In this Nintendo Switch adaptation of an ancient Slavic legend, you take on the role of the knight Svaran who fights against the Sorcerer, a servant of the evil god Chernobog, who wants to conquer the world.
The Sorcerer has turned all the inhabitants of the kingdom to stone and kidnapped your beloved Mira, the last priestess of the goddess Mokosh. In an attempt to prevent the abduction, your body has also been turned to stone. However, the amulet that Mira gave you nullifies the curse. But only temporarily. Namely, your body is slowly dying, and the only way to prevent this is to kill the followers of the evil Sorcerer: ghouls, wraiths, and other mythical creatures, thus extending your life. And I must not forget the birds. You will hate the birds.
On this journey, you have various swords, maces, axes, crossbows, torches, and several types of bombs at your disposal.
The gameplay is a platformer hack and slash, although you have a health bar, after taking a few hits or waiting too long, with the sound of thunder, your arm will fall off, and you lose the ability to use two weapons, and soon after, you will lose your life. However, by killing enemies, your arm regenerates. Until the next time. There will be many.
The story takes you through four medieval scenarios, each with 5 levels, and each scenario ends with a boss fight. Since there are no health potions, barrels, stones, and debris will occasionally fall during boss fights, which you must break to prevent the petrification of your body.
The background is beautifully detailed and provides the experience of real medieval villages, fortresses, swamps, and mountains; you will avoid various traps, from spike-filled pits, swamp holes, bear traps, while at the same time, some can be used to your advantage, for example, you can drop some hanging weight on enemies or break a lamp that will fall and ignite them. Sometimes you will find yourself behind an object, and the camera will focus on you at that moment so you can see where you are.
The music is of high quality, fits well into the game, and is not boring, but the sound effects are quite poor: all enemies make the same sounds, and there isn't much difference whether you destroy a wooden box or hit an enemy.
The controls are too slow and unresponsive for my taste, and you feel like you slip a bit with every landing, which makes the game quite challenging at times, especially on swinging hanging platforms. The weapon swing is quite slow, and you will get hit many times while waiting for your attacks to land - which is very noticeable with bosses, and have I mentioned the birds?
Although the background is beautifully drawn, it would be good to have more interactivity with it. Sometimes the camera angle changes, allowing you to see something from a different perspective, but that's far too little for what could have been done here.
The weapons, aside from their visual appeal, don't make a significant difference, except that when you have two, you deal more damage, and you can throw one weapon, which I wouldn't recommend because you'll mostly be fighting with one hand anyway.
Crossbows and spears are good for quickly and efficiently dealing with archers and birds (again, the birds), but ammunition runs out quickly, so you need to be careful not to rush into archers unprepared because they almost never miss.
The AI of the enemies is quite low; you can jump on them and then hit them to death, and they won't react at all, but you won't be able to do this too often because they're never alone, and someone else will attack you. Also, although your attacks do some knockback, it's impossible to throw enemies into the abyss; they just fall to the edge, which sometimes prevents you from jumping up because the enemies are standing right on the edge.
Additionally, sometimes arrows will rain down from the sky that are very difficult to avoid, especially when you're rushed to cross a clearing. The game also features a large number of slopes that you'll slide down while avoiding obstacles, which becomes quite repetitive.
In each level, you can find 4 crystals of the goddess Mokosh that increase your health bar and make the game a bit easier, which isn't too hard but can be frustrating at times due to the slow controls and poor landings, and the good thing is that you have an unlimited number of lives - when you die, it sends you back to the last save point, of which there are plenty in each level. If you collect all the crystals, you unlock the true ending, but honestly, if you don't collect the crystals right away, I don't see a reason to replay previous levels to find the ones you missed because the other ending is nothing spectacular.
All in all, a solid game that could have been much better if more effort had been put into interaction with the background, more responsive controls, and sound effects. What a shame.
The Nintendo Switch version of the game was provided for review purposes by the publisher 7Levels
