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They're not obscure games by any means nowadays (thanks Iron Pineapple for missing the point of the games), but Shadow Tower Abyss along with King's Field 4 are truly the pinnacles of FPS dungeon crawlers, especially Shadow Tower Abyss. As Don Quixote loses his mind thrashing against the horrors of reality, finding solace in fantastical realms of dragons, wenches, and false mistresses, the player character descends into slow encroaching madness, a world of twisted branches, unknowable darkness, crooked bones and limbs, desolation, isolation, a world hidden from the gaze of God. A vision of death and depravity from Comte de Lautremont. A gnarled, malformed monument of the nebulous space above come crashing down into our blue marble. Shrinking away from the Sun's incandescence, it finds strength in the dirt, in the flesh of the Earth. A nameless man falls deep into this beast, a guide worships on his knees. The last light of the known world above dies out as this young man is swallowed whole into this antediluvian dark, thick and impenetrable. The sounds of creatures beyond human imagination lurk around every corner, inside every crevice, every crack. May it please Heaven that the reader, emboldened and become of a sudden momentary ferocious like what he is playing, may trace in safety his pathway through the desolate morass of these gloomy and poisonous halls. For unless he is able to bring to his playing a rigorous logic and a spiritual tension equal at least to his distrust, the deadly emanations of this game will imbibe his soul as sugar absorbs water. That is until you take like ten steps forward in the dark and get your soft little baby head crushed by an instant kill statue that comes at you faster than a New York minute. Thank you, FromSoftware, it's like a slap from an abusive lover, thank you. I'm hooked already with what this game is putting down. I always loved and preferred FromSoftware's pre-Demon's Souls output (exception to Armored Core which only got better with time) and this is no exception. I want you to understand that I have been playing this game off and on since 2018, I only beat it November of last year. Every time I would go through it, I would stop somewhere around the Scouring Rush area. About 4 times, I dropped Shadow Tower Abyss. Most would assume that a bad sign for this game. Complete opposite, I would start it up, forget where I was and just easily and happily restart the game. It is THAT easy to pick up and go. The combat is just so MEATY, I fucking adore it and the pacing it has. It's not lumbering, it doesn't feel like molasses, it's not fast and hyper. It's methodical and precise, every swing lands with a wet thud, a squelching stab, or a gushing slice. Dismember these rancid little creatures as you make your way through this god forsaken tower. Pick up memories and last moments of those before you, dried blood splatter on knife handles, hastily don some old armor, trying to ignore the deep gouges on the chest of it. Keep your hands from shaking as you try to land a bullet in between the eyes of some godless thing lurching towards you. There is rarely any music to calm you or frighten you. All that is there is you, the dead silence and the rustling of grass behind you, the plodding footsteps of something in the deep dark, screeches and moans from beyond the veil. Make friends with the walls and floors, every beautiful brick, every gorgeous rock, every swaying blade op grass as the wind caresses your skin and brushes your hair past you. Stare a little too long at Auriel/Rurufon. Let the arms of Shadow Tower Abyss wrap around you and lose yourself in it. Until it just gives you a fucking assault rifle, an uzi and a fucking rocket launcher and you begin blasting knees off and disintegrating little demon creatures into dust. I love you, Shadow Tower Abyss.
Fuck the Dense Fog area though.
Fuck the Dense Fog area though.
