Reports of the mid-budget game’s death have been greatly exaggerated. They’re generally now something you have to more actively be on the lookout for, but there are still plenty of them with all the same hallmarks cynics’d have you believe we don’t get anymore – navigation by way of unique geographical landmarks as opposed to UI widgets, obtuse systems you only learn the inner workings of by throwing yourself into the deep end, visual design and mechanics strange enough to ward off the easily disoriented and more. Few games in recent memory exemplify it all better than this.

While that clip works a rough vertical slice of what you can expect from Clash’s combat, its little nuances aren’t immediately obvious at a glance. The way its blocking system works feels especially distinctive from other action games with parries, temporarily slowing down the enemy you block almost like a localised version of Witch Time, but key to the balance it strikes between complexity and accessibility is how it lets you cancel any light punch at any point into one of a special attack, jump or dodge. It’s a narrow but malleable core which enables a bunch of playstyles simultaneously; you can help speed along Zenozoik’s death by manipulating these mechanics to absolutely wombo combo its denizens, be less committal and whittle them down while dodging away and luring them into each other’s attacks, focus on filling Pseudo’s attack gauge to spend as much time in his superpowered first person mode as possible or take any number of other approaches. Chuck in unlockable combat styles you can find through exploration (complementing its revamped, Bloodborne-inspired level design) alongside some light moveset customisation and you’ve got the type of game you’ll be reloading saves before boss encounters just to replay them differently, this all being before you get into modifiers brought about by the Ritual.

This is essentially an in-universe dice game that you can challenge bosses to before the fisticuffs start, during which the pair of you offer up an artifact to either somehow alter the fighting area, debuff one’s opponent or introduce some other advantage to one’s side depending on who has the most dice remaining by the end. The effects can get pretty creative, thick fog rolling in and obscuring your vision in exchange for causing enemies to swing blindly at whatever’s nearby being a suitably chaotic standout, though my favourite has to be the paired Pact and Summon artifacts. Winning the Ritual with the former active lets you store the boss you’ve beaten as an ally which you can then summon to help you by upon winning a second game with the latter equipped – if you stack up enough of both, you can essentially turn an unusual beat ‘em up into an even more unusual version of Pokemon, pitting cannibalistic mushroom men against tripedal bright blue elk with faces growing out of their chests and all manner of other weird and wonderful mercenaries I’ve no idea how these guys’ concept artists dreamt up. It does sometimes feel tedious that there’s no way to forfeit the Ritual once you’ve challenged someone to it, but it’s a worthwhile exchange for the sheer variation it enables in combat encounters. It’s everything I mentioned in the first paragraph dialled up to 11, fostered by an almost totally optional minigame. How cool is that?

I’m already predisposed to love any fictional world conceptually bizarre enough to feature something like this as its sole governing law, but it helps that it’s got the art direction to match. It’s one thing to be able to point your camera anywhere in a game and have a new wallpaper on your hands, another entirely both to craft such a genuinely alien environment and render it consistently readable without anything resembling objective markers. It’s perplexion with a purpose: it’d have been much easier to just let the player’s map or some other immersion breaking visual cue do all the thinking for them, but instead, the environmental artists and modellers gave it their all and went the extra mile to make this nutcase’s fever dream a believable place you’re expected to organically learn the lay of. Their creativity even benefits the enemy design in a way – certain opponents not having a particularly big or varied moveset is offset at least a bit by how you can never really be sure how something as uncanny as a technicolour lion with the face of an elderly man (for example) is going to attack. It easily joins hands with Bayonetta Origins and Inkulinati on the podium of some of 2023’s most unique visual design, none of which received any industry recognition in this regard because why would those with large platforms ever try to raise awareness of anything actually interesting?

How or why any given game flies under the radar varies too much to pin it on a singular cause, it’s just a particular shame that it’s happened in this case because of the extent to which Clash is stuffed with things people commonly claim to want. It might sound like a hodgepodge of disparate ideas when you’re just reading about it, but to me there are clear throughlines connecting all of its esoteric mechanics, outlandish art, intimidatingly loopy level design and litany of music I can’t do justice to with words – a willingness to be different and respect for the player’s intelligence. You can only put so much stock into how a game’s number of plays correlates to its actual popularity on a site where Gravity Rush 2 has more than Starcraft and Minecraft has only about three times as many as a Yakuza game, but only managing double digits even in a place of relative enthusiasts wouldn’t seem to bode well for its prospects (or, at least, as well as something with these traits deserves).

That’s why I challenge you, whoever’s reading this, by the One Law: please take a chance on this game you may have missed. They don’t make them like this anymore, except when they do! And when they do, you’ll be reminded of how much we could still do with more games like it.

