Developed by Rasul Mono and published by GameNet, The Guise is a dark Metroidvania fairy tale that arrives just in time to revitalize the genre. Despite promising plenty of action, The Guise however fails to last long as we find out in this review of the title. This is our review of The Guise on PC in which we turn ourselves into a monster and then try to reverse it back by killing tons of deadly monsters.
The story of The Guise lets you experience the journey of a boy called Odgen. Odgen and some other children are living in an orphanage which is being looked after by the caretaker called Mallory. One faithful night, Mallory steps out of her secret chambers and leaves the orphanage for some time and the curiosity of the children takes the best of them, leading them into the secret chambers of the caretaker. Inside the children find a strange setup which looks like a lair of a witch complete with a cauldron on fire and some cupboards with some weird items in them. One of the items sitting in plain sight is the mask which intrigues Odgen and he puts it on.
This converts Odgen into a monster who flees out into the night and finds himself trapped in a mess. Mallory arrives to save his skin but instructs him to reach back to the orphanage. This begins the journey of Odgen has he has to convert himself back into a human from the monster that he has become. The story is told mostly in the form of cutscenes however the dialogue has no sound and as far as I can remember, the cutscenes were completely silent with not a single sound coming out from them. These cutscenes might not offer much in terms of visual or audio fidelity but they are your only source of the story and any sort of narrative in the game.
The Guise is essentially a Metroidvania which is a genre that has been extremely popular in the past few years with some really good titles coming out on every platform. The Guise aims to continue that tradition however when it comes to gameplay, sadly this game just fails to deliver. For Metroidvania titles, gameplay plays a vital role as it is the core of the genre where platforming plays a big role alongside combat, While The Guise offers a decent amount of platforming, it is in the combat department where the game massively falls short.
You have a basic attack combo at the start of the game however as you complete side quests in the game or defeat bosses, you unlock more and more abilities that help you in various ways during combat. Some of these abilities offer offensive powers while some simply boost certain stats and hence help in the longer run. As you kill enemies, their eyes are left behind on the level and you can collect these eyes as they are the primary resource in the game. You spend these eyes to upgrade your abilities which need to be unlocked first. Apart from your abilities, you will also find different items in the game that you can use in the game to your advantage for various aspects.
During your fight with the enemies, you can land your basic combo attack or use different abilities on them to defeat them. The enemies come in various shapes and sizes but one thing common in all of them is that all of them are dumb and follow the same attack patterns. There is no variety of attacks in the enemies. Even a few bosses are extremely boring and predictable during their battles. You can easily cheese your enemies and kill them without taking a single hit because the enemies take their sweet time to attack just one side of the screen and until they turn to the back, you can roll to their other side and land another attack and thus easily kill them. This becomes repetitive and boring after some time and thus breaks an otherwise great game.
The levels hide different secrets and you cannot reach most of them from the start of the game. As you continue to unlock more and more abilities, you can re-visit these areas and access these secrets with your newly found powers. The levels are designed pretty well for a platforming game however some specific places in the game are completely out-of-place. There was one particular location in the game that offered no way back after I completed a task and I could not even find a way to go back and complete the side quest. This just showed that a poor QA run was made on the title before its release. Apart from this, during combat, you will also feel attacks and jumps during platforming out of place.
Two of the most striking features of The Guise are probably its great visual design and audio design except for the cutscenes. For me, these two aspects alone pushed me to play the game all the way to the very end. As you play The Guise, you will fall in love with the game’s visual design. The levels look amazing and feel really creepy and dark. Special effects in these levels are really good and sometimes your enemies will even become invisible in all the darkness making it difficult to hit them. During exploration, you will get to hear much calm yet spooky music however during boss battles, the music picks up the pace and really puts you in the mood for a big battle. For the most part of the game, you will greatly enjoy the great visuals and overall presentation of the game.
The Guise does not come short when it comes to problems. While these might not be technical issues, the combat of the game requires some more time and attention. For this review, the game was played on a system running Ryzen 7 3700X, Auros X570 Elite motherboard, 32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3600MHZ Ram, AMD RX 5700 XT 8GB with a Cougar 750W PSU unit. The system is pretty decent. Running on this system, The Guise was a breeze on its highest settings. There were no crashes or frame drops for us even in visually demanding areas such as fights or areas with high lighting. The only problems we faced were during combat scenarios where the hits would not hit the enemies despite the models physically connecting with each other or the character simply refusing to jump from platform to platform while running.
Final Verdict:
The Guise is a decent Metroidvania title that will greatly wow you with its amazing visuals and animations. The levels look beautiful and go perfectly with the dark theme of the game. This goes for the audio design of the game as well however The Guise seriously falls back when it comes to gameplay. Even with multiple options for improving gameplay, the gameplay simply fails to impress at any level. For me, the gameplay is a vital aspect of every game and if a game fails to deliver when it comes to gameplay, it automatically goes down in my recommendation list. At this point, I cannot recommend that you play The Guise just because its gameplay requires plenty of fixing and there are better alternates out there that can give you a much better Metroidvania experience for the same price. If you’ve exhausted all other good titles and really want to experience a fresh game in the genre, you can then try out The Guise at your own risk.
Final Score: 6.0/10
