The Vanshee, the preview of a promising emulator of Devil May Cry
The Vanshee
Line Games Corporation is a Korean publisher still little known to European players: however, the music seems to change in the coming months, given that, at the LPG 2021 convention it presented some potentially interesting projects, such as UNDECEMBER and Quantum Knights. The Vanshee is the one that has most tickled the attention of the Western public, at least according to the unquestionable judgment of the number of views on YouTube. It is an action / hack 'n' slash developed by Pixel Cruise, a half-known software house belonging to the northernmost of the four Asian tigers, and its landing on the shelves of Steam, in the state of early access, is expected during the year. .Let's find out in detail in our preview of The Vanshee.
Good atmosphere
The premise is the following: aliens have invaded our planet, solving at the root the problem of overpopulation. A small group of warriors (Vanshee, in fact), combining magical arts and technology, represents the last bastion to cling to in order to avoid the extinction of the human species. Said this way, the plot is really terrible, but it is difficult to expect something much deeper from a game devoted to online.The developers make it known that they have used the Unreal Engine 4 as regards the graphics , and to have designed a combat system that goes beyond traditional classes. The style of play will therefore be influenced by the way in which weapons are forged and combined with magical elements. For the remaining information we just have to rely on the vision of the minute and a half of the trailer, enough to get a clear idea of how the structure of The Vanshee is set up, which "winks" (to put it mildly) to the Devil saga May Cry.
In addition to the spectacularity and frenzy of the action, the design of the enemies, even before that of the protagonists, has pleasantly struck us, with particular reference to their size. Apart from the indispensable side monsters, sacrificed on the altar of violence to underline the power of the attacks, the "standard" abominations are on average much larger than the Vanshee; it's just a pity that what appears in the final stages of the video and which should be an end-of-level boss, while impressive, does not return the same feeling of a mastodon.
The settings, on the other hand, did not appear memorable at all: a ruined city, difficult to trace back to its real counterpart, numerous indoor sequences (including an anonymous underground car park and some ancestral ravines) and some excessively bucolic glimpses considering the devastation brought by the alien threat are typical locations in the developer's manual. A little more originality wouldn't have hurt at all.
Combat system
The technical level of The Vanshee looks extremely interesting. The battles follow one another at frenetic speed, as is the speed of execution of the combos, so much so that the weapons (broadswords and spears are the masters), in their rotation, give way to beams of light and a series of special effects the more spectacular the longer the sequence of attacks.It is equally true that, in the trailer, you hardly ever see attacks by the CPU-controlled characters, nor defensive actions by the warrior, so the impression is born that the title offers tons of meat for slaughter and that runs the risk of relying on so-called "button mashing". Similarly, it is impossible to understand how the online component will be developed: in none of the sequences are two or more warriors visible at the same time. We believe the presence of a PvP mode is unlikely, while it is realistic to expect that the cooperative can be limited to three / four players at the same time and that the focus of the online game will mainly be that of collecting increasingly lethal weapons.
The cinematic sequences (including that of the girl embracing the warrior), made with the same game engine, we presume mainly refer to the introductory film, considering the online nature of the title; alternatively, it cannot be ruled out that there may be a single-player tutorial campaign.
The Vanshee trailer looked promising, but there are still too many pieces left to be unbalanced in expectations. Pixel Cruise's game does not seem to shine with fantasy and originality, but from a technical and scenographic point of view, the Korean developers seem to have managed to reach a noteworthy level, capable of remembering even that masterpiece that responds to the name of Devil May Cry. This very brief taste, however, does not allow us to analyze more in depth crucial aspects such as the combat system and artificial intelligence, but leaves us the hope that something good can come of it.
