Possessor(s) Review

It’s easy enough to know when you’re not into television series. While some take time to settle in and require a bit of patience, you’ll often decide whether it’s worth investing your hours early on. Video games are a different beast. The element of required interaction means that your initial friction could just as easily be a skill issue or a misunderstanding of the game’s mechanics, making it far harder to identify the disconnect. This is the challenge I was faced with while playing Heart Machine’s latest outing, Possessor(s). I wanted my disinterest in the studio’s first foray into the Metroidvania genre to be an issue on my part, but, in the end, it wound up simply being one of those shows that I wanted to stop watching after the pilot.

Living in a dystopian city owned and operated by a shady megacorporation is bad enough for the teenage Luca, but her day gets far worse when a fissure in reality sees scores of demons pour onto the streets. The incursion kills her best friend and severs her legs, leaving her crawling towards the only figure in sight. Hoping for salvation, Luca instead encounters Rhem, a demon also battling with the pointy end of mortality. While understandably hesitant, Luca accepts Rhem’s offer to restore her legs in exchange for a possession hitchhike that will see her deliver the demon back to his home.

The procedure is successful, but it takes time. Having been in a limbo-like dimension for three years, the pair, now sharing the same body, return to a flooded and crumbling Sanzu City that’s overrun by demons. At the behest of Rhem, who is now a literal voice in Luca’s mind, the two set out to uncover and explore the headquarters of Agradyne, the mysterious company that appears to be at the centre of the calamitous event.

Sanzu is crumbling, but its destruction is a sight to behold

Luckily for Luca, demonic possession is more than just a never-ending phone call. Faster and stronger than humanly possible thanks to Rhem’s presence, Luca can now traverse this shamble of a city and battle against the demons that reside there. Movement is fluid and responsive, with Luca able to dash and wall jump as standard, before any new abilities are added to the mix. Moving through the stunningly beautiful locations is enjoyable from the beginning, and it continues to impress as your skill set deepens.

As Metroidvania search-action games go, new tools and abilities are added to your arsenal as you progress, such as a yo-yo that acts as a whip, a slide move that grants you access to new areas, and a ground-pound that also unlocks previously inaccessible rooms. Each of these new powers adds to the platforming pool in an interesting way, and I enjoyed experimenting with them as they appeared.

And they do, simply, appear. Each new ability is found lying around without much fanfare, often at the very end of one of the map’s branches. During the first hour, you’ll be given the core objective, which is to track down five McGuffins marked on your map. Far from the perceivable edges of the map, you’ll need to explore in their vague direction, hoping that you’ve decided to pursue the correct one first. If not, you’ll be hit with an impassable wall or a locked door, forcing you to take another route.

Do I want to turn this demonic teenager into Kurt Angle? Yes, yes I do

So far, so Metroidvania. The issue with this is that you’re simultaneously given no direction and too much direction at once. Whacking five icons onto your map and being told to go find them feels antithetical to the genre, but it’s when you head towards one, hit a gate, turn to the next, hit a gate, then turn again to, you guessed it, hit a gate, where frustration starts to kick in. Finally stumbling into a new tool gave brief moments of relief, but those were fleeting, as the path that I double-backed to often led to nothing more than a new combat option or a collectible.

The aimless exploration could be somewhat forgiven if combat were fun and engaging, and sometimes it is, but it must be within very particular parameters to hit those marks. Rather than your typical side-scrolling action affair, Possessor(s) adopts a combat model similar to a brawler or a platform fighter. Basic combos with Luca’s knives, baseball bats, and other melee weapons are combined with metre-draining abilities activated with a direction input. The computer mouse, for instance, hits the enemy multiple times, while knocking them in the air for a juggle. Similarly, the mobile phone can be used as an area-of-effect attack that damages and stuns enemies in every direction around Luca.

The essence of the combat is solid, and when it works, it’s awesome, but the demons you’re fighting just don’t allow that to happen often. Possessed pot plants, lights, and vending machines will attack you with ranged and melee strikes that are meant to be readable and parried (once the ability is unlocked), but if they aren’t, you’ll get stun-locked into oblivion. This is most apparent when you’re hit in the air, as you’ll stay in a stunned state until you hit the ground. As you could expect, this makes taking on multiple enemies a bit of a chore, and it’s made worse when you consider the overwhelming visual noise that’s created with more than a handful of demons on screen at once, making that all-important parry nearly impossible to pull off.

You wouldn’t think taking the subway could look this beautiful

I did enjoy the wide range of abilities on offer and appreciated the additional layer of affixes that could further alter each ability. Picked up throughout the world, the affixes, abilities, and weapons can be upgraded and improved by vendors dotted around the map. These upgrades become vital as you progress and begin to encounter the same enemies with a different colour scheme, but you’ll be hard pressed to effectively purchase them, as each vendor offers a specific set of upgrades, and they aren’t differentiated on the map, so you’ll need to jot them down, or hope to hell that you’re heading for the right one.

While Sanzu might be a hellscape of confusing corridors and frustrating enemies, it sure is a looker. Each location, from the high-rise buildings to the boggy swamp, is beautifully detailed using a muted colour palette and a 3D animation style that offers a huge amount of depth. The beautiful backdrops are offset by the gorgeously hand-drawn 2D character models, all of which move with wonderfully detailed animations. These models extend into conversation, where each character is given a huge range of emotive expressions, used to effectively convey their feelings, rather than a lifeless static image.

Most of these conversations happen between Luca and Rhem, immediately at loggerheads –      Luca’s preconceptions of demons (however fair as they may be) clash with Rhem’s disgust of humanity. Luca is young, naïve, and brash, while Rhem is stoic, nihilistic, and coarse. Inhabiting the same body, the two clash, bicker, and learn about each other’s lives in an affecting way. They grow and begin to understand one another, exchanging cultural quirks and mentalities held by their kind. While none of the supporting cast, save for the overarching antagonist, manage to make much of an impact, the leading duo and their complex connection are interesting from front to back.

Final Thoughts

While I was enamoured by its presentation and premise, its shortcomings in game design and mechanical execution made it hard for me to want to go back to Possessor(s). I kept hoping that my next play session would turn my thoughts around, that the combat and exploration would suddenly click. Unfortunately, that click never came, and I was left to push through uneven and frustrating combat encounters, while aimlessly wandering through environments that irritated instead of intrigued. There’s a version of Possessor(s) I know I would enjoy, one that I would love, but it’s just not the one we ended up getting.

Reviewed on PC // Review code supplied by publisher

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