Clash is a 3rd person fist fighting soulslike that doesnt have much depth to its mechanics. The combat is simple yet can be more in depth if you want it to by mixing up your four different attacks and being very reactionary with your opponents.

The part of the game I enjoyed the most was the ritual system. Opponents being scattered throughout the map that follow The One Law(TM) and force you to partake in a ritual before combat that adds an effect to the fight and can sway it in whoevers favor. Both parties submit an artifact that does X effect, then a roll of the die and some pieces that influence the sum of die on the board, the highest sum wins and gets to use this artifact. Plus you can get more dice and ritual pieces for this game to give yourself an edge. It kept the game interesting to me.

The game follows the recent gaming trope of "grizzled older man with bright eyed child" trope and it does it very well. My main complaint about it is that in certain areas the boy gets VERY talkative and repeats the same 2-3 lines. In order to prevent him from spam talking, you have to buy clothes for him so those areas wont bother him anymore. This is a bad mechanic, please no one repeat this.

My biggest gripe with the game is the map and traversing. It complicated as fuck!!!! There are so many twists, turns, ups, downs, doors, bridges, holes, ledges, etc that make every pathway just become noise and mix together. There is not a detailed map, just a big generic one with no details. Its a shame because I love exploring areas and there is a lot to explore, plus it rewards you for exploring! But it stopped feeling worth it that after running around looking at every nook and cranny, then being lost for half an hour trying to find the way to go! For the last 1/3 of the game I just ran down the main paths and avoided side paths because I hated having to run around in circles until i found the main path again. Plus for the record, it is not clear WHAT the main path is, you just gotta take the best guess you can or find out where to go by accident. It just really dragged the whole game down and lost it major points to me.

The game has a beautiful and unique artstyle! Every creature design was weird and original. With most designs being a fucked up version of a humanoid animal, to the main character looking like a hotdog from Sausage Party that rolled around in cat hair. Plus the soundtrack is pretty decent.

This game was an enjoyment for a good portion of it, there were quite a bit of frustrations though from what I mention aboved and some bugs that caused me to lose progress a few times.

I do recommend this game but be warned. It is definitely not for everyone.

THE sleeper hit of 2023.

The fact that this series got a third entry this many years later, and it's so GOOD, just boggles the mind. This is the evolution of those games on like, pretty much every level. There NEED to be more games like Clash. (Though there's still money in more first person brawler/beat-em-up games like the originals. Someone should make that!)

Third person in-depth high skill ceiling martial arts combat games are the way to go! And this being one didn't stop it from both having an incredible visual style, and a narrative that made me think a lot about it afterward despite being so simple!! I cried over a beat-em-up's story!!

And the main character is freakin' ugly!!!

And the lunging double fist punch STILL looks really dumb!!!!

...I REALLY think more people should be fans of this.

Presentation - The game has a stunning art style that I can't really do justice with words, along with equally beautiful music. Its honestly one of the game's strong suites.

World Design - To talk about the open world briefly, its one of those worlds you appreciate more over time as you play the game; the interconnected of the world is just real neat and it feels rewarding exploring Zenozoik.

Writing - The game's narrative has some shockingly good high points and doesn't really have any big low points to hold it back. Probably one of the things I was shocked the most by.

Gameplay - There's a lot to talk about, but I'll be brief. As far as the good, the combat is really, really fun and sort of feels like a mix between a Souls-like and a fighting game. There's a lot of fighting styles to choose from and customizable moves, that once again make you feel good for exploring the world, however that is not to say I don't have critiques. For one, I find the camera to be the clunkiest part of this game; there's just way too many moments in fights, particularly in tight rooms, where it feels like I'm fighting the camera. I'm not sure what could've been done, but it did feel like a shortcoming. Secondly, I ran into a number of bugs where the repetitiveness of those bugs made me feel there was a lack of polish, the most offensive of these being a bug I found twice where in Pseudo's double kick special, he'd just start doing the kick indefinitely without stop. Notably, though not a gameplay bug, there was a moment in the final, final boss where Pseudo's head wildly stretched out twice. The experiences here are different from my friend who doesn't have nearly as many bugs.

Basically, if you want a bite sized game (like about 20 hours) that offers you a lot of ways to fight, is visually impressive, and can surprise you with its endearing writing, Clash: Artifacts of Chaos, is more than worth it. The polish in some areas and some shortcomings with the camera hold it back for me, but its still a great time.

This installment of Clash changes from first person pugilism to third person. It is also now a soulsish mechanics and a father/son story. It keeps the fun world design ACE Team always brings.

