When I first saw Batora: Lost Haven, I was first impressed by the games visuals, but the more I saw of things, the more I was intrigued, now being honest, Diablo style games are not my favourite genre, so when a game has an isometric point of view, I tend to associate it with the genre of a dungeon crawler, thankfully I was happy to be proven wrong here.

The story of Batora starts off quite dark, with an unnamed calamity striking the earth and burning half of it away and if that was the end of the story, it would be a short game. For Avril, the character that you control, the adventure is only just beginning as two powerful beings bestow upon her their powers, so she can be their champion and restore what was once lost. The powers are of the Sun and the Moon and as the story unfolds, more about them, the powers and the history come to be, but in this demo of the game, things were pushed further into the game, in order to provide a richer experience and it was something else.

Now I mentioned above how the Diablo style of games are not my favourite, but where this has an isometric point of view, the gameplay is not dungeon crawler related at all, in fact it is actually a twin-stick shooter, at least if we classify it as a single genre. Avril can make use of the powers bestowed upon her in two ways, the power of the sun, as indicated when she glows orange, are more up close and personal - meaning she can hack at enemies with her sword. The other power is that of the Moon, she is purple when that is active and as the Moon is traditionally something we don’t get direct influence from, unlike the rays from the Sun, the combat options here are also different, allowing for a shooting system instead. If the game was just content with giving you two different ways of interacting with the world, that could have been plenty, but they went a few steps further.

The power of the Sun impacts Avril in a physical sense, while the Moon impacts her Mentally and should either of those energy sources be depleted, it is game over. Where things can get complicated is that if you are embracing the power of the Sun and wailing on enemies with your sword, you can still take damage from those enemies aligned with the Moon, so you have to be aware of both at all times. Beyond that, if you are aligned with the Sun and start to use your sword on enemies powered by the Moon, you won’t deal as much damage to them, so you have to swap back and forth all the time, in order to get out of combat in one piece. For those thinking that you can just use the power you like to beat down on all that oppose you, that is possible, but none of the enemies hang back and wait for you to be done with your current target, you will be bombarded at all times, ensuring that you have to stay moving, as well as swapping, if you want any chance of victory.

Thankfully the game does have some puzzles to solve, which can give you time to recharge yourself, letting you enjoy a peaceful moment or two. The puzzles, at least the ones in the demo, were not especially difficult, but they still required a little thought to solve, basically they are not the kind you can just walk straight through, but they shouldn’t keep you from progressing. But puzzles are not the only time you will have to get your brain working, as the game will present you with choices, quite often and you will need to decide for yourself, what action you will take. Some actions can have limited repercussions at the moment the choice is made, but later on, it has the potential to impact something far greater and of course, your actions will influence how people react to you.

Something else that I have to talk about is the games visuals, because it was the aspect that first drew my attention to the game, and seeing them in action for myself, I like what I am seeing. The best way that I can describe the visuals is a cross between Claymation and comic book, specifically the style that Joe Madureira uses. Now neither is a 1-to-1 match, but when you start to see them in action, you will get what I mean, the combined style does work wonderfully though and with the unique character designs around the place, it just brough the world to life, like nothing I had seen before.

Batora: Lost Haven has the potential to be something really special, given the depth of replayability from its choice system to the exhaustive combat options. My time with the game was short, as these things usually are, but I really did enjoy my time with it, it wasn’t an easy game to play as the combat system required me to constantly adapt and failure meant death and I died a lot, but it was fun, nonetheless. Right now, there is no release date, outside of sometime this year, but if you have any desire to play a game that will challenge you, has interesting characters and a wicked art style, then this one should be on your radar.