XEL is an action-adventure RPG from Assembly Entertainment. This top-down 3D game has a lot of hack and slash and puzzle elements to keep you busy. But it has a lot of content, is it solid enough to play for hours?
Before starting the review, I think it’s important to pay attention to the trigger warning. When you turn on the game for the first time, you’ll see a list of five triggers. We appreciate these warnings, but we recommend that you include them in the description before downloading. Some of the triggers listed certainly bother me. And if I knew in advance, I would have taken over the game and let someone else on the pure Nintendo team take it. Therefore, keep in mind that the game deals with some heavy topics.
Let’s go back to the regularly scheduled show. You play as a lead. Reed crashes into an unknown world called XEL. She doesn’t remember her past or how she got to XEL. It’s time for her to explore the world, conquer dungeons and defeat her enemies.
Overall, it’s a solid story and a clever mystery set in a world like science fiction. It has a great cutscene that is fully voice acted and animated. Unfortunately, the animation of these scenes seems to be one of the few aspects of sophisticated games.
In most cases, voice acting is as good as music and sound effects. The problem is that I could hardly hear it. The audio is not loud at all. After examining the game options, I found that the volume was already at maximum level. I had to switch it on at maximum volume, but the audio was still at an average level.
Usually I enjoy hack and slash games. I like how fast they are. Attacking a swarm of enemies can be satisfying. However, using XEL makes it difficult to have a good time. Frames will continue to skip when the enemy is on the screen. Even if you’re exploring with Reed and there’s nothing else on the screen, she clips her objects that you shouldn’t be able to manipulate or skip her movements. I will slow it down.
When the game is working well, it has a good gameplay element. Move the lead to find weapons and other items in the area. These will help her go further into the dungeon or current location. The puzzles are solid and some fights are fun. Every enemy has a pattern of attack that you need to understand.
However, some battles need attention due to the camera. You can’t control it. You cannot zoom in, zoom out, or rotate. This frustrates things when I can’t see the way I’m supposed to follow (I got stuck in the first area for a while because of this), and it also makes some fights unnecessarily difficult.
The lack of camera movement, bugs, and even the inability to turn up the volume felt like I was out of control during the playthrough. No matter how cool the graphics looked, it didn’t matter how great the cutscenes were. Due to some bugs, the weaknesses far outweighed the strengths and sadly ruined my enjoyment.
We hope that these bugs will be patched in the future. Until then, this game is a pass for me.
