Fallen Tear: The Ascension - PC Review

Fallen Tear: The Ascension by developer and publisher CMD Studios and publisher Holysoft GmbH—PC(Steam) review written by Richard with a copy provided by the publisher. 

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes 

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Welcome to an adventure across the land of Raoah! Help guide Hira on this metroidvania quest across a land that is being choked by corruption. Can you help Hira return peace to Raoah with the help of the companions he meets along the way, or will the world fall into desolation? Only you can help out in Fallen Tear: The Ascension!

Fallen Tear is a beautifully crafted metroidvania title filled with a lot of character. From pretty graphics to solid soundtracks, it’s obvious that a fair amount of care was put into Fallen Tear. Fallen Tear has an interesting combat system directed by how you assign upgrades. It also features a fairly unique bond system where you can bring different allies with you to provide both passive and active effects. Combine these two and there’s a lot of customization for your combat and exploration.

Let’s start out talking about the world of Raoah and our protagonist: Hira. Hira has grown up in a small village with his mother and brother. One day, when he is taking the test to become a hunter, a profession of monster slayers, his town is attacked by demons. Hira then comes across a woman named Runa who tells Hira his fate is to seek the gods to ask them for answers to his questions. Needless to say he has to reach them first, which is easier said than done.

As a metroidvania title, Fallen Tear is very exploration heavy, and there are a number of abilities and upgrades to earn to help you reach new places, as well as one of the better systems to incentivize exploration. Ability upgrades are primarily earned through Ascension skills. These skills can be earned by exchanging points in your main hub area. When you first check out the upgrades you can select between different moves. I’d suggest unlocking from left to right if you aren’t confident in your abilities, but you can choose whichever you wish. As you get more points you’ll be able to unlock more abilities. These points are earned every time you meet a new companion and recruit them to your cause.

Now is when I’d like to introduce you to an interesting core mechanic of Fallen Tear: fated bonds. Basically, as you explore the world of Raoah, you’ll come across NPCs who you can ask to help you out. Sometimes you just need to ask, and sometimes they have a task for you to fulfill. Once recruited they show up in the Temple of Oras, your de facto base of operations, and you can bring them along with you on your journey. Each time you recruit someone to your cause you earn one of those points needed for ascension skills.

But that isn’t all that they’re useful for! See you can equip up to three friends to bring with you. These friends can be swapped out at the fast travel nexus points, but they all have an active and passive affect. Active consumes SP and will generally be a form of attack to enemies nearby, while the passive effect can be a number of different things, some helping with exploration. I will bring your attention to my favourite partner: Altapi. Her active skill is really useful in combat, which I will cover a little later, but her other abilities light up dark locations (yes you’ll definitely want that) and you will have a glowing pulse when near a hidden passage. Super useful for exploration, and competent in battle is a great combo. Some other characters may give you stat boosts or an increase to damage from certain attack types.

Bonds can also be upgraded, improving the bonus from their passive and permanent abilities as well as increasing the damage of their active skill, or the affect it has. Bond level increases are earned by hitting certain benchmarks for in-game goals. Some may be tied to map exploration and combat goals, some could be for acquiring a certain number of collectible items, visiting a set number of locations, or even one greedy bugger that just wants all your money. Once you meet the upgrade criteria you can fork over a grand in currency to upgrade their bond.

Fallen Tear gives you a lot of freedom with what you can do. Basically after the tutorial-like areas you’re told “here are your main goals, now go do whatever while achieving those”. I often bounced between different areas while exploring and didn’t really go straight in one direction. I’d head left on the map and clear an area, then head back to the temple and go right and clear an area, maybe I’d go up on the map next. I think this is probably going to be a sticking point for some people, but you’re literally given free reign over what order and how you want to complete your tasks with very little direction other than knowing where the gods you are looking for are. You don’t HAVE to make it through the super rough area that you’re probably underequipped for, but you still probably can. You almost assuredly won’t be able to collect everything on your first go, but you can still get through the area.

