Immortal Planet Review

Immortal Planet is a souls-like, challenging RPG action game developed by teedoubleuGAMES in which you play as an “immortal” (You don’t say!). The main objective is to learn the mysteries of the planet where everybody was cursed to an endless death/reborn cycle. And you have to fight your way through enemies and bosses to uncover the story.

Unfortunately, Immortal Planet offers very little to the player (unfortunately). I will try to be as objective as I can. The game itself is pretty interesting. First of all, let’s talk about the positive sides of the game. Despite everything, this is an Indie game. So we like it… Moreover, the artwork looks pretty good. An old school, simple, isometric game with a minimalistic design. Pretty good… It doesn’t disturb the player.

Sound effects are ok. They are not the best, and they are not that bad either. Controls are pretty easy and combat system is fairly simple for a challenging game like this. These were my initial thoughts. Until I realized that the challenge was not about any mechanic or any implemented feature…but the game itself was a challenge. It’s pretty challenging to have fun actually…

The combat system is simple but challenging. Dark Souls lovers should have good times playing this game. But it can be unforgiving if you are not patient enough. You understand it as soon as you start your first combat.

A new keyboard/mouse killer.

As for the other side of the medallion, there are some issues I’d like to point out.

The game starts with a character “creation” page. After you chose between 3 different weapons and abilities, you create your character, that’s it. Other than these, you do not have any chance to make any changes on him. Which is fine as it is an isometric action RPG game and it wouldn’t make a huge difference if you had the chance to customize your character or not.

The differences between weapons are not clearly provided if you ask me. No matter what I did, I was not able to feel comfortable about using the unique feature of any weapon. This might be a problem about me. After all, I don’t have the right to blame the developers for my incompetences. But even if it’s the case, game tells you so little about what to do or how to do it that you can’t keep yourself away from feeling lost. After killing the first boss, I still had no idea what I was doing with my weapon and my skills.

Main features

As for the combat, it is pretty hard and challenging. Which is nice for people who like games like Dark Souls. But the main problem is that you never feel confident. Heck, you don’t even get the feeling of achievement after killing bosses.

You can do two things as defensive maneuvers: block and dodge, which can be improved by the initial items you choose or the other items you get from NPCs. On the offensive, you change your weapons style by “awakening” it which supposed to have an impact on your combat but as the instructions were not so clear, I didn’t have the chance to see the difference between them. But by combining dodging, blocking etc. you can stun your enemies (or get stunned in the process), throw them from edges to kill them quickly, (or fall down from the edges to start over), or you can simply bash them between their attacks (or get bashed by them when you are stun locked).

No matter what, you either walk backwards, waiting for an opportunity to strike back or stun them and smash your mouse. I cannot say that the combat system is satisfying. On the contrary, even for a game which was meant to be challenging, combat system, movements, animations etc. feel so sluggish that they become annoying after a couple of minutes.

The story

There is no lore based introduction, or any introduction at all. The story seems interesting but even after spending hours on learning the combat system and trying so hard to kill the first boss, you do not learn anything at all! After 2 hours of sluggish combat and mental breakdowns, I ended up getting a quest like thingy from a frozen archivist. Nothing else! It gets better and better, of course. But the initial feeling is not enough if you ask me. You feel like playing a hack’n slash game with no story at all.

I already told that the sound effects were ok. But when it comes to the music, I try hard to keep myself from asking: “Which music?”. Immortal Planet fails on attracting players with sound effects and especially with the music. Either during combat, or out of combat, you do not hear anything other than the sound effects. The ambient music is not distinctive. The boss fights have music during the combat. Which is a nice change. But a huge change. When the combat starts, you suddenly understand that there is something special going on because the game decided to play some music to you…

All in all, what I want to say is that Immortal Planet is NOT a bad game. It deserve attention, that’s for sure. But the developers need to take the idea and improve it. Then it can become a really good game. With more attention to the details, and a little changes on here and there, this game would be a hit.

But in any case, if you like challenging games, and if you don’t mind helping an indie studio, you should try it.