The Darkest Tales: Hollow Knight review made in Italy

If they ask us what was one of the best years for video games produced in Italy, 2022 would certainly be a good candidate as well, thanks to The Darkest Tales, the 2D action adventure developed by. Trine. The studio was born thanks to Bud Spencer and Terence Hill: Slaps and Beans starring Bud Spencer and Terence Hill, but the tones have definitely gotten darker for this game.

The Darkest Tales is actually the story of a teddy bear who comes to life to save his now grown mistress from a world where nightmares come to life and nothing is scarier than good old fairy tales. Brothers Grim.

From a wolf bloodthirsty Little Red Riding Hood to a Peter Pan who is willing to do anything to stay young forever, many villains will sound familiar to you, but for all the wrong reasons.

At a game design level, the game draws a lot of inspiration from modern classics like Hollow Knight and Ori and Wisp’s Will, it will take a lot of well-made things to customize it and adapt it to the story. Trinity Team wants to tell. in this The Darkest Tales review We will tell you what impressed us between quotes and novelty about this title made in Italy.

A (small) chill story

Nightmares come to life in Alicia’s mind and she is haunted by evil and terrifying creatures in the dream world that threaten to harm her. To help her, she needs a knight so that the spirit of the little lightbulb that accompanied her through the dark nights of her childhood enters the little girl’s mind and defeats the ranks of the demons that now fill her. who is betterTeddy bear Favorite as a child to fulfill this task? Unfortunately, after years spent in a ballot box and forgotten, Teddy (the hero) isn’t exactly inclined to help him. After some bickering, the little light manages to convince the teddy bear and the mission to rescue Alicia begins. The journey of the two protagonists begins in the most classic fairy tale worlds: forests, medieval-style villages, and a blood-stained girl with a red riding hood pits a pack of wolves against him.

Little light and the teddy bear discuss what to do, but quickly realize that this version of Little Red Riding Hood is a game. bad memory Alicia’s childhood and her duties are to eliminate it in order to purify that part of her memories. After a very simple fight that ends the training phase, the mission succeeds, but this is only the first phase of a journey that will take Lighty (that’s the name of the light) and Teddy to discover and defeat many characters from the childhood fairy. fairy tales. go crazy now.

It would be a shame to reveal who is hiding here at the end of each level because some of the funniest moments in the game were when we realized who he was after a few clues. the last boss. The Trinity Team did a good job of getting our childhood fairy tale characters into a spiral of insanity.

Simple but layered combat

To defeat the horde of nightmares that haunt Alicia’s dreams, Lighty inoculates with her magic a strictly round-tipped scissors that Teddy wields like a pirate with two swords. It’s just the first weapon From your arsenal the game will get richer as you progress. First you’ll get a bow that will unlock the ranged weapons category, and then an ax that will give you access to heavy weapons. As the adventure progresses, you’ll unlock alternate versions of these weapons (boomerangs instead of bows or spears instead of swords) to customize your fighting style.

If you’ve played Hollow Knight, you’ll soon learn how the game works. spell By The Darkest Tales. Teddy has a segmented life bar and a mana (energy) container that fills up by defeating enemies and hitting bosses. Mana can be used to regenerate a portion of your health bar (a full orb will give you about 4 back) or to energize weapons by dealing more damage, or to create a shield to protect yourself from hits. As in Team Cherry’s souls-venia, a runes and slots: 24 passive buffs are hidden between levels, but you’ll have to choose carefully which ones to use because there are only 6 gaps and these are unlocked as the story progresses.

But unlike Hollow Knight, you can’t skip too many combat moments against weaker enemies. After entering certain parts of the levels, barriers will appear that will not be destroyed until you eliminate all the enemies in the area. If the job gets too difficult, you can always change it. difficulty level. We recommend starting at medium to go easy in case of frustration, or upping to hard for a more intense challenge.

Playing with a few missing runes and mostly on medium difficulty a dozen hours to complete the game. We also recommend using a controller on PC, combat is much more intuitive with the pad in hand.

Engaging level design but seen before

To recreate the fairytale and messy atmosphere typical of a child’s bedroom, the Trinity Team mixed the aesthetics of their picture storybooks with the material feel of stuffed animals, even swiping a few Lego pieces here and there for a real touch of class. There Color pallette It is very reminiscent of the Ori series mixed with the watercolors of Child of Light. But the management of the lighting makes some sections in the dark almost unplayable in daylight. To explore levels and face enemies classic skill set 2D platformers: jumping, double jumping, sprinting (to which you’re immune), wall-clinging (wall-climbing), and a hook with the most generous timer in gaming history. In the middle of a platforming session, you can actually hover for almost 2 seconds by turning the hook, waiting for the hook to turn. As with Hollow Knight, hitting an enemy resets current actions after leaving the ground (2 jumps, 1 sprint, 1 hook) making exploration really smooth.

Unfortunately, the quality drops a bit in the variety of settings and the design of the enemies: the levels are very linear, especially in the beginning. few and repetitive competitors. Flying enemies that require an exaggerated amount of arrows to knock down are particularly annoying. Fortunately, all of Teddy’s abilities can be upgraded via a skill tree, with points you get as you level up, just like in an RPG. So you can increase the damage of weapons, unlock new powers or increase the effectiveness of the spell. In battles against bosses, however, we found ourselves in front of battle stages that didn’t restart after death or the damage mechanics didn’t kick in, but nothing that a restart of the game didn’t fix. These glitches will be easily fixed with a patch and won’t hurt the overall experience.