Spartan Fist Review

"Fists of Fury!"

Campaign

February 29, 2020 at 5:00pm
By Jason Stettner

This is an interesting, yet somewhat simplistic title. This is a rogue-lite experience where fists are everything. There are a few areas you work through, each containing a number of random levels that might pop up.

It’s definitely got dungeon crawling themes as you clear rooms to progress, choosing the direction you want to head to next. During the passage between areas you might come across a stand that will either grant a drip for a special bonus, or a different type of fist to use. There are many fist options available, and these do alter your battling options considerably.

With each area you progress past towards the next core one, you’ll take on a boss. If you die in a later area, you’ll start from the very beginning unless you gather enough points in order to buy the skip option. This is somewhat tiring, as it becomes repetitive as you play since there’s not a whole lot of variation in the initial area.

Gameplay

This does look visually appealing carrying a voxel design. You can choose between blood or rainbow effects in the well setup tutorial and both honestly are quite cartoonish. I liked the destruction of some aspects as they would crumble. The backdrops are a bit bland however, but I found the cut out crowds to be interesting.

The areas also get a bit more dynamic as it progresses since the second area carries more of a metro theme. That being said, as more enemies fill the screen I did notice that the controls would freak out. Your screen would start spinning, or freaking out due to the shifting of your lock-on. This is quite present when you hit the second area and past that. The fist style was really neat here, you have varying stances and it does provide a challenge as you learn the best maneuvers.

The fists also factor into how you fight, and it’s a neat aspect. The stone one hits hard, the feather could launch you high and so forth. The music tunes were fine, I did notice performance drops in this one which was odd as it didn’t necessarily seem to be a highly demanding sort of experience. There is an in-game store you use to boost abilities through various levels and these carry over through the permadeath system.

The Conclusion

Spartan Fist is an alright rogue-lite being something that’s different while ultimately lacking in depth and content. It has a few areas, with limited levels within them. You won’t progress far having to repeat and grind for enough points to either skip areas or be able to survive long enough.

It just gets really repetitive here which is disappointing, as the core gameplay is rather cool. They did some neat things with the fists of fury concept, but that’s not enough to make this one compelling. I did have fun playing it for a number of hours, but I was getting tired of it after the first hour or so.

I liked the visuals, but most of the backdrops were bland. The voxel battling could have been pushed further and perhaps more enemy variation would have helped as well. It’s just generally a very simple sort of experience.

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Spartan Fist Review on Xbox One X
Review Code Provided by JanduSoft

Rating Overall: 5.5