Corrupted occupies a curious middle ground in the world of RPGs. On one hand it’s an action-rpg with plenty of swordplay to go around. On the other, the twin stick simplicity of the combat takes away some depth and threatens to make combat a repetitive affair. However, the first game from OnlyLuck Interactive sidesteps these potential pitfalls and carves out a unique identity for itself thanks to a surprisingly solid fighting system and plenty of RPG elements to go around.
Instead of having you save the princess, Corrupted tasks you with raiding a kingdom and stealing princesses for your masters’ nefarious purposes. Although rife with potential, your role as the anti-hero is never explored much. It doesn’t diminish the fun of the final product, but it is a little disappointing that the developers didn’t come up with something completely fresh.
Thankfully, OnlyLuck’s inaugural title makes up for its conceptual shortcomings by delivering hack-n’-slash gameplay far past its price point. Combat is a top down twin stick affair. The left thumbstick moves your anti-hero around while the right can be flicked in the direction of enemies to slice them into ribbons. Continually connecting on your strikes sends your character into a smooth combination attack while missing will causes a slight delay and puts you at risk of getting hit. This puts a premium on well aimed blows and gives fighting a tactical feel to compliment its twitchy nature.
If getting up close and personal isn’t your thing, there’s also the option to take your enemies out from afar. Switching between ranged and melee attacks is a breeze; with the pull of a trigger you can swap your swords for a bow. The ease of transition ensures that you can tailor your play to suit both the situation at hand and your personal preferences.
The customization is capped off by a surprisingly deep leveling system. As the stages progress you’ll rack up gold which can be cashed in between levels for increased skills in one of 10 categories. Although there aren’t a ton of skills to be leveled, there are enough to create for a unique character tailored to your play style. Of course, there is also the option to go back and grind previous levels for gold to max everything out if you don’t like making decisions or are just plain stuck.
Sadly, this diversity is not present in the environments. It seems as if you’ll only be visiting forests, rivers, and castles. This mostly is dwarfed by the fact that it feels like Corrupted is just one large room clearing mission. Sure, you may be fighting in a forest or alongside a river, but gameplay effectively follows the same pattern: enter an area, defeat the enemies, move onto the next area, rinse, lather, repeat until the boss has been defeated.
For some reason, although this should be boring to the point of game-breaking, combat is fun enough that even a complete lack of variety can’t inhibit this slasher’s value. The single player itself provides enough combative fun to be worth the price tag and when that is supplemented by the ability to play the game with up to three friends it becomes something that should definitely be on your radar. It isn’t quite on Epic Dungeon’s level, but Corrupted is some darn good fun.
[Corrupted]-240 MSP