Let's just get to the combat, a little button mashy, but can have some depth to it. There is your basic 4 string combo, a hold heavy attack, a dodge, 3 distinct dodge+attacks (forward, left/right, backwards), and a jump forward attack. There are a bunch of different Fighting Stances that change your animations/damage scaling/properties of your attacks. All attacks are loosely the same thing, like the back dodge attack will always dodge back, then lunge forward to attack, but some are multihit or whatever. You have 2 slots to change between equipped stances, and 3 slots for special moves on the Y button. Stuff like Shoryuken or a teleport forward (if you get hit while doing this the game WILL stop recognizing movement inputs unless you die/reset). Once you get used to your stance you pick, it can feel really good just stringing combos together to knock around the shit outta enemies. Or even get long damage strings on bosses without getting it from including dodge attacks, it kind of rules.

There is also a special meter that fills up and once you unleash it you will go into a first person mode. You have to do enough damage in a limited time and you will unleash a canned animation high damage super on the enemy you activated it on. I found this mode to be very annoying on boss enemies because you can get hit out of the super by a bunch of attacks and it is a waste of meter. Just made me mad everytime it happened.

Before most fights against sentient enemies, you can invoke The One Rule. It is a game of Yahtzee where you roll dice onto a mat. Whoever hast he highest can innact the artifact they picked to the fight. Artifacts buff whoever won with numerous things like summoning an extra ally, causing enemy to cramp, a free hit, etc. After you roll, you can use Tchaks to affect yours or the enemies die. You can half them, subtract from the total, or other things in various shapes. The idea is kind of cool, and I like the strategy with the Tchaks, but it is also heavily rng dependent. You could just roll like shit and the enemy could roll great, or all you die could land close to eachother, or in a line, or in 1 quadrant for the enemy's Tchak to just obliterate you. You also don't really need to play the game by the halfway point I think cause you will be able to just beat them up without any help, and they can't have any buffs cause you didnt play it.

The exploration is kind of cool, a little tedious cause there is a daytime/nightime versions of the map. In the night you play as a like a "dream" you and there are "dream" enemies. There are thorned bushes that only the dream form can go through and you need to go through them to open them up for the day mode. Along with Night Time variants of the bosses and armor you can only find at night, there is a lot of exploring the same areas twice over.

There is also a bunch of pickupables everywhere, things like crafting materials. They don't have highlights so its a lot of spamming the pick up button while exploring, not very optimal I think. Some materials are used for trading merchants, no currency, just trade items for them to craft the stuff. The other stuff is used for mixing your estus's so their heals are actually good and maybe have a buff.

The story is a classic father/son adventure thing. Pseudo meets a boy, everyone wants the boy for his powers, Pseudo decides to protect him. I like Pseudo's voice actor, just a good voice. There is some connection to the previous Zeno Clash games, but idk what they are cause I can't remember the first game besides 1 character that shows up; and I didnt play the 2nd game.

Overall, I think it is kind of a messy game, but its definitely cool.

Being more ambitious and realized than its predecessors, Clash: Artifacts of Chaos exceeded my expectations as the third installment in the Zeno Clash series. A self-contained spinoff gives ACE Team a clean slate to work with. This allows them to introduce new characters and conflicts that are more fleshed out.

You can choose to fight the henchmen at Gemini's Palace before obtaining a single Great Shield Artifact, giving you the freedom of nonlinear progression in such a tightly designed world. I love everything about the world.

An online coop mode was planned during development which would've been enabled through Pseudo's dream world. Unfortunately, it was scrapped, so the dream world serves no purpose aside from creating roadblocks.

I feel like some mechanics exist as window dressing. Giving the Boy cold protection clothing or a respirator mask does nothing and is merely flavor text.

There are minor bugs that are inconsequential for an indie developer as small as ACE Team.

An update released which addressed quality of life fixes and a New Game + mode.

I just wish the game was called Zeno Clash: Chaos or something like that. "Clash: Artifacts of Chaos" sounds like freemium shovelware garbage you'd find on an app store somewhere. Seriously, no one even knows this is related to Zeno Clash. It sucks because this game is truly special and it deserves more attention

Estava ansioso por esse game e de fato é um bom jogo.
O gráfico é muito bonito. A trilha sonora é uma das melhores coisas do jogo, simplesmente muito foda. O combate é maneiro troca de porrada mesmo. Os personagens principais (Pseudo e o Passarinho) muito bons juntos. O FINAL É ANIMAL mas como nem tudo são flores esses estilo de "mundo aberto" meio sem muita marcação tipo um darksouls que te soltam pelo jogo e "vai na fé" não me agradam muito.

Recomendo é um jogo diferente e muito bem feito, com uma historia muito boa e filosófica