Featuring the goodest of boys.
This one is a pretty neat 2-D platformer that feels like a game out of the SNES era, albeit with simpler sprites. Flynn can attack, dodge-roll, shoot magic and jump his way to victory. As you go through the game you'll unlock two weapons to compliment Flynn's sword, the Axe and the Claws, one favoring strength and the other one speed. For the most part, I stuck with the sword, although some latter flying enemies were better taken care of with the claws. As for spells, you can obtain Ice, Thunder and Fire damage. Ice freezes enemies, Thunder is necessary to deal with electrified enemies and then there's my favorite, Fire, which deals damage over time.
The magic system felt a bit half-baked. Flynn's basic spell is a red projectile that deals damage, and elemental attacks must be charged, changing the selected element with ZL. It feels a bit off. Ice is used to freeze floating water bodies, something that I know realize makes no sense, to turn them into platforms. Freezing enemies is pretty worthless. Fire is neat in combat, but you just use it to turn on torches. As for electricity... you'll be merrily on your way until you see a green enemy, and now you must start charging electricity in order to get the electric aura off them. I dunno, electricity being necessary to fight some enemies feels off considering it has no use outside of battle. As for the other two spells, their exploratory use felt a bit tacked on, and freezing enemies wasn't very useful. I think taking the charge out of the elemental benefit would've been better, although maybe not giving the elemental side-effect unless you charged it, that way dealing with electrified enemies on the fly wouldn't feel like a hassle.
Combat is pretty simple, mash Y and win. As enemies take damage you'll notice that they'll blink white, that's your cue to get ready to dodge out of an incoming attack. Most enemies have a secondary orange bar beneath their health bar, this is the stun bar, once you fill it, by pummeling the enemy, they'll get stunned for a few seconds. Taking a page from more modern games, there are no healing items, instead you have a limited resource of healing: Healing orbs. These are automatically refilled upon entering a boss arena or by smashing blue crystals.
Later in the game you get your very own Crimson Gauge, which you can then use once its full by pressing ZR+ZL by entering a RAGE MODE in which you deal tons of damage. So much so that pretty much any boss fight, at least on normal, is over as soon as you get your super mode off. There's a reason this gauge gets sapped before each boss fight. You can unlock some special techniques that consume blocks from this gauge, such as a downward stab with the sword... but I never felt like using any of these techniques. Why would I, considering the super move is infinitely more useful?
In some stages you'll get to ride Rex, the goodest of boys, a giant dog that you can ride and it can walk over spikes, and dash, and it can also hit enemies with his tails and bite them with his fangs and he is super fluffy and he is the best. He appears in about 4 or 5 stages, so he never wears out his welcome, and its a nice change of pace.
Every level has a ton of red crystals for you to grab, be it from the environment or fallen enemies, and most levels have a golden trinket to find. The golden trinket can then be traded for more red crystals. Red crystals are important because later in the game you unlock a trainer that works as an upgrade tree, and she requires red crystals to gain her boons.
The game has a fair amount of stages, a few having 'alternate exits', which usually means that, once you find the key you can unlock a enemy-wave arena bonus stage. It's not like Super Mario World, so there are no obscure alternate routes that need a guide to discover. One complaint about the game, is that every now and then 'THE SCOURGE HAS APPEARED' will appear on the stage-select screen, blocking you from going to the next stage or revisiting an older stage. Now you must 'find' the source, which is an older level, and play through a harder, truncated version of an older stage. This happens about 5-6 times throughout the game and it felt like needless padding. Brought the game to a halt, as I just wanted to play new, fun stuff.
All in all, Flynn: Son of Crimson was a pleasant surprise. It features a nice mix of combat, puzzles and platforming that keeps it from getting stale. Most of the things it tries to do it succeeds in them, although a few elements felt a bit misused. Regardless, I'd quite interested in a sequel.
8.0
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