Last year we checked out the demo of Batora: Lost Haven. While it’s still early days, the demo showcases most of the combat system, a few puzzle scenarios, and some story aftermath of your choice. As the game gets closer to its full release, we played the latest demo to see how it went.
Unlike last year’s demo, Batora brings you one step closer to the start of a full-fledged game where you have the opportunity to roam the devastated Earth. After a bit of wandering around and creating the world, Batora takes you to a dreamland where the Guardians of the Sun and Moon proclaim you the champion. You wake up on an alien planet where you discover that the key to saving the Earth is to help all the other planets you go to.
The “fish out of water” situation is not new, nor is the position of the hero involuntarily. It’s funny how not everyone seems trustworthy. From helping your caregiver to the aliens you meet, everyone seems to be looking for their own interests, hidden secrets, and potential ulterior motives. For a game that wants to emphasize that choices always have consequences, shading other characters forces you to make your own decisions as there is no obvious good or bad path. Judging by the samples in the demo, the rest of the story could throw you some interesting characters.
The combat and puzzle-solving systems rely on color as a mechanic, as your character can have abilities given to them by the orange sun and blue moon. The puzzles are self-explanatory: your color determines which switches you press and which floors are stable enough for you to stand on. It might get more complicated later, but for now it’s easy enough to understand.
Combat is a mixture of many things. Choose the power of the sun and you will wield a great sword. Switch to the moon and shoot energy balls. Both of these abilities allow you to use the face buttons or the right analog stick on your controller as a weapon, whether it’s dodging or using special abilities like energy tornadoes or powerful sword strikes, both give you roughly the same Actions. Color also plays an important role as it determines how much damage you deal to enemies. Mixed enemies of two colors work with any weapon, but mixed enemies of only one color are vulnerable to more damage if you match them in their attack color; similarly, if you attack them with the opposite color, their health loss is also small.
One thing we’ve noticed this time around is that combat seems to be slower than before. The longer rewind time makes the swing feel slower and you’ll dodge a lot because you can’t knock the enemy down before they can counterattack. There is still time in the development cycle to fix this, hopefully the final battle seems clearer.
For those interested in playing on Steam, Batora is doing well so far. The game starts at 1920x1080p with everything else set to medium by default. The game looks clean during gameplay, but the model becomes blurry when the camera pans down during dialogue. The frame rate stayed at 60fps or so most of the time, but moving into new areas resulted in stuttering for a few seconds. Without any modifications, you can get an average of over three hours of gameplay on a machine. This is just a demo, so there’s a good chance the final game can be optimized to take full advantage of the handheld.
Batora: Lost Haven looks promising. The color changing combat adds an interesting twist, although the overall speed seems to be slower than expected. The puzzles are beautiful and simple, and the world looks mesmerizing because this perspective is mostly used in medieval fantasy, not science fiction. Having said that, the story can be fascinating. Almost every character you encounter seems to have more nuance, depending on what they may or may not be hiding. Hopefully Batora lives up to its potential when it releases this fall.