A really handy thing they’ve done for exploration is the ability to take screenshots and attach them to your map as self made markers. They appear as little nodes and when you hover over them a picture appears. This is so incredibly useful for remembering areas of interest and what you needed to do there that I’m willing to overlook some of the other minor exploration hurdles in the game. I’ll warn you now, while I did thoroughly enjoy the environments and the exploration, it wasn’t always…super cohesive. I have a particular umbrage with the wind city. No, not the underwater segment surprisingly—that I didn’t hate—but the wind city of spinning blades of migraine inducing platforming certainly wasn’t great. So what is my issue you ask? Well, it turns out that the camera will sometimes zoom out to give you a better view, or move in a direction to help prepare you for future platforming. In an area where touching a spinning blade sends you back to the start of the platforming segment, you can imagine my frustration when the camera is too slow to keep up with you in a spinning blade maze. I literally had to time it and jump and dash off-screen and hope I made it. Was not amusing.

That being said there weren’t a whole lot of issues I came across that really dampened my playthrough other than this. There were a few camera issues here and there, and dropping down the stairs in Purist Isle is nigh impossible, but otherwise I found the majority of the platforming to be reasonable. There are a few areas that are rather sparse in fast travel points, so be aware that returning to certain places may be a little frustrating if you’re collecting everything like I did.

Speaking of collecting everything, you may be asking yourself “why would I want to do that?”. Well, turns out there’s actually a reason for you to explore everywhere, not just for completion sake. Hira has “tasks” assigned to him that are listed as “fated goals”. These goals include discovering certain landmarks, finding all the items of one type in an area, or defeating a set number of each individual monster type. Upon meeting these requirements, you can receive the rewards as a sort of point resource. This resource can then be spent on a skill tree for Hira called “Masteries”. There are four “tiers” of Masteries and each tier has six common masteries and two “capstone” masteries. You can have three common and one capstone mastery equipped per tier and they all provide different effects, as well as permanent unlock bonuses. They can be mixed and matched to suit your playstyle and swapped out whenever you need. For example, generally speaking the six common masteries would include two attack based ones, two defense based ones, and two ‘other’ ones that are usually some sort of supporting effect. Similarly the capstones tend to be either offensive or defensive focused. Going up a tier requires purchasing the current tier Masteries. While I’m not certain on the particular requirements, unlocking three common Masteries and a capstone was enough for me to unlock the next tier.

I’ve talked a lot about exploration and upgrading abilities, both exploration based and combat based, but I haven’t talked about the actual combat yet. Combat is, for the most part, pretty dang smooth. You have your standard combo hits, a dodge, and a counter as your basic moves to get you started. A counter is performed by dodging an attack at the last second and then attacking. Both enemies and you have a guard gauge, and depleting it causes a stun effect and increased damage on that target. For bosses, they regain their guard gauge after recovering from the stun but most small enemies do not. You have a souls-like healing mechanic that is based on mana rather than set uses, and you regain mana through hitting an opponent or countering attacks.

Mana is also used to summon the teammates you brought along to do their attacks. By exchanging enough blows with enemies you can also build up a sort of super move that summons all your equipped teammates to attack in front of you. This attack also slows down time while being used so enemies don’t move out of range…usually. The last boss and one particular boss is a little egregious for this, but by the time you fight either of them chances are you’ll be overpowered enough not to really care other than mere annoyance. In addition to this, You can also parry most enemy attacks by attacking them at the same time they attack you, but there are a decent number of unparry-able attacks, so take that at your own discretion. A cool thing to note is that any Ascension skills acquired after the first three can also be used in combat. Furthermore, you can customize these skills with certain unlocks you get, but how you get them is a little spoiler-y, so I’ll let you discover how on your own.

Getting in fights is a weirdly diverse feeling, as common enemies, bosses, and the routine gauntlet challenges you come across all feel very different. For normal monsters you can usually get them by themselves or as a group of two, and you can use the terrain to your advantage. It’s always a good idea to practice the dodge and parry on the enemies the first time you see them. The reason for this is that there are numerous gauntlet challenge “rooms” you usually have to go through. As the name implies, these gauntlet rooms require you to beat a number of enemies before being able to leave, and this is almost always in flat ground rectangle rooms where you can’t hide or use the terrain to protect yourself. While I understand most people tend not to be fans of this, I actually like the gauntlet style rooms because it feels like a little bit of spice added to the combat every so often. Bosses tend to have unique mechanics or aspects to their fights and will usually throw some pretty interesting attacks your way. Breaking their guard to get the big damage in is always a good idea, but figuring out when to heal and when to be less aggressive is also important. While some bosses are basically just larger versions of smaller enemies, none of them felt particularly stale to me. Other than the one bonus boss in Lilac Mire and the last boss I didn’t have too difficult a time playing on normal difficulty, but your experience will change based on your normal playstyle, whether you’ve been exchanging the collectibles for health/mana/damage upgrades, and your Mastery and teammate load out.

