Why is there so many Immortals?
33 Immortals feels like quite the experiment from developer Thunder Lotus Games. Blending roguelike gameplay with MMO-lite large-scale co-op action with some faced paced action and the studios trademark ‘hand-drawn art is quite the recipe but somehow with this game the team managed to cook up something really unique and fun, albeit familiar.
33 Immortals takes its inspiration from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, while a completely different take on the subject matter than Visceral Games’ Dante’s Inferno; in 33 Immortals players will take on the role of a condemned souls who are rebelling against God’s judgement. This game is still in early access, and I have not completed it but I am guessing that God is going to be the final boss; can’t wait to see y’all flexing those achievements. Each run will follow a similar path, players will choose their weapon and head into battle with 32 others, work together to kill mobs for resources, take out the torture chambers that rewards you with perk providing relics. Then its on to the final battle with Lucifer, or Adam & Eve depending on how far you’ve gotten.
MSRP: $19.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PC
Price I’d Pay: $19.99
When players load into the lobby area there are a few areas that they can initially check out. First and foremost, MAKE SURE that you do the training courses, there are only 3 and they give you some currency as a reward to spend on cosmetics. In the Dark Woods barracks is where players will meet Dante who can help them equip perks and Charon who sells the aforementioned cosmetics. From there players will choose between one of 4 weapons; The Bow of Hope which is the long-range weapon and allows players to recall arrows to hit foes from behind. The Sword of Justice is a hulking blade with powerful, slow attacks. If magic is your game, then the Staff of Sloth should be your main; it allows players to fire orbs that can damage and slow enemies, leaving them ripe for attack by your teammates. And the Daggers of Greed which have speed and build up critical strikes on enemies.
Each weapon has a different co-op move that will require two other players to pull off. The Sword will give the 3 players a shield, whereas the bow will fire a torrent of arrows at enemies. Each of these moves are powerful buffs that can help to sway the tide of battles. One of the issues with them though is they all seem to be direction locked, the arrow attack only fires one way and there is no way to place or aim it at anything specific. I like these abilities but players need more agency over placement, especially with how frantic battles can be with enemies all over the screen.
The main gameplay takes place from an isometric viewpoint and plays mostly like Hades, which means players will be franticly dodging attacks while hacking and slashing at demonic baddies. Player can pick up relics which can augment their play styles by providing various buffs to attack, defense, health and more. The really cool thing is that players can reroll these relics after each big battle, adding another layer of strategy available to players. Tokens will also drop from enemies that players can use to unlock and upgrade perks with Dante or spend them to add relics to the chests which will give them a chance to drop.
Players will spawn around the map in groups of 6 and will have to figure out how to work together. I say ‘figure out’ because there is no chat or voice function in 33 Immortals, players can join a private Xbox party through the system but that will only allow you and your two friends to chat. This just seems like a big oversight in a game that depends so much on working together, I mean players only do negligible damage to enemies alone and will need others to make any real headway. As players farm enemies, they will pick up a currency that can be used to buff their health, damage or co-op move for the current run. As the run progresses players will have to dodge the literal Wrath of God, which presents as huge attacks of meteors, tornados and more. All the areas of attack are well telegraphed and can be dodged by players thankfully as well.
A typical run takes around 30 mins to reach the first areas boss battle with Lucifer but the trick with it all is you need allies in the fight. I made it to the end a handful of times and each time it was only like 3 or 4 of use remaining, which is nowhere near enough to defeat the devil. Players will have two lives essentially as once they go down the first time they can be revived by friendly players; as long as people actually pay attention to their team. Some of my deaths were attributed to the frame rate utterly dropping out when things got crazy. All the weapon effects, enemies and other immortals must be too much for the system to handle at times. Even when I died though, which happened a lot I still came back for more and was having a good time.
33 Immortals isn’t a finished product as of now but what the team has launched with is quite a bit of fun if you can get a room to work together. The lack of any sort of voice communication really handcuffs the MMO-type raid setting that the developers at Thunder Lotus is going for. What the game does have though is a killer hand-drawn art style, a fun and addicting gameplay loop and the benefit of being the only game of its type right now. I hope this recipe is one that sees 33 Immortals make it to the 1.0 finish line and beyond.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
