Right now, Nexon is offering a free Steam demo of its upcoming solo/co-op action RPG Vindictus: Defying Fate, but before the devs opened the doors to the public, they were kind enough to grant Massively OP early access to the alpha build.
I played the original Vindictus (itself a prequel to another MMO, Maginogi), but only briefly, and it was a long time ago. I remember it having good combat, but that there didn’t seem to be much of a game built around that combat. Based on that, I expected Defying Fate to be mildly fun but mostly forgettable. What I got was something more impressive.
My first impression of Defying Fate was that it was absolutely gorgeous. I know “pretty Korean game” is kind of a cliche, and graphics aren’t everything, but seriously, this game is breathtaking. The music is nice, too, and the world feels immediately inviting.
Like its predecessor, Defying Fate promises a large cast of playable characters, with four available to select in the alpha, all of which are Vindictus veterans. Unfortunately all are melee; given the game’s combat mechanics, I’m not sure ranged would even work, but it would still be nice to have some variety. More characters are planned to come later, so we’ll see. For the alpha, I chose Fiona, a standard sword and board warrior.
The game’s prologue is not yet implemented, instead spitting you out directly into the starting town, but it seems like the characters are at the start of their heroic journeys, so I wonder how this relates to the story of Vindictus. Kind of feels like it’s a reboot or remake.
Before you go off and adventuring, there’s a pretty lengthy sequence where you tour the town and meet all the NPCs, and here’s where perhaps my biggest surprise with Defying Fate arose: The story is actually pretty good.
It adheres pretty closely to standard tropes, at least at first, but the execution is unusually strong. The characters have well-defined personalities right off the bat, the translations are impeccable, and the voice acting is top notch, with what sounds like authentic Irish accents (at least to my untrained ear) that fit the Celtic mythology inspired setting.
I found the combination of well worn fantasy tropes and above average polish quite charming. It’s kind of like eating a cheeseburger made by a five star chef. There’s also some hints that not all is not necessarily as it seems, so while the story starts out very vanilla, I’m not sure it will stay that way. It definitely left me curious to find out what happens next.
When you’re not chatting in town, Defying Fate plays out through highly linear maps featuring small packs of trash punctuating by regular boss fights. Combat relies on comboing light and heavy attacks in precise sequences. This is something I’ve always been pretty bad at, but I did manage to get the hang of a few simple combos at least.
I was a bit concerned when I started up the game and got Steam’s “plays better on a controller” pop-up, but thankfully I found the keyboard and mouse controls quite workable once I’d rebound things to preference.
Beyond attack combos, there’s the blocking and dodging that are part and parcel of these sorts of games, but there’s no stamina, so there’s no limit to how many attacks you can avoid. The death penalty is also pretty light, merely sending you back to the last campfire with no further loss, so things are a little more forgiving than the average Soulslike. But only a little. Expect to still get mauled if you aren’t on point with your blocks and dodges.
Each character also has up to four active abilities they can unlock. The cooldowns of these are measured in minutes rather than seconds, so don’t expect to rely on them too much, but the rest of combat is deep enough that not getting to use your abilities very often doesn’t feel too bad.
Animations are flashy, and the sound effects are brutally satisfying, and overall I thought the combat was a lot of fun, at least against the weaker enemies (that’s called foreshadowing).
After a while, you unlock the ability not only to swap to other characters but also to bring one of the other playable characters with you as an NPC companion.
Companions are the one part of the game that didn’t feel finished yet. I had a recurring bug where my companion failed to spawn or disappeared for extended periods. That said, everything also about the demo was incredibly polished, to the point where you’d never know it was an alpha.
The other issue is that in the current build companions… well, they suck. They rarely block or dodge, and they don’t seem to do much damage. To be fair, I think the idea is to level and gear them alongside your main character, which I didn’t put much effort into, but unless their AI is improved, I can’t see them ever being terribly useful.
