Dust: An Elysian Tail Review

I've always believed that 2D got pushed aside before its time had truly come. New tech arrived and forced things forward, leaving us to wonder what kinds of two-dimensional games might have been made with more powerful hardware to back them. Dust: An Elysian Tail, is a great example of such a game. Hand-drawn and animated by one lone developer, it's a beautifully penned love letter to fans of the Metroidvania sub-genre. Whether you play for an absorbing story, exciting combat, or the joy of exploration, Dust has you covered.

The first thing you're likely to notice when you start the game up is how it looks. Your journey begins in a magical glade, and brings you through dimly lit ice caverns, long-dead forests, snowcapped mountain ranges, and more. Each pops to life with a painterly beauty rarely seen in modern gaming. Dynamic weather effects and subtle use of ambient lighting provide a strong sense of mood in each new environment you visit. And as memorable as the locales are, the characters that inhabit them are even more so. The cast is populated by a variety of talking animals, strongly reminiscent of the Don Bluth animated films of the ‘90s. Their outlines are basic, but their exaggerated features and well-designed costumes make each of them stand out, none more so than the titular main character, Dust.

We often underestimate the importance of a visually appealing main character, but Dust makes sure we don’t this time. His tattered sedge hat and shimmering runed blade Ahrah make for an unmistakable silhouette. You'll only need to control him in action for a few seconds before feeling connected to him. This is due just as much to his silky smooth animations as it is to the sheer responsiveness of the controls. He seems to dodge, leap, hack, and slash at a thought, making combat feel fluid the moment you jump in. Short though the move list may be, attacks can be chained into one another in a surprising number of ways, resulting in impressive looking dances of death that feel satisfying every time you pull them off.

A variety of locales keeps Dust's luscious graphics fresh.

Whether on the ground or in the air, your entire repertoire of attacks, parries, projectiles, and magic spells make for a good time when fighting the varied hordes of enemies you face during your adventure. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the boss battles, which seem substandard by comparison. Given the genre, you'd be forgiven for expecting screen-high bosses with an endless array of powerful attacks for you to dodge. What you get instead is a collection of villains no larger than your own character, who have but one or two rudimentary ways of attacking you. All of them, including the grueling, overlong final boss can be easily bested by flying back and forth while spamming magic attacks. It seems odd that a game possessed of such great imagination should be so banal in this regard.

This shortcoming is made even more disappointing by the fact that the boss battles are so well incorporated into the story, which bears down with more thematic gravity than the game's visuals would lead you to expect. Despite the genuinely funny banter between Dust and his flying companion Fidget, the plot regularly delves into issues such as redemption, morality during times of poverty and war, and the very nature of the soul. It's all handled capably by a very strong voice cast that makes every character affecting in one way or the other. Dust isn't simply another grim-faced, sword-wielding badass. He's internally conflicted in a rather...unique sort of way, and I found watching him work through it genuinely engrossing.

What doesn't belong in this otherwise serene scene? Hmm...

It's rare for this kind of game to have such an extensive story, and combined with the quest, crafting and stat point allocation systems, it lends the game a sort of light RPG sheen. Many NPCs can give you sidequests which, when completed, net you a solid chunk of XP to level up with. Each time you increase your rank, you get to improve one of 4 core stats: health, attack, defense, and magic. Adding to the RPG feel is the crafting system, which has you searching for item blueprints and materials dropped off monsters to create powerful pieces of gear to augment Dust's stats with.

Both systems work well enough for you to gear your character towards your play style, but neither are sufficiently deep or rewarding enough to warrant trying different “builds” or farming for specific blueprints. And since most craftable items become available for purchase in shops shortly after you see their blueprint drop off monsters, the system's inclusion can seem superfluous at times. The strange lack of a “New Game +” mode to carry over all your stats and crafted gear to a second playthrough further marginalizes the importance of the RPG mechanics. It's still nice that they're there, but in the long run they don't add as much to the gameplay as they initially seem to.

Behold Dust's artistic beauty.

Still, these features are more or less icing on the Metroidvania cake. The core gameplay pillars all remain rock solid. Platforming feels effortless, and each new area brings new hazards and light puzzles with it, ensuring that you stay on your toes. As you'd expect, revisiting old areas with new abilities yields generous rewards. The world of Dust is overflowing with hidden treasures, secret areas, and a series of challenge maps designed to test your skills to the max. It'll take most players 12-15 hours to roll the credits while doing a minimum of exploration and backtracking, while completionists who want to 100% every area can easily push past the 20-hour mark, lending Dust: An Elysian Tail immense value for its $15 price tag.