Desta: The Memories Between Review (Cyan)
Desta is a game that's confused about its identity. (Which could be meta except the protagonist is not at all confused about theirs!) This is a turn-based roguelike dream dodgeball game on PC, and those individual elements never entirely cohere.
The central conceit is that Desta is going back to where they grew up, and is having anxiety dreams about a variety of friends, relatives, and acquaintances from back home. Desta has some real unresolved issue with each of them that they're worried about, and resolves them by talking things out while playing dodgeball. So far, so good--the emotional and story beats here feel a lot like Assemble With Care. But. All of this is happening in a dream. As the game itself mentions, Desta is still going to have to talk to these people in real life, none of the emotional catharsis they reach is real. It makes it feel hollow. There's a bit at the end with that manages to overcome this hollowness, but that also serves to highlight how much the rest doesn't quite work.
It feels like the dream setting was chosen to justify the wackiness of the dodgeball game, but honestly, why? Who cares about realism, just let the player assume the dodgeball is a metaphor. Let Desta talk through their problems in reality while playing a strange surreal dodgeball game. It's fine, really! Or if you must have the dream layer, let the other people somehow actually be in the dream with them. This extra layer is unnecessary!
Speaking of unnecessary, why are there roguelike elements in this game at all? I beat the main campaign and nightmare mode on my first attempt (as I'm sure many players did) so I didn't really engage with the roguelike elements until I was cleaning up achievements. But even once I actually saw how the roguelike pieces worked I didn't get the point of it. You're playing through each area/character confrontation in the same order every time. You go up against the same enemies in each level. You unlock the same characters, see the same dialogue. The only random part is which ability you start with, which artifact you start with, and which additional abilities or artifacts you unlock at set points as you go. Why bother? Sure getting different abilities pushes you to play in slightly different ways, but the abilities you use most get unlocked for permanent use anyway, so it doesn't make that much difference.
If the devs really wanted a roguelike mode that badly, they should've saved it for nightmare mode. Shuffle up the character and enemy order, ditch the story and dialogue since the player's already seen it at that point, give the player a random ability and artifact and unlock a few more over the course of the mode so there's some scope for synergies. They could've even kept the character levelling, that part worked fine. As is nightmare mode feels like an afterthought, and I don't understand why they did either mode the way they did.
Further identity issues in the platform--Desta is a PC game that still feels like a mobile game. In particular the aiming controls are awkward (though you do eventually get used to them) and only make sense when you realize that in its original mobile form the controls had you pull back and aim, then release to throw. That DNA is still in the aiming now (the options let you pick another aiming style, but that didn't appear to actually change anything). The added challenge mode is pretty good, but I wonder if the inability to just restart a challenge, a very obvious thing to include in that type of mode, is also something they weren't able to adjust when porting over from mobile.
Finally, turn-based dodgeball. Ok this is a bizarre pitch and I can only imagine that feeds into the low sales of this game, but I won't knock them too hard for this because it actually works pretty well in practice. At first it feels too basic and too slow, and a weird fit, but once you get further into the game enough tactical depth emerges that it's actually pretty fun.
Which this game is! Ultimately it does turn out to be fun, despite all the stuff I complain about above. I like Desta and the crew, I like figuring out just the right angle to hit an enemy and rebound to a teammate, who then returns the favor. I like the additional challenge of nightmare mode, and the mini puzzles of challenge mode. I like the one moment of actual emotional catharsis we get at the end. I'm just frustrated because this game is only pretty good, where it could've been good to great like ustwo's other games. I loved Monument Valley. I loved Alba. I only mostly liked this one.
I hope ustwo pulls things together on future games, and I hope the low sales of this one don't slow them down on whatever they choose to work on next.