Hi everyone Lunar here and welcome back, in this one im going over a 100% completion review of Atlas Fallen. A mostly open world action RPG with coop options. Now I am making this review after 100% completion, I play most games and cover guides for them and I usually get 100% of the game complete.
That gives me an opportunity for a more in depth review of the game, something most reviewers dont bother doing, so I have done everything the game has to offer and collected all the achievements, and I play nearly every game on the xbox series X.
The developers said you can do a full run of the atlas fallen in around 35 hours, my playtime was exactly 49 hours and 33 minutes, but making lots of other videos while playing means my playtime will probably be higher than yours and so expect it somewhere between 35 and 50 for getting all achievements.
Character & Difficulty
Let’s delve into character creation and the game’s difficulty settings. The character creation feature in Atlas Fallen is relatively straightforward. It presents you with a selection of 12 presets, spanning both male and female options. From there, you can make basic customizations to elements such as hair, face shape, eyes, ears, and nose. Alternatively, you can simply opt for a random selection.
While it’s true that the game’s character creation could have been more intricate to grant players a higher degree of uniqueness, my personal tendency doesn’t place significant emphasis on character customization. However, I acknowledge that this aspect might carry more weight for you.
Regarding difficulty, the game offers three options: easy, normal, and hard. Notably, difficulty doesn’t tie into any achievement rewards. Adjusting the difficulty setting enhances enemy attributes, making them more formidable adversaries. This includes increased damage output and, notably, elevated health pools. It’s worth noting that enemies in the game are already quite resilient. While there may not be a substantial incentive to select the hard difficulty mode beyond a personal sense of accomplishment, it undoubtedly intensifies each encounter. This gameplay demonstrates the contrast between easy and hard modes.
On easy, defeating an enemy might not necessitate healing, whereas on hard, employing all available healing resources becomes crucial. Successful parrying and evasive maneuvers are essential, particularly when contending with swarming lesser foes. The challenging difficulty amplifies the importance of building a robust character setup, making strategic choices even more paramount.
Story Set Up & Thoughts
This brings us to the central narrative of Atlas Fallen. The story is set in a world dominated by gods, with the malevolent deity Thelos reigning supreme. This oppressive god subjects humans to forced labor, mining a substance known as essence, which serves as the life force of the world. Consequently, the realm is predominantly desert-like and barren due to the ceaseless mining operations.
The player’s journey commences when they chance upon a gauntlet housing another god named Nyaal, a more benevolent deity. Nyaal bequeaths the player with his powers, in exchange for the player’s commitment to wield those powers against evil forces and restore the world to its rightful state.
While this outline appears rather straightforward and even cliché, with parallels found in numerous games, books, and movies, Atlas Fallen distinguishes itself. It doesn’t merely tread the path of being a clone of other titles like “For Spoken.” Rather, while the overarching theme might be a recurring motif, the game successfully hinges on its character investment and the unfolding journey.
I personally found no qualms with immersing myself in the characters and the progression they undergo. The relationships established, particularly between the player and Nyaal, feel organic and unforced. The narrative’s trajectory, from its inception to the climactic final confrontation, remained engaging throughout, fostering an enjoyable experience.
Progression Systems
This transitions us into the topic of progression, which adheres to the familiar RPG template. While your character doesn’t level up through XP accumulation, you can enhance your abilities using essence stones and unlock perks by upgrading your armors.
Essence stones, numbering over 150, constitute a core aspect of the game. These stones can be acquired by locating them in chests, as rewards for defeating enemies, or as mission incentives. They are categorized into five distinct types: Damage, Tricks, Survivability, Momentum, and Healing.
Damage and Healing are rather self-explanatory, while Tricks imbue certain actions with unique effects, such as crystallizing enemies after a successful parry. Survivability focuses on bolstering defensive attributes or erecting barriers to ward off damage. Momentum pertains to augmenting your momentum gauge, a crucial factor during combat, as it governs the activation of essence stones during battles.
It’s important to note that essence stones come in three tiers, each tier featuring one ability with accompanying passive skills. The ability to equip stones is confined to specific tiers, preventing an imbalance and fostering a need for strategic selection. Moreover, certain essence stones feature distinctive black edges, offering potent effects at the expense of introducing negative status effects.
