist, can only attack the adjacent tile, but other weapons have different ranges. Guns can shoot up to three spaces ahead; some weapons, like the greatsword, have additional abilities such as knockback which moves you and your opponent one space away, or the Katana which teleports you one square behind your target. Being keenly aware of your attack ranges and what to expect from your weapon movement is crucial to success as the game telegraphs all attacks. Before an enemy takes a swing at you, you will see a glowing yellow striped grid which indicates an enemy's target area. You don’t want to be standing in it when you end your turn, so plan your movement wisely and take your time. Time does not pass until you make a movement, so you can be as patient as if you're still waiting for George R.R. Martin to finish The Winds of Winter.
You can assign multiple of the same weapon to various directional inputs, but assigning a weapon pick up to a slot that matches the same weapon will instead upgrade it. In addition to the enemies, there are hazardous tiles such as lava and spike traps, and other hazards to avoid on any given stage, adding another layer of strategy to your movements.
When a run ends, your gear is lost, but defeat does not come without its perks. Souls gathered in the underworld can be spent on permanent character upgrades that can increase your relic slot count, overall hit points, or the cost of some merchant actions, to name a few.
The gameplay wrinkles don’t stop there. Some of TLBU’s best tricks are revealed once you’ve beaten your first stage: Teleportation and Chips. One of the game's earlier frustrations is that you can end up finding yourself in quite the bind, stuck between enemies requiring multiple attacks to defeat and with no movement options that don’t just leave you wide open–teleportation removes that issue. During a stage, you can queue this ability up and within a limited distance get out of a bind, after which it goes on cooldown.
Next up is Chips. Just as addictive as Mark Messier’s favorite potato-based snack, these are much like call signs from the Helldivers series. You can equip various abilities in the hub area and bring them into the depths. Abilities such as a heal or a fireball that, once you’ve completed the correct directional input, launch that ability in your chosen direction. Truly a game changer, though the mechanic does take some getting used to. Unless you're paying close attention, you can end up triggering these effects accidentally, but that's never much of a burden—more of a happy accident, and for anyone looking over your shoulder while you’re playing, you, of course, meant to do that.
Lastly, when you defeat a stage boss for the first time, you will get an upgrade point to put towards Main PC or Arawn (a second NPC who arrives in your home base). Upgrading between the two can unlock multiple endings, so choose carefully.
The visual style of TLBU is quite attractive; the chunky pixel graphics in a 3D environment accented by popping neons look wonderful on the OLED Switch screen. Sound design is fitting, with looping tracks that neither stand out nor get in the way. Everything works quite nicely as a package. Happily, I didn’t run into any glitches or performance issues during my playtime.
Overall, The Land Beneath Us sports huge replay value and strategic roguelike gameplay that can be challenging but immensely rewarding. I would highly recommend any fans of the turn-based roguelike genre to take a look underfoot at The Lands Beneath Us.
Topic: The Land Beneath Us (Switch) Review (Read 829 times)
