With stunning visuals abound, El Shaddai: Ascension Of The Metatron presents an artistic front for the action/adventure genre, but does it deliver on all fronts? 8/10

Developed and produced by the people over at Ignition Entertainment, El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron is a game that delivers an exciting jolt of artistic freshness from the mind of Takeyasu Sawaki, whose previous work includes the stunningly beautiful Okami. While a clear focus of the game is on its interesting visual presentation, a game can only last so long on the merits of its aesthetics. Has Ignition managed to create the perfect balance between style and substance, or is El Shaddai a game you should judge based solely on its cover?

Story

You take control of Enoch, a resident of heaven who is tasked with bringing justice to seven fallen angels who have descended to earth. You descend in pursuit, only to spend centuries looking for a tower in which these seven fallen angels dwell. Upon discovering its location you make your way through the tower, destroying the fallen and their followers on your path of divine justice. Throughout your journey, you’ll pick up bits of info and lore about various topics like the creatures known as Nephilim – offspring of the fallen angels and human woman – who are destined for nothing more than to continuously devour everything around them until they escalate into devouring each other. There’s also the prophecies of Ishtar that include interesting sections that involve gathering bones to create a new armor. You’ll also frequently run into Lucifel, basically Lucifer pre-fall, who can save your progress while having interesting conversations with God via cellphone.

The story is told in a very unorthodox manner, more specifically, there isn’t much dialogue and the dialogue you do get tends to be very vague. El Shaddai prefers to have the emotions of the story play out through its visuals and sounds in order to really immerse you within its surreal world. The written story handles well with themes like redemption playing out rather nicely, without ever getting all preachy, but at times due to the abstract nature of the game, it can be a little hard to follow what’s going on. There’s also a few scattered moments of poor execution, most apparent in the very anti-climactic ending. Despite the few hiccups in the way the story is written, the art itself makes up for any shortcomings.

Sound

The soundtrack of El Shaddai: Ascension Of The Metatron attempts cohesion with its art. Rock beats excite the action sequences, which are then substituted for religious-themed music in between fights. All of this is followed by layers of atmosphere during story sequences or scenes with a more serious tone. On top of it all, everything comes with a dash of psychedelic feel in order to keep in tune with the obscure backdrops. It all works very well, but there’s a distinct lack of a real catchy piece of music.

Aesthetics

For those who played Okami, the swirling palettes of bright moving colours will remind you of that amazing first time you discovered Takeyasu’s hand at work, but you’ll still undoubtedly be blown away with what he’s done in El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron. For those experiencing this art style for the first time, this is nothing short of must-see quality; the abstract environments utilize soft shifting backgrounds that are accented by sharp bright colours. The textures move around you, an entity within themselves, creating visuals that in addition to being magnificent eye candy, take the form of a living breathing organ. Describing it accurately is simply a task in futility due to its obscure nature, it can really only be experienced.

In an unusual but well played move, El Shaddai elects not to incorporate a HUD, but instead allows things like HP to be revealed simply through the art itself – the more armor your wearing, the more health you have – and its decisions like these that really illustrate the development team’s dedication to creating a full experience rather than just interesting backdrops. That said; a full experience is more than just lavish scenery. A contribution from the gameplay must also exist in order to truly make this game the real deal.

Gameplay

Generally, while everyone tends to agree that El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron puts forth a remarkable visual display, the same is not always said about the combat and platforming. The problem? What do you think about having basically only one attack button? First thing that comes to mind is: Simple, basic, boring… and for a lot of people, this sentiment will remain true, but for some of us, we will appreciate the depth that the combat invokes. OR, if you’re like me, you’ll fall into the third category: Appreciate the depth of the combat, but still find it extremely boring.

Enoch can take hold of three different weapons, which he switches out by stealing a different weapon off an enemy. The Arch is an elegant weapon that boasts quickness and power, while allowing for juggle techniques, a decent guard, and a decent evade. The Gale is a ranged weapon that allows for quick attacks and incredible movement, but has virtually no guard and does little damage. The Veil, a clunky shield-like gauntlet, is the most powerful weapon with the best guard, but it lacks heavily in attack speed and evasion speed.