While you’re out and about, or even in combat, there is a world mechanic that is a Blood Moon. During this period monsters become much tougher, demons can spawn in, but enemies drop a lot more money. Resting at a camp or fast travel point ends the Blood Moon, so you can always “turn it off” if you’re struggling. Fair warning, a blood moon can happen during a gauntlet challenge, so halfway through if the enemies get super tough you know why. Contrary to what you may hear, there is actually a plot relevant reason for the Blood Moon, and I don’t actually hate the mechanic. It’s easy enough to end if you aren’t confident in exploring while it’s going on. It increases money generation while it’s happening, and it spices things up if you’re re-exploring areas for collectibles.

So let’s talk a bit about the aesthetic design here. I absolutely love the visual design taken for Fallen Tear. The animations on characters and enemies seem well thought out, the background designs are really great and are unique to each area you visit, and the NPC character designs all have their own individuality. Couple this with a very well fitting soundtrack that accompanies the theme for the area you are exploring without being either overshadowed or obtrusive and you have a great package to present Fallen Tear. Hidden areas are reasonably indicated by differences in design that are subtle enough to be tricky but not so invisible you need a guide. A cool design choice involves the use of foreground art. There can be creatures moving in either the background or foreground to give a dynamic feeling, and whenever you pass behind something that would obscure your vision it goes see-through so you’re never left in a bad spot.

Area design is also mostly really good. One of the few underwater segments I didn’t hate in a game, and there were only three areas that really caused me grief, one of which was reasonable enough to give a shortcut once completed, and wasn’t too awful to begin with. The Golem Ruins and Zapana were quite rough however. Golem Ruins could really do with an unlockable shortcut after the “dark room you need to push switches in” but was otherwise rather reasonable for the nature of the area, at least comparing it to similar styled areas in other games. I’ve already outlined my frustration with Zapana’s spinning blades and camera, but you also need to make sure your computer doesn’t lag in this area. While I admittedly played this on an older machine, I did have some stuttering which caused me to restart a platforming section because I touched the blades. That being said, almost every game I’ve played, especially metroidvanias, tend to have a few zones that are awful to get through. Sometimes this is due to challenge, sometimes it’s developer oversight, but it’s really rare to find games without them. Fallen Tear’s case is fairly tame compared to some other titles out there, and the developers are very open to feedback so it might not even be as bad when you play.

As a pre-closing segment before we wrap up here, I would like to be clear that the game is currently experiencing some glitches and issues here and there, and there is a FREE DLC planned for the future that expands the world story. My personal issues apart from the lag in Zapana include: 

• crashing when viewing the tutorial for enhancing the Ascension skill that happens after a certain boss fight, 
• being unable to upgrade a particular teammates bond because their dialogue for the final boss overrides the option, 
• and not playing a cutscene after beating the last boss. 

Thankfully I ended up joining the game’s Discord and could see the final cutscene that way, but I do hope this gets fixed in the next major patch. I would also like to say that the game felt a little lacking in terms of the NPC teammates and their stories. I realize it’s tough getting 20+ different fully fleshed out character arcs into a game like this, especially since doing that for every character would also feel like a drag on the player as well, but a little more into all their backgrounds and such would be really nice to see. 

Furthermore, the game ends on a really weird note. It feels like there is more that was supposed to be there, but stops just shy of reaching the real conclusion. It’s kind of like getting to the final area of an RPG, beating the miniboss at the halfway point, and then the game says “ok, we’re done”. Maybe this is meant to be addressed in the free DLC planned, or maybe it’s supposed to be set up for a planned sequel, but it does end on a bit of an anticlimax. Still better than ending poorly, but it did leave me feeling a little disappointed. Good news though is that the devs are super active in the discord and steam discussion threads and are looking into all the issues and suggestions players are sending them. Chances are by the time you read this review many of the issues others have had will have been resolved.

In conclusion, Fallen Tear: The Ascension is a lovingly crafted metroidvania with rewarding exploration, plenty of unique biomes, a colourful cast of characters, and some pretty fluid combat. While there are a few issues currently being worked through, and the storyline does feel a little lacking or incomplete at times, you can still be drawn in to a fantastically crafted world both visually and auditorily. Despite a few hiccups here and there, Fallen Tear: The Ascension is definitely on my list for recommended metroidvanias. 

 

Score: 9 / 10