PLATFORM: PC, SWITCH (REVIEWED) | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
It’s a battle for the ages when ancient occult forces collide with powerful human technology in this retro-style platformer from Flinthook / Mercenary Kings developers, Tribute Games, that plays like a modern take on 2D classics like Mega Man and Castlevania.
Controlling Flame, an android, and Grit, her sword-wielding mech, your job is to travel the world and take down eleven mythical monsters including heavy-hitters Baba Yaga in Russia and Medusa in Greece, and lesser-known entities like Gashadokuro in Japan and Mexico’s Lord of the Dead, Mictlantecuhtli. On the surface, it’s a fairly standard action-platformer, but you quickly discover there’s much more to it than meets the eye.
Throughout each level (which can be tackled in any order), defeated enemies have a chance to drop a weapon. Grit is able to carry up to four at any one time, with any extras being sent to your inventory when collected. Each weapon has unique stats and a limited durability, as well as a single magical property like attacking enemies with screen-clearing lightning, healing your character or buffing your attack or defence. The catch is, weapons break completely when their abilities are used, so there’s a constant need for managing your inventory and saving the more potent powers for the most appropriate situations. Weapons are also used to activate checkpoints and can be broken down between levels to extend Grit’s health meter, adding a further layer of risk to the decisions you make – do you continue without a checkpoint in order to horde some weapons, or do you want to give up that powerful full-health restoring weapon to ensure you’ve got a restart point just before a boss fight?
On occasion, Flame will have to jump out of her mech and go it alone for a while (a bit of Blaster Master, there), using her whip as both a means to fight enemies and also to swing between grapple points across deadly pits. If Grit falls in battle, Flame also acts like a “second chance” which allows players to continue on foot – she isn’t the most sturdy of droids though, and only possesses a tiny health bar, so trying to reach the next checkpoint alone can get very tense indeed. This, along with an incredible soundtrack that pushes you along and the emphasis on making decisions about how and when to make the best use of your weapons, means that Panzer Paladin doesn’t give you a single minute’s peace – it’s action-packed in (mostly) the best kind of way.
We say “mostly”, because it can sometimes feel like you’re spending a little too long staring at your inventory – being able to sort your weapons based on their various stats would be a welcome addition, as it would massively speed up the amount of time needed to find, for example, your strongest weapons or the ones with specific abilities. It’s far from a major issue, but it’s something that the game as a whole might benefit from.
There are a few bits and pieces to keep you going outside of the main campaign – a Blacksmith allows players to design their own weapons in a limited range of colours (four), which are then uploaded… somewhere… and can appear in other players’ games. There’s also a speedrun mode, and beating the main campaign unlocks a more challenging remixed campaign as well as a score-based boss rush tournament mode. Plenty to sink your teeth into and well worth the price of admission, Panzer Paladin is another hit for Tribute Games.
