Fans of the Tales of series will likely find the combat to be quite familiar, considering Kiro’o Games themselves cited it as a major inspiration. I’d also say there’s a bit of Vanillaware present, with some battles feeling like something out of Dragon’s Crown or Muramasa: The Demon Blade. Battles in Aurion take place in a separate, smaller environment against a collection of enemies, sometimes with a few platforms or uneven terrain thrown in. Enzo can do quick attacks with his sword and a harder knockback move, both of which can be done in mid-air. He can also block with a giant spear or dodge through enemies and attacks. There are also a few small spells he can use not tied to his Aurions. Dodging and blocking depletes stamina though, so don’t rely on it too much. Enzo can use various hot button items, which refill either his health, stamina or Aurion points. Said Aurion points are used when Enzo summons one of them in battle, of which he can equip four. He can also use the Aurion combination system to activate ones he doesn’t have equipped, in case you enter battle with a bad set of Aurions.
While active, Aurions slowly drain AP but allow Enzo to use a couple special attacks, which tend to have a longer range and do way more damage than regular attacks. While the point cost stacks up fast, Enzo can use items for that or recharge his AP during battle. Once they’ve leveled up the Aurions not only get stronger, but unlock a powerful super move which charges up during battle. There’s a fair amount of variety to these attacks and, since Enzo can switch Aurions at any time (provided he has the AP for it), it allows for a wide variety of combos to neutralize or air juggle multiple enemies.
But where is Erine in all of this? While she has her own HP/AP/Stamina to worry about, she functions like an assist in a Marvel vs. Capcom game. She has three equippable moves, most of which are designed to either heal Enzo or damage, knock back and/or neutralize multiple enemies. She can summon walls of lightning, pillars of fire, sheets of ice and the like. Since she has battle stats like Enzo, items work on her as well. At one point a third person joins the party and they can be summoned to perform attacks too. The only limits for the ways to approach and mow down enemies are their elemental resistances and the player’s imagination.
Outside of battle, Enzo can change up Aurions and abilities. As he levels up he also unlocks passive skills, which can be equipped while sacrificing a few AP points. Being able to move while blocking, or recharge both AP and stamina are just a couple examples. Erine also levels up, which strengthens her bond with Enzo and allows her to not just access more spells, but do things like use more than one at a time. Being able to knock enemies away from Enzo while healing him proved quite useful in Aurion’s last few sections. What I also liked was that by learning the game’s mechanics I could proceed at my own pace and, as a result, I didn’t feel the need to grind at all in my playthrough.
As for those enemies, I had the feeling about eight hours in that I’d seen the creative limits of the types of enemies to fight. Fortunately that wasn’t the case. Enemies charge at Enzo with swords or bare fists, hang back and toss axes or spells, or fly around and dive bomb him. Some of them can do more than one, so running away for a bit typically doesn’t give enough time to fully recover. That’s especially the case as the enemy count per encounter rises in the latter half of the game. All of this together creates a fast-paced combat system which becomes more and more dynamic as Aurion progresses.
I thought at first that the controls would be too complex to handle all of this. Somehow, Aurion manages to pull it off with a little simplicity and a little extra direction. Erine’s moves and item use are tied to holding the left trigger and pressing the control stick or a hot button. In other words, it’s largely the same as controlling Enzo, just with a trigger held down. Even the third attacker is controlled with a couple face button commands while holding the left trigger. Prompts for each special move are listed in the on-screen HUD, with flashing visual cues for when certain stronger attacks are ready to use. Enzo’s movement, in the air or on the ground, is fluid and responsive, making platforming simple. My one problem with the controls is that Aurion is designed with a keyboard or Xbox controller in mind. There are no prompts for a PS4 controller, which is what I ended up using, so there was the mental hurdle of adapting Xbox inputs to a Sony controller.
The framework of the game is solid, for the most part. Occasionally Aurion doesn’t handle certain situations well because of “what if” scenarios. For example, what if Enzo gets in a battle near a swinging blade? Every once in a while after a battle, Enzo will spawn right in its path and he’ll take damage. What if the enemies Enzo is about to fight are really aggressive? Enemies spawn in before the battle screen completely loads, so sometimes they’ll launch projectiles before the player can see what’s going on. The one saving grace is that Enzo can be moved or Erine can be summoned in that time, but the player shouldn’t be expected to react to attacks before knowing they’ve happened.
Where Aurion really stumbles is in its presentation. Sound in Legacy of the Kori-Odan is something I need to break down to properly get across its shortcomings. In a vacuum the voice over clips are passable at worst and quite good at best. In a vacuum the music, while I won’t be humming tunes from the game after playing it, does a solid job complementing the on-screen action and environments with distinct African instrumentation. In a vacuum the sound effects are impactful in battle and appropriate enough out of it. Together they illustrate one of Aurion’s bigger problems: audio balance. Throughout the game the music overpowers everything else. In battle Enzo’s attack calls and the sweeps, shocks and swings of various elemental abilities get drowned out by the battle themes, which aren’t that loud to begin with.
Another problem is with the dialogue. Aurion was made in French first, then translated to English, or at least that’s what I’m guessing based on the images in the tutorials all having French text. While there’s little that gets lost in this linguistic game of telephone, there are a number of awkward sentences, typos and words without spaces between them. It’s not uncommon to have words spill out of text boxes or stray bits of code accidentally show up in conversations. It happens often enough that it distracts from an otherwise interesting narrative.
Then there are the visuals. Aurion is a lovingly drawn and rendered game, heavily utilizing frame-by-frame animation. It’s bright, colorful and loaded with eye-catching environments and flashy attack effects. The cutscene battles tend to run at a lower framerate, but the rest of the game runs smoothly in battles and running through towns… most of the time. Every once in a while some kind of lighting or water effect causes the game’s framerate to tank. How bad is it? I couldn’t give a number in frames per second; I’d have to do it in seconds per frame. I had to navigate through a screen or two of some towns with the framerate dipping to three seconds per frame. I can count on one hand the number of times it happened, but I can’t overlook that it happened.
All in all, I spent over 15 hours going from Zama to the farthest reaches of the game’s world and back. It’s extremely ambitious for Kiro’o Games to dive into the deep end with a game of this scope right off the bat, even with the framework they built up from years prior. Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan is a game which shows tremendous heart and dedication to making a legitimately fun and beautiful game, but also some of the pitfalls of a developer’s first big title. That said, in spite of the technical issues, I do recommend playing Aurion. It’s available right now on Steam for $14.99. For those who want more of the lore behind the game, there is also a comic which delves deeper into the game’s events.
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Review copy provided by publisher.
