‘El Shaddai’ is now on Switch, but is still a very bizarre game.
Back when El Shaddai was originally released in 2011, it already felt outdated functionally. Now over a decade later, it’s now on Switch and feels even more out of place.
The premise of El Shaddai has you take on the role of Enoch, from the Book of Enoch, sent to Earth to fight fallen Angels and stop an impending flood.
The problem is that the functional approach taken to do this is straight out of Devil May Cry circa 2001. In that, for the 3D combat sections you have a fixed or tracking camera setup. This makes platforming sections especially awkward, but it just generally feels very dated without a decent combat system to back it up.
The combat itself is sadly just very generic though and while you get other weapons apart from the initial Arch, most of the combat is very repetitive without much variety being offered to help mix things up.
On top of this, you also have 2D sections, which also have platforming issues and just generally feel quite jarring.
The 2D sections in the game are also quite awkward.
To be honest, all of this was true back in 2011. El Shaddai felt a decade out of place when it originally launched, but its mostly insane art style seemed to blind game reviewers back then. However, now over a decade later, I was expecting some quality-of-life improvements to the game’s functionality and a general re-thinking of how the game works, but that is sadly not the case.
Following all of that, the game still has a nonsensical and overly pretentious narrative. Not only in how it’s communicated but also in how it is visually depicted.
The game’s director started out in art and it really shows. The emphasis in El Shaddai is about reality bending visuals, so as to seemingly flex their art chops, with the game’s functionality a very distant second in terms of priority.
It looks interesting in places, but the art style is visually disorienting and that’s not great in terms of figuring out objectives and navigating the game’s levels. That said, the character’s armor and weapons are interesting in terms of their design and style, but it’s not entirely clear who actually designed those.
Overall, this is the same game from 2011 that felt very dated and awkward but is now available on the Switch. The narrative premise is also delivered in a way that makes very little sense and is visually pretentious, to the point of being overly jarring. If you really want to play a stylish action game with a fixed camera and Biblical narrative influences, then just pick up the original Devil May Cry, it plays a lot better.
El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron HD Remaster
Platform: Switch
Developer: crim
Publisher: crim
Released: 28th April 2024
Price: $29.99
Score: 4/10
Disclosure: I was sent this game for the purposes of this review.
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