El Shaddai utilizes a rock paper scissors system that takes the form of Arch beats Veil, Veil beats Gale and Gale beats Arch – the difference is fairly prominent when your using the wrong weapon against the wrong enemy. Attack variations work on a simple but effective mechanism, you can mash attack over and over again for a combo, but at any point you can do one of two things: Hold the next attack to deliver a stronger more powerful blow, or delay the next button press to deliver a different attack that can break enemy guards. You can also hold the delay attack to deliver a stronger guard break. While the focus of the delayed attack is evident, the held attack is cunningly used as a powerful counter, where you take an enemies hit while charging and then unleash the attack while they’re recovering. Being aerial will also produce a different set of attacks. Aside from these variations, there is another type of attack available; Each weapon comes with a special attack that compliments its regular attack patterns; The Arch has a lifting attack, The Gale uses a close ranged power attack and The Veil… well the Veil just likes to slam the ground some more. In addition to attacking, you can also guard to block blows, or perfectly time your guard for powerful counters, and each different weapon comes with a different dodge move.

During fights, as your weapon inflicts a couple solid bashes against your unholy enemies, you will find that its bright shimmer will begin to fade. Faded weapons do very little damage, so you’ll be forced to either steal a new weapon, or purify your weapon to give it back it’s edge. Purifying leaves you temporarily vulnerable, so make sure you have an opening in the fight to do it. At times, you will also be left without a weapon or an enemy will break your weapon (typically only in boss fights) and be forced to use your fists. Your fists are fairly weak, so be sure to grab the next weapon you can get your hands on.

So as you can see, there is a fair amount to the combat system. It’s important to also note that button mashing isn’t going to get you anywhere – enemies guard like crazy and exploit openings in your attack – so it is vital that you get a good grasp of the fighting mechanics. So what makes it so boring? Battles become tedious as you progress through the game because of one major flaw: You’re stuck fighting the same four enemies over and over again. There is a little variation, but basically you have the enemy that uses The Gale, an enemy that uses The Veil, an enemy that uses the Arch and the enemy that doesn’t have a weapon. They get tougher and tougher as you progress through the game, but it remains all too familiar. Boss fights add a refreshing change from the status quo, but aren’t enough to refill the desire to go back to fighting the regular enemies again. Some of the platforming areas introduce a few other enemies, but these aren’t really fights and are more an aspect of the platforming itself.

On that note, the platforming is the one thing that takes a hit from the abstract art style that runs rampant through El Shaddai. At times it can be difficult to see just exactly where the ground is amongst all those shifting colors. Another pain invokes the age-old problem for most 3rd person action/adventure games: What to do with that camera? El Shaddai employs, to great effect, several 2d side-scrolling sections in the heavier platforming areas in order to eliminate this problem, but there remains a couple of sections where you can’t help but hate having to jump.

After beating the game, you unlock additional difficulties along with score modes and the ability to turn a HUD on, but it just isn’t enough to enthuse a second go around.

Conclusion

In short, El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron definitely delivers a package that is more than the sum of its art… but, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who’d recommend this game purely for its gameplay. Running in at roughly 14 hours of gameplay; come for the show, stay for the experience, and leave feeling satisfied you got to see something new and unique – then feel perfectly fine with selling your ticket to the next performance.

El Shaddai was provided to us by the folks at http://irentmygames.ca for review purposes. For this, and more great games, make sure you check them out. They have plans starting at $5.50 per month!

	El Shaddai Review Score Breakdown!
Score	Click here for our ratings guidelines.
7.5/10	Story - Odd but interesting story that can be a little hard to follow at times. The ending could have been better. The art is what really holds the story together.
8/10	Gameplay -  Functionable gameplay with a lot of combat depth. Good level of challenge. Lacks that “Fun” factor that keeps you coming back.
10/10	Aesthetics - Stunning visuals of an indescribable nature that work as a vessel of story telling and immersion. Abstract sophistication at its finest.
7.5/10	Sound -  A well-made soundtrack that incorporates good versatility. Lacks any stand out pieces.
8/10	Overall - While the style delivered by El Shaddai: Ascension Of The Metatron is unquestionably top notch, its brand of substance may not be for everyone. This game is definitely worth a playthrough, but for those you can’t fully enjoy the combat, El Shaddai falls short of being a truly great experience.
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