Drifting Lands Review

Alkemi’s Drifting Lands hit PC on June 5 as an hybrid of classical horizontal shoot’em’up and action-RPG. And as I see it, the game kept its promise as a successful mashup of both genre.

Alkemi’s true objective is that creating a game which will bring RPG and shoot’em’up fans together. And, they tried to achieved this goal by creating full of action combat, randomly generated and beautifully designed levels, a decent story and loot option.

Our main goal while playing Drifting Lands is to fly the ship and carry the cargo to our planet and from our planet. But these huge swarm of robots want a piece of you really really bad.

Drifting Lands’ loot feature is a little but significant touch to the game. Killing enemies will grand you loot and as you kill more powerful enemies with a more powerful ship, the loot will be more valuable. Once you start playing Drifting Lands, you will see that a lovely ship and your first mission is waiting for you. The mission is basically to distract the enemies and kill as many as possible.

While in combat, the game offers various skills to use. These skills can be leveled up through the gameplay and will make you stronger against your enemies since they are getting stronger and stronger as you complete your missions. You can use these skills to build your defensive, offensive or scoring build. The skill tree is really improved and you can shape your combat style and your ship by choosing various skills. This skill system is mostly inspired by RPG games and you can feel it while playing Drifting Lands. There are Basic Active Skills, Advanced Active Skills and Auto Skills. Under these titles, there are various skills which you can choose and equip.

The other noteworthy part about Drifting Lands is the class system. At the very beginning of the game, you will choose your class and by doing so you will choose your ship style. There are three ship styles you can choose from and each has unique features. You will choose an Interceptor, a Marauder or a Sentiel according to your play style. Through your gameplay, you can change your ship and buy another one, but the important part is the improvements you can do on the ship. You can have more than one ship with different offensive and defensive features.

Drifting Lands offers a vast menu for us to use. By visiting Hangar, we will be able to improve and repair our ships. There are parts which are equipped with the ship like shield parts, weapons, lasers, energy cells and such. These items are also purchasable with in-game money from the market. There are various kinds of every item so you can improve your ship to something you would want to ride into a battle. While in Hangar, you can view your stash, skills, attributes and stats.

After that, there comes the Command Center. Command Center is where you pick your assignments. Drifting Lands offers ten grades of difficulties. The first mission is of course a piece of cake and later, you may want to punch the screen since enemies are coming from everywhere, and it is almost mayhem and they all have different abilities and movements. If you want to be strong enough to fight in higher grades, your ship must be improved. The game offers some free equipment for you to add to your ship, but you can also visit the market and purchase better shiny parts for your ship with your in-game money. While in combat, you can loot little gold pieces from your enemies and spend it on your ship.

On the other hand, combat is always fun and heroic. There is no doubt that things will go crazy while in combat. Thousands and thousands of evil robots attacking from every side? Well, who can say no to that!? The animations are flawless, enemies and bosses are well designed and the best part is that they are randomly generated. You can play the same level and come across different enemies while playing Drifting Lands. I must say that this is really exciting and saves the game from being dull.

While playing Drifting Lands, beautiful soundtracks will accompany you. Sometimes these soundtracks may be a little soft for a combat scene but other than that, they achieved to bilevel the soundtracks with gameplay.

When it comes to environmental design, I must say that it took me some time to get used to it. You may find depth-perception a little bit disturbing first, but after spending some time you will get used to it. While in combat, the game usually offers you various backgrounds and they are nicely designed. It is not face-melting but it is decent and I think using simple backgrounds is a good idea since there is a mayhem happening on the front.

Drifting Lands kept his promise of being enjoyable while combining 2D horizontal shmup with ARPG elements. If you are up to some challenging shoot’em’up action-RPG with swarms of enemies, then buckle your starship’s seat belt up!

Drifting Lands is now available on Steam with 20% discount and if you long for a restless space fight, visit here.

Drifting Lands was reviewed using a Steam key provided by the publisher.