Fallen Tear: The Ascension, Winter Crew Studios’ new Early Access magnum opus, feels like a Metroidvania greatest hits album. I generally consider it bad form to talk about a game by comparing it to another, but I’m struggling in this case. When I look at the visuals and listen to the soundtrack, I get echoes of the Ori games. When I complete a tough platforming section and get rewarded with a useful collectible, I’m mentally back with Hollow Knight. I don’t mean this as a negative, either. Quite the opposite in fact.
After bouncing straight off of Silksong, and its strange way of handling exploration, I was ready for a game that encouraged me to poke around in the corners. That’s not to say that Fallen Tear lacks an identity of its own though. Even in the small fragment of the game available on Early Access, it’s clear it has its own ideas. That said, this is undoubtedly an early build. There’s some roughness, and a few songs on the album that feel far weaker than others.
Hunter Gatherer
Fallen Tear‘s opening plot runs along familiar lines. A once peaceful world is getting ravaged by the ‘Corruption’, which is threatening to tear it apart. Meanwhile, a young lad called Hira is on his first quest to become a full fledged hunter. He defeats a big beastie, then meets up with his brother. His brother tells him that he’ll always have his back, seconds before demons start flying in from off screen. It’s perfectly comically timed. Hira’s village is destroyed, he blacks out and when he wakes up, everyone is giving him the side-eye. It’s a generic plot, but I’ll harp on that more later.
Instead, let’s look at what would undoubtedly be the opening track: the graphics. Fallen Tear is very proud of its hand-drawn look and it bloody well should be. It’s stunning. Everything is bright and colourful, different biomes feel very different and there are bespoke animations everywhere. Enemy variety is nice too. I only noticed a couple of small palette swaps. It’s to the point that having basic enemies be woodland creatures feels almost kind of cruel. Like we’re slicing our way through the cast of Animals of Farthing Wood. Either way, it’s fantastic at pulling you in from first glance.
Gameplay is good, too. Movement feels very tight, so jumping puzzles feel fair. Melee combat is quick and responsive. Blows feel a little light, but there are guard break and weak spot mechanics that feel nice. Exploration is great, too. The map is wonderfully big, even in Early Access, and exploring its corners is rewarded well. Whenever I was stuck, I reliably had three other routes still to explore. Boss fights are generally a highlight too. Especially the big sewage snake (or Leviatron if you want to be fancy).
The B-Sides
Fallen Tear introduces a couple of new mechanics into the formula. Stat progression is very non-linear, for example. You do have basic stat advances from finding secrets, but new skills are learned by taking on hunt contracts and killing mini-bosses. It’s a great way to reward your fighting prowess. You also have ‘fated bonds’, which are NPCs that you meet in the world. After doing a short quest, they join you. They give you access to new active skills, as well as giving you passive buffs. They also join your home base, allowing you to upgrade health and so on.
It’s a nice touch, feeling very natural and allowing you to swap out your build as you go. The characters in the EA version are nicely rounded, but feel a little underexplored so far. The writing in general needs a stronger presence I feel. The bare bones and fairly generic plot means we need to focus on the characters. But they rarely chat beyond a few lines. Hira himself feels very bland at the moment, with his lines being pretty flat. We need an excuse to gather folks around a campfire and have a proper chat. Otherwise, we’re just going to be staying at the level of co-workers.
I’ve a few other nitpicks that are undoubtedly down to the early build. Here’s a quick list. There’s an overlong boating animation that you can’t skip, and serves no purpose. Sometimes there are platforms in the background that look like they are in the foreground, making platforming a little odd at times. Hira will sometimes stop dead because the terrain rises a tiny bit, most egregiously when you’re trying to step on buttons when escaping a bandit HQ. Lastly, there were a few visual bugs. Hira decided he wanted to stand at a forty-five degree angle for a while, which was impressive.
Fallen Tear: The Ascension – Very Promising
There might also be a balance issue, but it’s hard to tell in Early Access. Everything was fine until I hit the water area and met shielded guys and spear throwers, who could take off my health with a couple of swings. Fallen Tear doesn’t let you heal much, unless you can absorb healing blobs from dead enemies, so a big swing can ruin your day. I didn’t finish all the EA content, because one of the last bosses kept slicing me up in three hits. I’d normally go off to other areas, but I’d explored ’em all.
Still, that definitely leaves me wanting to listen to the full album once Fallen Tear is out. It’s reminiscent of a lot of the big boys in the genre but, crucially, never feels like a hollow re-tread. It brings in enough mechanics, and dedicates itself to non-linearity enough, that it’s already standing on its own two feet. It just needs to iron out some of its issues and, with any luck, put in a bit more character focus. If you treat the EA as a fairly chunky demo, then you’ll have fun with it. I’ll certainly be back once it’s out for good.
(Fallen Tear: The Ascension‘s Steam Page)
Please note: a Steam key was provided for this preview.
