Who doesn’t love a good redemption story, whether in-game via a character’s journey or watching a game climb from mediocrity to success? That’s exactly what Deck 13 is trying to accomplish. Originally released last year to a lukewarm reception, Atlas Fallen received a large update earlier this month and rebranded as Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand. I never played the original version, and came to Reign of Sand with an open mind. After about 16 hours, I can say Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand is a pretty enjoyable ride – the consummate 7/10 game – but I don’t think this new version will really breakthrough and connect with players enough for it to be remembered for the long haul.
The meat of Atlas Fallen is its gameplay, and it offers players a very satisfying loop. You’ll come across various wraiths – frightening creatures roaming the open world – and beat the living sand out of them. Encouraging aggression is the momentum meter. WIth each landed attack, you’ll build momentum, increasing damage and activating combat modifiers called essence stones, but also weakening your defenses. With a fully juiced up momentum meter, you can knock out lesser foes in just a couple hits, but tougher wraiths can in turn end just as quickly. It adds a nice frenetic balance to the game and watching your weapons and movesets evolve as your momentum builds is great fun.
Large powerful wraiths are defeated by depleting the health bars of multiple body parts. Those health bars will glow powder blue when they can be shattered and defeated. Your shatter attack sacrifices your momentum bar for a walloping attack that crystalizes your foes and potentially shatters them if you deliver enough damage. Ending fights by shattering opponents is exhilarating and punctuates the combat with a giant exclamation mark.
Although fun and never boring, Atlas Fallen’s combat constantly teeters on the edge of being too repetitive. You get the third – and final – weapon very early on and all the monsters mostly look the same – small or giant sand monsters. However, the sheer abundance of essence stones enlists a feeling of experimentation in you. You’re constantly acquiring new stones – even vendors can sell them – and your momentum bar can be fully unlocked fairly early on, so you’ll essentially have a full complement of open slots to mix and match the stones.
Some enhance damage, others build off your parry abilities, and they all make you that much more powerful. You can eventually unlock a perk that offers bonuses if you have multiple stones of the same type – such as damage enhancing stones or essence stones that focus on building momentum – making the ability to build three different preset momentum bars very useful. Atlas Fallen encourages customization, enticing you to seek out combat encounters to test out new attacks and stone benefits.
Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand’s combat does a ton of heavy lifting, because the campaign is nothing special. You play as a customizable Unamed, who are effectively slaves or indentured workers in the land of Atlas. Early on you conveniently stumble upon a powerful gauntlet and become The Protagonist – I mean, the Gauntlet Bearer. Let’s face it: there’s just not a lot of personality to the Gauntlet Bearer, and I struggled to really care about them. They are a vessel for your traveling and fighting in this world, and not much more.
Your companion Nyaal offers more intrigue. Seemingly trapped in the gauntlet, Nyaal is a mysterious being who can’t remember much of his past. He’ll help you rebuild the gauntlet and access new traversal abilities all while piecing together who he is. There’s a lot of interesting lore to Nyaal and the world of Atlas Fallen. Conflict and political intrigue are ingrained in this land, and Nyaal is connected to more than you might think at first glance. I was genuinely interested in the lore of Atlas Fallen and feel like it’s a world brimming with storytelling potential. Unfortunately, the story it tells is severely lacking.
Most main quest missions – especially in the early game – are simply exploring and rebuilding the gauntlet to access a new power and continue the main story from there. If you don’t engage in characters’ side quests, complete errands (which are just as dull as they sound), or listen to/read journal entries, then you’ll barely grow to care for the cast of Atlas Fallen. It doesn’t help either that most conversations are extremely static; the camera lingers behind the Gauntlet Bearer as wooden, expressionless characters deliver lines of dialogue. The game scarcely has cutscenes, so much of the dialogue – and therefore, story – is delivered in this frustratingly boring way.
Once of the quests, new to the Reign of Sand update, tasks you with investigating rifts found across Atlas. They’ll teleport you to another realm and have you play as Nyaal. Completing combat encounters on the other side of these rifts rewards you not only with new essence stones, but also more context as to who Nyaal is and what has transpired in the world at large. Nyall also has exclusive wraith abilities, making him attack like your enemies and staving off gameplay repetition.
You’ll also spend your time exploring the world of Atlas Fallen by locating anvils, destroying statues, digging up treasure, and following around animals to discover even more essence stones. It all mostly falls under the category of ‘open world tedium.’ The movement in Atlas Fallen is fun, but it ain’t no swinging around New York in Spider-Man 2. You’ll slide on sand from map marker to map marker, uncovering a new essence stone or destroying an altar to Thelos, the god who reigns over Atlas. Will you have fun exploring and platforming around the open world? Probably depends on how much you enjoy Ubisoft-lite open world checklists.
Part of me almost wishes the game was designed completely differently; that instead of an open world, it featured mission-specific large levels for quests to take place in. If the open world fat was trimmed, Atlas Fallen might have been a tighter and more enjoyable experience.
You can tell the developers at Deck 13 are very passionate about Atlas Fallen and making it a success, and I commend their publisher Focus Interactive for giving the team the runway to create the Reign of Sand update. The final product is a good game, although it doesn’t quite break through the “7/10” barrier. I’m not sure if the update has done enough to entice players to Atlas Fallen in troves right this moment, but I suspect in a couple years it’ll become one of your favorite bargains when you get it for ten bucks on Steam.
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