![Lucah: Born of a Dream Review - Screenshot 1 of 4](https://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/97604/900x.jpg)
A nightmare can be a powerful thing. Locked inside your own mind, it can be a place where your worst fears, regrets and moments of shame emerge from the shadows to haunt and taunt you. Thankfully, we all tend to wake up from these imaginary hellscapes, but it’s not quite that easy for the hero of Lucah: Born of a Dream. They’ve been cursed, sealed with a dream world where their inner demons have been brought to murderous life. Now it’s a question of whether they can survive their psychological turmoil and make it out with their sanity intact.
From the off, Lucah’s stark art style lashes out at you like one of its many nightmare creatures. It’s one of those artistic choices that you’ll either love or hate. The ‘living sketch’ look can often be a difficult one to pull off without making the player’s eyes bleed after a while – take the failure of David Jaffe’s Drawn to Death as a prime example – but Lucah really doubles down on that aesthetic. It's purposefully harsh, full of jagged lines and scribbled level boundaries. It’s clearly meant to evoke the drawings and musings of a darker mind, with hand-drawn sketches that stand out vividly like an animated blackboard.
![Lucah: Born of a Dream Review - Screenshot 2 of 4](https://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/97607/900x.jpg)
This spartan visual approach does make navigating its open-ended levels more of a challenge than it really should be, since so many areas look the same – an issue that forces you to constantly rely on the game’s map for any sense of direction. This gradually opens up as you explore more areas, Metroidvania-style, but considering the map isn’t one button away (you have to enter the menus and skip to the map from there) exploration is often the game's weakest element. One area that is one of Lucah’s strong points is its combat. A top-down RPG by trade, you’ll travel through your dark dreams and hack and slash your way through a malicious menagerie of monsters.
You have a light attack and a heavy attack as standard, as well as a dash manoeuvre. All three consume stamina which, in the traditional fashion, refills when not in use. On top of this, you’ll collect various Familiars, which provide different types of ranged attacks. These rely on a charge meter, which only refills when you land a successful strike on an enemy. It’s a symbiosis of systems that requires you to balance melee attacks and ranged griefing or risk running out of the latter during a particularly challenging encounter or boss battle.
![Lucah: Born of a Dream Review - Screenshot 3 of 4](https://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/97606/900x.jpg)
There are also different forms of attack, known as Mantras. Distinguished by colour, each one comes with its own style of light and heavy attack, as well as a unique set of combos when mixed together. You can have two of these Mantra sets active in your loadout at any one time, and you can switch between them by pressing ‘ZL’. Building combos and learning how well one style blends into another when activated is one of Lucah’s most rewarding aspects. You’ll discover more Mantras and Familiars, as well as Virtues and Techs (which provide passive boosts and modifiers to your loadout, such as the ability to slow time or leech life from enemies), so you’re always in a position to customise. You can even equip consumable Rewinds, offering the limited ability to undo mistakes in battle.
While its striking visuals might make some enemy designs a little harder to distinguish than others, you’ll still find plenty of them pose a challenge in battle. Strike an enemy enough and they’ll enter a stunned state (known as a Break) where they’ll be left open to further damage. Simply spamming one kind of strike will often reward you a Break, but it’ll often leave you out of stamina and similarly vulnerable. The key is building combos while keeping just enough stamina to either finish an enemy off or dash away to relative safety. You can also Parry enemies by dashing into them at the apex of a strike, adding another dimension to the defensive/offensive cycle.
![Lucah: Born of a Dream Review - Screenshot 4 of 4](https://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/97609/900x.jpg)
Comparing games to Dark Souls is beyond cliché at this point, but we’d be doing you a disservice as a reader if we didn’t acknowledge the influence of FromSoftware’s groundbreaking series. That reliance on stamina management is one nod, but so is the bleak and often obtuse approach to storytelling. You’ll even become corrupted the more you die, much like Dark Souls’ hollowing. You’re meant to feel disorientated and at odds with your environment, and in this regard Lucah really ties into its own concept really well. There are even mounds with swords buried hilt-deep, which serve as (you guessed it) rest points, fast-travel markers and levelling-up stations. It’s a very familiar model, but Lucah’s levelling-up system is a little too basic and not particularly intuitive compared to the fluidity of its combat model.
