Game: Doom & Destiny Worlds
Genre: Role-Playing, Adventure, Open-World, Survival
System: Nintendo Switch (Also on Steam (Windows))
Developers | Publishers: Heartbit | Heartbit Interactive
Age Rating: EU 12+ | US T
Price: US $19.99 | EU € 19,99| UK £ 17.99
Release Date: October 1st, 2021
Review code used, with many thank’s to Heartbit Interactive
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you and your 3 closest friends got sucked into a game you were playing? And by sucked, I mean literally being sucked into a portal to the said game world. Yes? No? Well, either way, Doom & Destiny Worlds has got you covered! This game is an open-world survival RPG that covers four friends who suddenly find themselves in a mysterious land.
Story
In Doom & Destiny Worlds (hereby shortened to DDW), the player can choose to play solo or with up to 3 friends as the 4 characters in the story: Nigel, Mike, Johnny, and Francis. Each option has their own class and playstyle. The story starts off with the menu depicting the guys being sucked into a vortex.
The player then wakes up as 1 of the 4 chosen characters, naked, amnesiac, and alone. A little exploring rewards you with clothing and a weapon. After that, further exploration leads to the discovery of a friend trapped in a tower. You’re tasked with finding the other two characters to help rescue the trapped one. Thus, the adventure begins.
Gameplay
When first jumping into the game, time is spent gathering resources, swimming to other islands, crafting, grinding, finding recipes, and farming. The player is expected to explore the land around them to grab resources to craft items… with some of the resources only able to be collected with said items. This is one of the issues I had with the game.
The first several hours are spent running – or rather swimming – between various islands. Finding the other friends is easy because the one in the tower gives hints as to where to find them. The hard part is the grind to find resources to build tools, weapons, and armour, all of which are necessary to advance in the game. The only hints are messages in bottles that are scattered among the various items, but even these don’t provide much in the way of the location of resources and are mostly tutorials and vague messages. Given there are also recipes for crafting to find and other collectables, a more direct hint system would’ve been appreciated.
Fighting Monsters
As the player goes through the game and explores their surroundings, they will run into various kinds of creatures guarding the land. If they manage to spot the characters, a random encounter will occur. This plays out in the manner of a traditional RPG, with each side taking turns to fight. The player has the option to attack, use a power, defend, or run.
To win requires first taking out the enemies’ skill points, preventing them from using powers, and knocking out the points protecting their life points. However, skill points do regenerate after each turn, though the amount also diminishes each time. Fighting naturally gives you experience, which can be used to level up certain skills, such as strength or wisdom, based on the character and playstyle that is being pursued. Weapons and crafted or found armour help increase certain skills and abilities.
Diving Deeper
Upon rescuing the last party member, the player can descend into the castle. However, a torch is needed to navigate the dark space. Once this is accomplished, the player can meet Destiny, a powerful wizard who has summoned the guys to defeat the three tyrants who are former explorers that the evil wizard Dark Eidious corrupted. The quartet is tasked with defeating these world-ruling tyrants so they can go home.
Thus, the story truly kicks off and the rest of the game is spent looking for and defeating these tyrants. Of course, along the way, plenty of adventuring, crafting and surviving to be had. There isn’t much dialogue in the game – which I feel is a missed opportunity to connect to the characters – but what quips exist are actually pretty funny. Be mindful though. Grinding is rather long and tedious in this game, so keep that in mind when deciding if this game is your cup of tea.
Controls
Compared to other games I’ve played, the controls here weren’t as intuitive. There is full use of the buttons on the controller – which is great to see. However, they aren’t quite comfortable. Oftentimes, I found myself accidentally switching the party order when trying to pull up the inventory menu. I also wasn’t a fan of the fact that the map required holding ZL and hitting Y. I feel like this should’ve been mapped to the main face or directional buttons.
The inventory was also fairly complicated. While favouriting items puts them on a quick menu that is a little easier to navigate, remembering which character had what was time-consuming and a little frustrating when trying to accomplish story goals and side quests. The constant double-backing wasn’t my cup of tea either.
Art & Music
DDW is beautifully rendered with pixel graphics. I enjoyed the way the characters and environment moved, interacted, and looked. The music was lively and never got boring or repetitive. Certainly fit the atmosphere of the game.
Pros & Cons
The art, music, and funny dialogue were the major positives I took away from the game. I enjoyed how they complimented each other. The characters were great together – riffing off one another in a way that seemed warm and comfortable, much as you’d expect from close friends. The game is a beauty to look at. I also liked the fact that despite this being a survival game, this game didn’t utilize a hunger bar or really a stamina bar (outside of swimming between the islands). Though, while that was great, I did get more than a little frustrated when I was a moment away from land but drowned due to stamina running out. However, that is a small gripe and applicable to other games in this genre.
My bigger issues lie with the amount of grinding and lack of dialogue. While I understand that RPGs are often grind-y as a fan of the Persona series, I just didn’t find that enjoyable here. I think in large part, that is due to the lack of dialogue and character interaction outside of quick cutscenes in the story. I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m a character- and narrative-driven gamer. As such, this made the game fall more than a little flat for me. If there was more focus on the story and characters, the grinding would’ve been worth the effort to me, especially in the beginning.
Conclusion
Doom & Destiny Worlds is a solid open-world survival RPG game. Clocking in at about 40 hours, I think that fans of survival, grinding, and crafting will enjoy a fun romp through this game. For them, I definitely recommend it. For those like me who are more character and/or story-driven over mechanics and survival, I’d say give it a chance – as it could be a hit for you like Stardew Valley was for me – but this isn’t an essential pick-up.
Final Verdict: I Like it. 