Creating the optimal combination of essence stones for your character involves striking a balance across all five categories. However, there’s another layer to consider—your armor. Armor pieces possess unique bonuses that are unlocked when you equip a specific number of stones from a given category. This design choice, although slightly restricting in terms of essence stone selection, aims to maintain balance and forestall any one build from becoming overpowered.
Initially, I had reservations about the essence stones system. However, as I continued to play and unlock more stones, my appreciation grew. While it isn’t a system that would have incited disappointment had a more traditional skill tree structure been implemented, the essence stones’ presence adds an interesting dimension to character progression.
World & Gameplay
Let’s delve into what is a significant aspect for me, something that can either make or break a game. As someone who creates guides and devotes around 90% of my gaming time to meticulously exploring every nook and cranny, I hold strong opinions on this matter. The focal point of discussion is the map.
Initially, during my gameplay, I perceived the map as satisfactory, albeit on the smaller side. Upon fully immersing myself, completing all side quests and main missions, I reached the end at around the 20-hour mark, and a thought crossed my mind: a bit more length would have been welcomed.
However, as the story unfolds, it unveils a series of surprising expansions. A second map materializes—an underground city with distinct characteristics. Subsequently, a third, even more expansive than the initial map, emerges, complete with additional enemies, activities, and an actual town. Then, a fourth map becomes accessible prior to the conclusion, leaving me pleasantly astonished by the game’s true scope. Each map possesses a unique ambiance, ensuring that the exploration remains engaging.
Moreover, the verticality of the world adds depth to exploration, making certain areas truly captivating. The game’s lighting and atmosphere contribute to its appeal, and the inclusion of a photo mode amplifies these positive attributes.
Traversal primarily hinges on your double jump ability, bolstered by three dashes and the ability to surf the sand, which imparts a sense of speed to traversing the maps. In terms of content, the game offers main quests that necessitate extensive world exploration as you seek out upgrades for your gauntlet to progress.
Complementing these are side quests and errands, adhering to the familiar template of item retrieval and enemy vanquishing. However, some are tailored for uncovering secrets, while others unlock armors and cosmetics. The unique facet of these quests lies in their missable nature, which I found intriguing.
In the initial map, aiding the side characters is imperative, as they migrate to the second map; failing to complete their quests before they relocate results in quest failure. Furthermore, if you’ve previously assisted an NPC, you may encounter them on the new map with additional quests. This dynamic establishes a growing rapport with recurring NPCs, a touch that adds depth, as each character exudes their distinct personality.
While the majority of quests are well-crafted, a few falter in their payoff. For instance, the thief—an NPC introduced at the game’s outset—features in numerous meetings and quests throughout. Given the investment, I expected a more substantial culmination to his narrative arc. Some quests, be they longstanding or secretive, left me craving greater rewards.
In terms of exploration, the map follows a distinct Ubisoft-like formula. Activities are strewn across the map, conveniently discoverable, and they recur across all four maps. To access these, you need to attain essence stones, cosmetics, or treasure maps as rewards. If you’re not striving for absolute completion, forgoing these activities doesn’t significantly impact your experience. Personally, achieving 100% completion was within reach, though I would have preferred more variety and especially a higher count of secret or elusive items. The most captivating map activities are the watchtowers, though their numbers are somewhat limited.
During exploration, the potential to be ambushed by the Watcher adds an engaging layer. This scenario entails combatting waves of adversaries and reaping rare essence stones. While I found this concept enjoyable, its sporadic occurrence left me wanting; increasing its frequency would enhance the experience.
Combat
This leads us to the topic of combat, which, for me, stands out as the most significant concern within the game. During the initial stages of adjusting to the controls, the combat feels rather sluggish and awkward. The button combinations can be perplexing, particularly when dealing with flying foes. Maintaining hits on these enemies can prove challenging due to the delay with each attack. This delay, whose rationale eludes me, inhibits the ability to swiftly dispatch opponents—an unusual drawback for a game that otherwise boasts fast-paced combat.
However, I believe that the central issue lies with the controls. After I took the initiative to remap them, combat underwent a substantial transformation. Whoever oversaw the control scheme for the game seemingly lacks familiarity with controller-based gaming. Fortunately, on consoles, you have the option to remap all buttons except for the joysticks.
