Review: Death of a Wish

When a game’s visual style becomes such a distinct aspect of its personality, it can go one of two ways. You could net a stylish gem like MadWorld, or you could end up with another Drawn to Death. Thankfully, Death of a Wish — the hypnotic follow-up to melessthanthree’s Lucah: Born of a Dream — falls firmly into the former category.

Create and destroy

Death of a Wish is a top-down action game with an idiosyncratic aesthetic that perfectly complements its dark and brooding story. Right from the start, our hero Christian is raging against his past, familial ties, and the current state of his dystopian world. This ruined landscape comes to life through scribbles and sketches, cobbled together to create a cohesive vision that meshes perfectly with its similarly rough characters.

As Christian, you’ll dash from screen to screen, facing the threat of menacing enemies called Nightmares in an attempt to piece together what happened prior to this and prevent something even more cataclysmic from occurring. It’s a layered story, full of angst and earnest to a fault. It’s unflinching in its depiction of sensitive subject matter, particularly as it builds up to its climactic moments.

Those who have played Lucah will be familiar with the style on display in Death of a Wish. Otherwise, there really isn’t much out there that looks like this. It’s like someone took their old original anime character sketches, scanned them in directly from their Mead notebook, and didn’t do a single thing to touch them up. And yet somehow it all works.

From the environments to the characters and enemies, there’s a nightmarish quality to everything on screen. The off-kilter designs merge nicely with all of the combat effects, which exaggerate sword slashes and projectile blasts to absurd levels. When Christian successfully clears a room of enemies, dynamic character splash art appears on screen. Again, it looks like a teenager’s approximation of what they might consider to be a “badass” pose. In the heat of the moment, it gets the job done and serves up a satisfying bookend to combat.

Parry and punish

Death of a Wish would die on the vine if that combat wasn’t engaging. With a handful of intertwining systems to learn and take advantage of, it ends up being just as thrilling and heart-pounding as any big budget character action game. To master the skills needed to survive you’ll need to allocate and equip Arias, which serve as your primary means of attack. From there, you can further customize these attacks with modifiers. You can also enhance your capabilities through the use of Virtues, a limited number of which can be equipped at any given time.

As Christian levels up, there are five main attributes he can funnel points toward. There’s the standard max HP boost, as well as one that raises your overall damage output. You can also put in points to increase your max charge and strengthen Hold Actions — powerful moves you pull off when holding down an attack button — raise your mind for more effective Arias or invest in your Familiars that can be used to fire at foes. The more you pay attention to all of the sub-systems and the better you manage your point allocation, the less you’ll be sweating some of the tougher Nightmare battles.

All of this action bobs along swiftly with the backing of a pitch-perfect soundscape. Beyond the ominous, driving music, the sound design is integral to everything that’s happening on screen. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say Death of a Wish is unplayable with the sound off, it comes pretty close. There are so many crucial cues to listen for in tandem with the typical animation tells for enemy attacks. Even the sound of a parry is a distinct comma before the following volley and eventual exclamation point of a successful stun-lock.

Sin and repent

When you die, you usually respawn at the last gravesite, but there is a novel means of punishment for failure. At the top of the screen, a Sin percentage gradually rises from zero to 100 as you move through the world. It’s a very subtle increase, but whenever you die in battle, those numbers add up significantly. If you’re not careful, you’ll soon find yourself in the 20s, 30s, and so on.

Thankfully, there is a means of bringing your Sin percentage back down. Earning an S-rank in any given encounter will lop three percent off the total. An A-rank takes it down a percentage and some change, and there are ever-diminishing returns under that. Letting it max out doesn’t result in the Mob Psycho 100 explosion of power I was hoping for. After the first time, Christian unlocks a skill that gives him a major power boost while rapidly increasing his Sin. You can only realistically keep this on for a few seconds at a time, but it’s not a bad way to clear a combat arena in a pinch.

After that first taste of pure Sin, any other time you max out will result in a potentially huge setback. Upon hitting 100 percent, Christian will have to choose a previous chapter to revert to, with each option noting the Sin percentage he had at that time. Even if you choose the most recent option, you’re likely to lose a bunch of progress, which can be a bit deflating. At best it fits in nicely with the established world and its themes, and at worst, it’s a total momentum killer.

Redeem and repeat

I really enjoyed most of my time with Death of a Wish, particularly the early hours. Shortly after hitting Track 5, however, fatigue started to set in. At this point, the game opens up more, tasking Christian with reconnecting any fast travel/save spots he may want to use, while providing minimal direction beyond the general gist of what needs to happen next. There’s nothing wrong with this inherently, but this world just isn’t one that’s wholly fit for exploration. The same enemies populate the same areas, so you’ll end up squaring off against repeat mobs until you finally pinpoint the means of progression. Using this as a grind to lower your Sin level can be beneficial, but if you’re not careful you’ll eventually get worn down and find yourself dangerously close to 100% Sin.

Going into the endgame chapters with anything above 70% is just asking for trouble. Since the progress you lose can be substantial, the punishment for your sins stings all the worse when you’re so close to the final battle. You can mitigate this slightly by tweaking the difficulty in both the Sin and Punishment categories, but I just found this final leg to be a bit tedious for my tastes.

Despite a few snags along the way, there’s a lot to love about Death of a Wish. Its combat is extremely tight, its story and presentation are uniquely ambitious and heartfelt, and the mood it creates is wholly its own. Melessthanthree made a bunch of improvements to Lucah here, including the wise decision to nix the stamina meter entirely.

I have no doubt that this is going to be — and in many cases likely already is — a runaway 2024 favorite for many. It didn’t quite land there for me, personally, but I won’t soon forget the satisfaction of a deft parry and the shrieks of those who sacrificed themselves throughout Christian’s harrowing journey. Hell, I may even dive back in and see how it holds up to a return trip, just not anytime too soon; the wounds are still fresh.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}