![]() Emmy is built for surprise attacks: "Foul Play" gives her bonus attacks when she attacks from an undiscovered position, and charging in dead on makes her "Panicky," reducing her evasion. Look at how characters who share the same basic class and gear are given life through their “potentials.” Fleuret Valois and Emmy Mistral are both shocktroopers-close range combatants who spray fire with high-damage submachine guns. Take a second to scroll through this fan-made personnel guide. It’s a reminder that there isn’t only one lesson to learn from a game as influential as Dark Souls, and that the world of games is bolder and broader when we diverge. Instead, I was taken by its divergences: the openness of many of its areas, its optimistic attitude, the ease and joy of its… platforming? The greatest indicator of Ashen’s strength is that, while it constantly drew on the same lineage of games, it never made me ask those sorts of questions. Is its expanded take on loot a betrayal of the focused core of the Souls gear system? How does its “ki pulse” fit into the tried-and-true, stamina-driven combat model? What the hell are these cutscenes? When I’ve played games like Nioh, I find myself running weird purity tests. That surprised me, because as a fan of the Dark Souls series, I find myself making a major mistake pretty often when speaking about the game’s legacy, and that is: speaking about the game’s “legacy.” As if there’s only one. But instead of focusing on boss strategies or character builds, I spent much of my time re-exploring old areas, lining up screenshots, and just sort of floating from one part of the world to the next. ![]() I spent 45 or so hours with Ashen, about the same that I’d spent with Dark Souls.
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