Immortal Planet Review | Souls Like Isometric Action RPG

“Good mornin-afternoo-vening dear viewers and welcome to Immortal Planet. A soulslike action RPG built around challenging real-time tactical combat.

Let’s start off this video by saying that I haven’t played any of the Souls games till now. Mostly due to the fact that I simply couldn’t run them till very recently. So when I saw Immortal Planet’s description it seemed to me that it might work as a great introduction to the fledgling soulslike subgenre of games, but with a more old-school and minimalistic twist.

The indie comicbook-like art direction and isometric perspective acting as a great bridge for someone oldschool such as myself to jump into this rather repetitive and grindy sort of experience.

And those are some of the main characteristics that come to mind when I want to describing Immortal Planet, even though they shouldn’t necessarily be taken as bad things, but more as part of the course.

The game revolves around tactical real time combat, with stamina management being the main mechanic around which encounters are built. You gain experience by killing foes, which you then lose upon death, which you can then recover once you return to your dying spot.

Due to the intricacies of the story and setting, your character can return to the fray in a Bioshock-like manner, but you need to make sure you get your lost experience back before you die again, otherwise you’ll lose it permanently. Rest assured, you’ll learn this on your own dime, and also learn to be vary wary of where you can die safely, as weird as that sounds.

So the game is called Immortal Planet because it takes place on a planet inhabited by what are now cyber-enhanced beings, made immortal by their ability to transfer consciousness into identical bodies. Or something of the sort, that’s kind of as much as I managed to cobble up from the few notes that I managed to gather throughout my playtime.

Not because I wasn’t trying mind you, from what I can discern there is quite a nice and peculiar world and story being told in the game, but discovering more information is intrinsically linked to progressing through the various stages - which makes sense, however progressing through the stages means dealing with the boss fights.

And that’s where I encountered my main problem with the game. Not the fights themselves mind you, I am aware of what Dark Souls-like games are, but more around the large amounts of grinding that has to happen in order to upgrade your character till he or it stands a fighting chance with each boss. After exploring a stage - and they aren’t larger than a few screens - you meet up with a stage boss which at first will almost always get you killed...several times...many times. At first due to you not knowing how exactly they attack and then it’s all down to them doing more damage to you faster than you can do damage to them. Hence why you need to spend time, clearing the stage of enemies, over and over again, in order to gather up the experience which you can then use to upgrade your stats.

Which in itself isn’t that annoying of an endeavor, to be honest, but I just don’t have that type of patience for it anymore, might be an age thing or it might be a controller thing because I had to play the game using my keyboard and mouse. Even though the game suggests I play it with a controller.

Unfortunately Immortal Planet, much like Super Stone Legacy, does not support third-party gamepad controllers, which means that it’s either X-Box controller or GTFO. My old and trusty Logitech is left to gather dust.

And I really think that keyboard and mouse controls are negatively influencing my gameplay experience.

As a result of playing this game I have concluded that first of all - developers really need to work on adding third party controller support to their games, in the cases where gameplay is optimized for gamepad controllers.

One has to be aware that not all PC gamers have consoles or have had really a lot of interest in getting a gamepad. And even if they did - like myself - it’s most likely not an X-Box controller.

The second thing is that I won’t be jumping into any future game that does not support third-party controllers.

And the third thing is that I need to look into getting an X-Box controller for the future just to be safe.

So basically what I’m saying is that I think the game offers a much better gameplay experience if you play it as it is meant to be played. Since I cannot do that, I’m getting a bit of a warped impression of it.

But I have to say that despite my issues with it, it has made me way more interested in checking out the actual Dark Souls games, so in this respect it worked perfectly as sort of an entry-level experience towards the originators of the subgenre.

Oh and before I get on with a bit of gameplay commentary I would feel remiss if I didn’t talk about the soundtrack. The really, really cool and atmospheric soundtrack. There isn’t a lot of it, since the game itself appears to be quite short, but what we get is just the right amount of ominous and epic, wrapped into something of a darksynth vibe, which totally works with the game world’s story and design. A great cyber-atmospheric package from Patryk Karwat - and I’m surely pronouncing that wrong. I’ll make sure to link the soundtrack in the description.

Now let’s talk a bit about the pricing, because I tend to not do that a lot, but I wish to rectify it, since pricing comes greatly into play when considering which game to buy, from the large number of options out there.

Immortal Planet can be found on Steam for 15 Euros, the latest Dark Souls game, Dark Souls III is 60 Euros while the cheapest, Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition is 20.

So that right there makes Immortal Planet the most affordable option, much lower than the entry cost to the first title in the Dark Souls series. On the other hand, if you’re still iffy about the pricing but also about diving into the Souls games, then I wholeheartedly suggest you wait a bit for Immortal Planet to be on sale and snatch it up then. The game will be an absolute deal for a reduced price.

But enough talking, let’s jump into some gameplay commentary and you’ll get to see the game in action.”

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Immortal Planet on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/631980/Immortal_Planet/

Immortal Planet on GOG: https://www.gog.com/game/immortal_planet

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