It’s a tricky balance to strike because you don’t want the companions to be too good at staying alive or they might negate the need for the players to defend themselves, but having them dying every 10 seconds isn’t great either.
There are skill trees for both individual characters and global progression, both of which are very simple. I suspect the skill trees may not be fully implemented yet because I had already unlocked about half of all possible options for Fiona and the global tree before I even finished the first zone.
You can also visually customize your characters. The way this is handled is a bit weird. At character creation you can fully customize your character’s body and skin colour, but their hair and face are fixed. Later on you can unlock different hairstyles, eye colours, make-up, tan lines(?), and for some reason individual moles, including a mole on your character’s butt. Okay.
There’s also a plethora of cosmetic outfits to unlock. Right now these are available for in-game gold, and quite cheap, but I’m not convinced that will hold true forever.
The outfits themselves are a wildly mixed bag. Some are incredibly out of place for the setting — I’m talking 21st century athletic wear — and some are extremely sexualized as you often see in Korean games, but there are also quite a few that are entirely setting appropriate and/or realistic. Good news is no matter what kind of look you like, Defying Fate probably has you covered. Every outfit is fully dyeable with an insane number of colour options, too.
While we’re on the subject of sexualization, I do feel the need to mention that the underwear on the character creation screen is absolutely painted on, and the female character models in Vindictus: Defying Fate have… um… let’s say they’re unusually anatomically correct. So that’s… weird. Not like you’re gonna notice in regular gameplay, though.
Oh, and there’s also the obligatory jiggle physics that more closely resemble the simmering primordial spawn of Azathoth than anything ever seen on a human woman. Though it’s not really noticeable if you choose a smaller bust size, thankfully.
So there’s a few small hiccups and oddities, but overall my first impression of the game was strongly positive. It’s beautiful, polished, and fun. There’s really only one big problem, and it’s as much a problem with me as with the game: I suck at Soulslikes.
I was muddling along OK for a while, even enjoying the challenge, until I got to the final boss of the initial zone, and there I hit an absolute brick wall. I tried at least half a dozen attempts, and I was not getting any better as time went along. My reflexes simply aren’t fast enough to dodge and block every hit.
I thought grinding might be a solution, but two level ups and some weapon upgrades didn’t seem to make any appreciable difference, and my fingers were starting to get sore from mashing the block and dodge buttons, so I decided to accept this was as far as I was going to get.
The good news is that Nexon did eschew the elitism usually found in this genre by offering an easy mode (though it’s available only when playing solo). The bad news is I was already playing on easy.
It’s a skill issue, and I won’t say otherwise, but I do hope the studio either makes easy easier or offers a full-blown story mode. I really like this game, and would happily sink lots of time and money into it, but I don’t think that’s going to happen at the current level of difficulty.
For what it’s worth, Nexon’s PR sheet informs me that there are two additional features I didn’t get to see by not beating this boss. One is the option to repeat previously defeated bosses for additional rewards, and the other are standalone missions you can tackle solo or with up to four other players via matchmaking.
If you’re better at this sort of game, though, Vindictus: Defying Fate should absolutely be on your radar. It is of a far higher level of quality than a spin-off of an obscure lower-mid-tier MMORPG has any right to be.
The one big unanswered question left right now is monetization. Nexon hasn’t revealed anything yet. There’s a reward track that is currently free but does look suspiciously like a battle pass, and as I said, I somehow doubt all those cool outfits are going to stay free forever.
The broad cast of characters does give me a whiff of gacha. I have the vibe that somewhere along the line there was a pitch meeting where someone described this game as “Dark Souls meets Genshin Impact,” but I’m speculating. Regardless of how it’s monetized, though, I think this is a game worth keeping an eye on.
Here’s my key takeaway: Nexon means business. This is not some trend-chasing shovelware. This is not a temport. Vindictus: Defying Fate is intended to be a serious triple-A quality contender in its genre, and from what I’ve seen, it may have succeeded.
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