The Souls genre is one of gaming’s most popular genres in this day and age. We’ve seen a plethora of different variations of the classic Souls formula featuring everything from androids to anime to even crabs. You know what we have yet to see that people also love; dinosaurs. Thus, a perfect marriage was formed between the two in the form of Dinoblade. It may sound like a crazy concept, and it might be. However, while not being the most technically impressive game in the genre, the developers at Team Spino were able to create something that is still loads of fun for its shorter run time.
Dinoblade throws you into a chaotic world where dinosaurs wield giant swords, and you play as a Spinosaurus that carries a giant greatsword in its mouth and you wreck havoc on all other dinosaur kind. The story is quite scant with a few cutscenes sprinkled throughout the game. All you need to know to start is that you are tasked with claiming the souls of all the dinosaurs by a mysterious otherworldly dinosaur that gave you your blade to start the game.
While the story isn’t the main draw of Dinoblade, the gameplay is where the game shines. Combat falls far more in line with what you would expect from the genre. You have your light and heavy attacks, dodge rolls, and blocks and parries. Then you also have a range charged attack you can use at any time. Then, you also have have four abilities you can unlock and use that consume the game’s Resonance (magic) system. These abilities are unlocked and leveled up through the use of Boss SP with each upgrade costing more of it. Thus, chaining together your combos and Resonance attacks becomes paramount in taking out all the dinosaurs you encounter. Then bosses you defeat, aside from the main bosses, give you a summon that you can call forth in battle to do damage to an enemy. Some of these summons even provide passive effects such has a larger parry window, a damage increase, or more i-frames while rolling.
Like any good game in the Souls genre, the bosses found throughout the game are the most fun to take on. Each area has multiple optional field bosses you can find and take on as well as culminating in a major boss at the end of the area. The game isn’t the most difficult, so the bosses can still be easily taken down in a few attempts. When fighting a boss, they have their health meter and a stagger meter that builds up as you attack. Once that meter is full and turns orange, the next time you parry an attack you respond with an attack that does a significant chunk of damage.
While falling into the Souls genre, Dinoblade is far more a Soulslite than a Soulslike and that’s a big distinction for those who may be put off by Soulslike. There are the typical hallmarks of the genre such as stones that act like bonfires, enemies respawing when you die or rest, and obviously the currency in the game being souls. However, this game is far less difficult than other games in the genre, and you also don’t drop your souls when you do die in the game. Thus, you never have to worry about losing anything. Leveling up is also done automatically, and is separate from what you spend your souls on. Souls are used to increase your four stats of health, attack, stamina, and resonance, but these stats also go up as you gain levels.
The only real negative when it comes to Dinoblade is that the game isn’t the most technically impressive game out there. Levels are mostly wide flat areas that, while you can find some things such as extra health cores or new swords, don’t really have anything going on in them. Then, there was a lot of pop in and inconsistent frame rates. This was very noticeable when there was a lot happening on screen at once and the game would start to chug. The worst of these issues was when I was messing with the controls at the final boss fight I had changed the block/parry button to a different input. However, this caused overlap between actions, but I was unable to assign any action to the original block/parry button. Thus, I lost access to using block/parry function which really limited my abilities in the fights.
Overall, Dinoblade is a fun action Soulslite game with a completely off the wall premise. The combat is enjoyable and it is fun chaining combos and abilities together against swarms of opposing dinosaurs. However, the lackluster amount of story and numerous technical issues I encountered stop the game from being something truly unique in one of gaming’s most popular modern genres.
Score: 7 out of 10
Reviewed on PC