In my case, I reconfigured the buttons to align more closely with a familiar layout, reminiscent of titles like Elden Ring. Evade was shifted to ‘B’ instead of ‘RB,’ special attacks to ‘Y,’ regular and secondary attacks to ‘RB’ and ‘RT’ respectively, and the interact button was reassigned to ‘X’ instead of ‘B.’ This adjustment significantly elevated the combat experience. I recommend making these changes as soon as you commence playing.
One noteworthy issue that remains, and it’s a substantial one, pertains to the auto-targeting system. Astonishingly, target switching is accomplished via the right joystick. This design quirk becomes a persistent problem, rendering gameplay almost unplayable. Although you can deactivate auto-targeting through the menu, it still intermittently disrupts combat. This issue urgently necessitates rectification; it’s evident that the developers hadn’t fully grasped the nuances of controller-based gameplay during their design process.
Regarding the adversaries in the game, they predominantly consist of wraiths. While there is some diversity among them, their defeat generally adheres to a similar pattern. This is an area that could have benefited from greater improvement.
However, the combat isn’t quite as dire as my description might imply. There are certainly positive aspects to it. Yet, throughout my 50-hour gameplay experience, combat remained a significant concern, although I’ve grown more accustomed to it over time, diminishing its impact.
Technical Aspects
Shifting focus to technical concerns, the game runs at 60fps and 1440p on the Series X. I prefer to play with performance mode enabled and all graphical features disabled. Should you opt to activate all features and prioritize graphics, it becomes apparent that the game struggles slightly on the Series X.
I did encounter a few instances of frame drops and experienced a total of three crashes over my 50-hour gameplay journey. These crashes included one issue related to textures and another where the entire world turned black. However, in aggregate, these hiccups only amounted to around five minutes of restart time, ultimately not significantly impacting the overall gameplay experience.
Should You Buy The Game
That leads us to both the positives and negatives of the game. The atlas fallen narrative and gameplay offer an enjoyable experience. It’s easy to become invested in the characters, and the dialogue avoids unnecessary attempts at edginess. While the game might not astonish you with ground-breaking innovation, it doesn’t make claims of being a high-budget cinematic masterpiece. Despite drawing inspiration from titles like God of War and Horizon, it manages to deliver.
If you’re a fan of action RPGs, relish exploring visually stunning open worlds, tackling side quests, and honing your skills while refining your character’s build, Atlas Fallen will cater to those desires. It permits you to start and complete the game to its fullest extent without significant hindrances. Although I, personally, didn’t partake in cooperative gameplay due to my solo gaming preference, I’ve gathered from others that the cooperative mode is well-executed in the game.
I’ll acknowledge that certain aspects could benefit from more depth. For instance, the range of armor choices could be expanded or segmented into distinct parts such as helmets and boots, each imbued with unique effects to introduce greater variety. Additionally, the activities populating the map could be more diverse, and there’s room for improvement in the combat mechanics. Nonetheless, these issues aren’t prominent enough to mar the overall enjoyment of the game.
The execution of the sandy desert environment is commendable, and I found the momentum system to be a refreshing addition that sets the game apart from others in the genre. It could potentially lay the foundation for a promising franchise. In conclusion, I wholeheartedly recommend giving Atlas Fallen a try.
More Atlas Fallen Guides
- Atlas Fallen Essence Stones & Formula Locations
- Atlas Fallen Idols Locations Guide
- Atlas Fallen Treasure Maps & Where To Find Them
- Atlas Fallen Review After 100% Completion
- Atlas Fallen Elite Foes – All Enemy Wraiths & Boss Fights
- Atlas Fallen Totems – How to complete all sealing totems
- Atlas Fallen Map: World Map & All Locations
- Atlas Fallen Quests: All Missions and Side Missions
- Atlas Fallen Armor: All Armor Sets & How To Get Them
- Atlas Fallen Weapons: All Weapon Types Explained
For more useful and helpful guides, check out our Atlas Fallen Wiki where all of our guides and lists are found. Every guide has a link to video walkthroughs to help you discover everything in the game and get 100% completion including all story achievements/trophies, collectibles and secrets.