Conclusion
We’re aware that screenshots of Lucah: Born of a Dream really don’t do the game justice. That aesthetic is going to put off some potential new players, but look past the purposefully jagged looks and there’s something far more palatable beneath. With its slick and deep combat system and the unashamedly bleak nature of its allegorical story, Lucah uses its visuals to help bolster its unique identity and stand apart amid considerable RPG company on Nintendo Switch. Sure, it can be a little frustrating to navigate in places, but it’s a small price to pay for the elements that shine bright elsewhere in the darkness.
Comments 31
I mean, when you're trying to make your game stand out, you do what you can. Good on them for trying something different. Wish them the best.
Looks pretty interesting. I'll throw it on my watch list for now.
I really like the visuals, they’re different and definitely stand out. I’ll put it on my list.
Visual's remind me of GoNNER - which was a fine game.
I dislike graphics like this in games. I want charming/cute or awesome graphics. This doesn't get me. Well each his own
Looks horrid.
Really don't like how the game looks and there's plenty of choice out there so I'll pass.
B select, A cancel. Seriously? Devs still haven't figured out not to do that? Is there at least a menu option to fix it?
@Stuffgamer1 it's like that in a lot of sonypony games.
I have no idea how some people actually enjoy games that look like this.
@jobvd Kinda funny because in Japan the Sony consoles often use circle for confirm and X for cancel/back
Looks a bit sketchy, but I’m intrigued nonetheless. Unfortunately, when your wish list and backlog are as long as mine, I start to be wary of just chucking more on. But I’m going to keep an eye on this anyway. I like where they’re coming from.
Graphics only a 48k Spectrum could love.
This is a game that sounded cool but ultimately the visuals turned me off. Unfortunately there are games I love the look and gameplay and they still do not make my list because of the backlog. Damn me and my first world problems.
Yeah...I couldn't possibly. I'm no graphics guru by any means, but sadly if I'm gonna play a 20+ hour RPG, it needs to at least be aesthetically pleasing. This looks like a floppy disk game from the 90's.
Sounds right up my alley.
I'm hardly in the "4K ultra-realism everything" group. But if I am gonna look at something for 30-60 hours like the average RPG tends to be for me. I want it to be visually appealing. This isn't for me.
But that's fine. I am certainly not lacking for other titles to play right now.
I typically don't care about graphics but ehhhh...
Edit - I did watch a video and it does look better than stills
@Stuffgamer1
Have you ever played Dark Souls on Switch?
After 30 minutes won't be a problem anymore, I promise
So why no video
@Alucard83 I think this looks plenty awesome, but comme ci comme ca.
@gamekill nintendolife doesn't tend to do video reviews, AFAIK
@somebread
Yes I know, what I meant was any gameplay trailer video embedded into the article. Videos really do a much better job showing this game's art style.
I need a better review for this. Dom I feel tends to be light on details in his reviews. There's always something that feels like it's missing.
There's mention of the word RPG but with a hack and slash action game, what makes it an RPG? What systems are in place? Can you level up?
The visuals are the one thing that instantly sold me on this.
@Dom snuck in a Kyuss reference in the subtitle - nice!
Sees preview picture
"Divisive visuals? I don't understand it looks like a perfectly ordinary-"
Clicks article
"OH MY GOODNESS."
"It's an ugly indie game, so it must be an 8."
My C64 from 1987 had better looking games than this mess.
"We’re aware that screenshots of Lucah: Born of a Dream really don’t do the game justice"
The footage doesn't either. It looks like a complete mess.
Very informative... I definitely couldn't tell by the visuals. I think I will look at some gameplay footage and that will help me decide if this goes on my backlog or not.
Only £4 right now. Got it tonight. Loving it.
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