INTRO
City of brass is a game that I have spent a considerable amount of time on in regards to gathering my thoughts in regards to this game. After about a week or two straight of playing it, I have come to a conclusive verdict. Is it good, or bad? Let’s find out together.
STORY
The story of City of brass is short, simple, and not too complicated or detailed compared to, say, Pokémon Mystery Dungeon’s series of games. Your are a nameless thief of varying classes, determined to claim a treasure from the middle of a trap-filled, enemy-guarded Arabian-styled city of brass. See? Simple!
This story is simple and easy to follow through this tutorial level, which also gives you time to practice the controls and mechanics of the game.
I wish the rest of City of Brass was as understanding of some players’ difficulties with timing, though. With that said, let’s get into the gameplay.
GAMEPLAY
This game is a first-person action Dungeon Crawler. It’s NOT an RPG, in case you wondering. You earn gold by opening chests and breaking pots and whatnot. You use that gold in order to recover health at shops, buy new weapons, disable traps, summon a ghostly companion, etc.
The game has 14 or so levels and 4 or so boss fights. When the time, as indicated by the upper-right Hourglass icon, runs out, orbs will chase you that will damage you and continue to pursue you until you’re dead.
The enemies range from legless skeletons, to sombrero-wearing zombies, to floating skulls. I’m sure there’s more types of enemies, but I never made it past LEVEL 1!
Now, we come to my least favorite part of the game… Permadeath. Now, despite what I’m about to say, Permadeath can be good and raise the steaks if done correctly, as demonstrated in the Fire Emblem series, where permadeath applies to units if you manage to complete a chapter while a unit you control has their health reduced to 0. That’s a fair example.
City of Brass will WIPE your progress clean every time you die. EVERY. Single. TIME! There’s NO option to turn this off, either. And since this is a roguelike-dungeon crawler, the layout for each level is random. The aesthetic and look maybe the same each time, but the layout is generally different each time you try.
For a more painful example in the same game, Let’s say you made it to the final boss somehow, and died just as you were about to beat it and the game. All of that progress will go away, and you start back at level 1 with 4 hearts. Every time you die or complete a playthrough, you earn XP, which unlocks new classes that generally play the same with little to no variation.
In regards to soundtrack, it’s Arabian-themed. I’ll give it that. It’s definitely mystic and enchanting. That said, I don’t remember much outside of the the title theme and level 1’s theme, maily because you play level 1 every time you die!
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, City of Brass is a decent game IF you like first-person dungeon crawlers with no turn-based action. While I was enchanted in the beginning, after 5-10 hours, I was sadly disillusioned. This is one city that should’ve lost, like Atlantis kind-of lost.
