The one and only reason I was even interested in this game was because it was free thanks to my PS+ membership. Since the last free game I played was Grow Home, I decided to give this one a try and see what all the fuss was about. I played this game for a little over 7 hours in order to get the platinum trophy and here’s what I thought about it.
If I’m going to be honest then I have to tell you that I have no idea what the hell this game was about. I completely missed the whole point apparently and actually had to look up what the plot of this game was. According to Wikipedia, Teslagrad takes place in the kingdom of Elektropia where there is this king who rules with an iron fist. This king doesn’t like technology and anything to do with technology so he goes and destroys the Tesla Tower. You’ll play as the orphaned boy who one day finds himself fleeing the kings guards and heading into the tower to unlock its mysterious secrets. So yeah…I didn’t get that from playing.
Not only does this game not lay out a clear story but it also doesn’t even tell you what you’re trying to do. After twenty minutes of just running around and not getting anywhere I followed a guide for the rest of the game just to get the trophies. There are no instructions on where to go, what you’re supposed to be doing, or anything for that matter. All you see is a small opening scene of some guy dropping off some kid and then time going by until the kid is forced to run off. I don’t know. I’m still confused just thinking about it.
BOO: While I’m not a fan of over instructions, something, ANYTHING, would have been nice for this game. A simple objective type thing or some kind of instruction on where to actually go so that you’re not just wandering around aimlessly would have been welcomed.
If you’re just going to play the game and not looking to get the platinum trophy that goes along with it, then the playability of the game is simple as long as you know where you’re going to get through the various different boss battles within the game. While it’s frustrating at times to take on the different boss’s in the game, you’ll get to learn your own techniques after dying over and over again that will make you wonder why you didn’t just do what you did to defeat the boss in the first place. Now if you’re playing for the platinum trophy and going for all the scrolls, that’s a different story as you’ll have to use a combination of different powers at different times in order to get into some impossible places sometimes. Doing this is frustrating as hell and you’ll want to break you controller each and every time the damn “blink” power doesn’t work because it’s fickle. Sometimes you can blink rapidly and other times you have to give it time to recharge, there seems no right or wrong way to use it and it just operates how it wants to when it wants to. The same goes for the other powers in the game. Most of the time they’re extremely fickle and getting the platinum for this game depends on your powers working correctly so this can get tedious and annoying. Other then that the game ran smoothly without any bugs or glitches.
Probably the one and only thing I really enjoyed about this game was the graphics. For a 2D side scroller, the graphics were just beautiful. They were full of detail for each and every section of the game. Both the foreground and background graphics blended nicely to give you something really pretty to look at and really that was the only thing I thought this game had going for it.
There are a total of 37 trophies for this game including a platinum trophy. In order to get all the trophies you don’t even have to finish the game, which is something that I did because after playing for seven hours I just couldn’t go on anymore and honestly I just didn’t care. All you have to do in order to get the platinum trophy is collect the 36 scrolls laying around the different areas of the game. These are not easy things to do. Sometimes they require you to complete some puzzles, other times they require you to use a combination of powers, and other times you’ll just mess up and have to start all over again from whatever checkpoint the game gives you. Trying to get a scroll and end up in a completely different area? If you die you’ll be stuck in that new area and have to back track back to the area that you were before.
There is no multiplayer for this game, but this is one of those games where having someone to play with would have bee nice. Even a co-op mode would have been appreciated since it would have made it easier to get the scrolls within the game.
Overall I give this game a 1 out of 5
What’s Great:
+ The graphics for this game are simply beautiful. They’re full of detail and are really the games strongest aspect.
What’s Not So Great:
– No clear story. While the story might be told through the scrolls, if you don’t find them then you don’t know anything.
– No clear objectives. From the start you’re just wandering around doing whatever. Where are you supposed to go? What are you supposed to do?
– Powers are fickle, especially “blink”. For something that is an important part of the game, using the powers should have been consistent instead of random luck if they functioned correctly or not.
I don’t like to give games a 1 out of 5 rating and it’s not something that I do lightly. I was able to get the last scroll before the final boss battle of the game and then stopped there. I was just frustrated with the game as a whole since I had to use a walkthrough to actually see what to do and where to go and I was unimpressed with the lack of story. Combine that with giving the main character some fickle powers that seemed to work when they wanted to work all makes for a really bad experience. If you got this game for free and you want to spend a stress filled day trying to complete it, I say go ahead. If you didn’t get this game for free, consider yourself lucky, I definitely wouldn’t pay the $14.99 price tag that goes along with it. It’s just not worth it and you can spend your money elsewhere.
1 Broke Gamer Girl 