As an indie game reviewer, it’s not often that I’m surprised by a game I’m reviewing. I usually know everything there is to know about the game and exactly what to expect. This wasn’t the case for Lucah: Born of a Dream by melessthanthree. Knowing nothing about it made my experience with the game ten times more exciting. And after beating the game and starting my second play through, I can say Lucah is the best souls-like on Switch and is my indie game of the year so far.

To note, a code was provided for review by messlessthanthree.

Souls-likes are a dime a dozen on the Switch. However, Lucah stands a head above them all. The game takes influences from others in its genre. It has a Dark Souls/ Hyper Light Drifter mysterious story. It’s inventory system is like the trinket system of Hollow Knight and its narrative is delivered like that of Undertale or Nier Automata. Therefore, the more times you play through the game, the wider the game’s story and world opens up to you.

Though you might argue borrowing mechanics from other games is a bad thing, that simply is not the case for Lucah. All of these mechanics have been put together and added to, which creates a flawless action adventure game. Messlessthanthree have added their own charm and flair to making Lucah stand out from the rest of the games in its genre. This is first shown with the game’s story.

Awaken

The story is vague and a little hard to follow. Nevertheless, the more you play the more it opens up to you. I know some people will just breeze through the story and not pay any attention to it (and that’s fine). However, for me I was fixated with it. I tried to piece all of the dialogue, boss fights and stories within the game together to work out what the hell was going on. Honestly, I’m still none the wiser to what is happening, but I still want to explore. Finding memories and other characters is exciting and goes some way to working out what role our character has in the world.

OOOK…..

I get the feeling everyone else in the world knows who you are and why you’re there. As the player though, you have no idea. Other creatures like you talk of fading out, loosing their memories and leaving the world entirely. I find it fascinating learning about these other beings, especially the ones you have to fight.

Best Souls-like on Switch?

Much like any souls-like, combat plays a huge roll in Lucah.

IT. IS. HARD!

You have three main attacks: a light hit on X, a heavy hit on A and a blast from your familiar on Y. To complement your attacks there’s also a dodge on ZR and you can scroll through items with L and use items with R.

One of my favourite things about Lucah is that it offers players choice in combat. Combos are an example of this choice. If you can combo hits together you can ‘Break’ an enemy and do massive damage to it whilst it’s stunned.

In addition, if you really want to ‘Git Gud’, you can try to Parry enemies. You do this by perfectly timing a dodge towards an enemy as it attacks you. The sound and feedback you get through the controller when you hit a perfect parry is like ecstasy (don’t do drugs kids), whilst also stunning your opponent and doing lots of damage.

Finally (and my favourite part of the combat) was dodging. If you have the right Virtue set up in the game, dodging can become OP. I had Agile and Enraged equipped, which let me replenish stamina and increase my strength every time I dodged. This came in very handy towards the end of the game when I was dodging attacks like Nintendo dodges good online services.

Virtues and Mantras

Choice is extended into your actual fighting style and how you develop your character. Virtues are like trinkets that each have an associated benefit to them. Throughout the game you have a cap of how many Virtues you can equip, so micro-managing them can be a little tricky to get the most bang for your buck. However, I never found it annoying. The pace of the game lets you unlock more Virtues and Virtue places often enough, so I think you’ll always be able to equip the right Virtues to compliment your fighting style.





Mantras are the different combat stances you can take in the game. If any of you played Nioh, you could compare them the the stances in that game. However, in Lucah there are 12 of them you can play with, each being unique and different from the other. Again, the pacing of the game means you’ll find enough of the Mantras to suit your play style. What I love is that the Mantra you choose changes the colour of the main character. So you can choose a Mantra because of its colour, or because of its combat stance.

The game gives you two combat builds to play around with called Paradigms. It let’s you mix up two Mantras and choose a different familiar. Throughout most of the game I ran with Thanatos as my main Mantra and Aero as my second. I liked Thanatos because it has a little bit of range to its attacks, which comes in useful when you’re dodging around all the time. I used Aero mostly for bosses because it has the most range and let me get out of harms way.

Watch your Stam!

Your hits are dependant on your stamina and charge. Stamina is used quickly and needs time to rebuild. So my best technique was rushing into enemies, getting a few hits off, then backing off. I’d then use my familiar to shoot at said enemy until all my charge was used and my stamina had recharged. Then I’d head back into the fight to smack the baddies around again.

Like any souls-like, balancing your stamina is vital. There’s nothing more stressful than getting an enemy down to one or two hits and then running out of stamina! So be sure to keep an eye on it and upgrade it whenever possible.

Hard but Fair

Each time you kill an enemy you are rewarded with ‘La’, which I suppose is Lucah’s version of Souls. However, what I prefer over the Dark Souls method is that when you die in Lucah, you never loose your La. This means when you come up against a difficult boss, you can still spend your La to level up. For me this was a key factor in my enjoyment of the game. Each death I had a against a boss taught me a little about how to kill said boss, but it also meant I could spend my La and level up. Every time I went back to face the boss I was stronger and smarter, always making me feel like I’d progressed, something not all Souls-likes do.

Unintentional Switch Colours!

Leveling up can be done at graves which act as bonfires. Upon each level, the player is given four choices to choose from to level up the character. These range from increasing health, better stamina regeneration, new Virtues and higher attack power. I liked that each level was a choice, which I had to think about and balance in my head. It made levelling up feel valuable in the game and something more than just numbers on a stat screen ticking up! Though the combat in the game is challenging, it always felt fair because of these two features.

R-r-r-rewind

There are only two active items you can use in the game, your health potion and your rewind. Throughout most of the game you only have one health potion, so use it with care! The rewinds are more abundant but still limited.

A rewind lets you rewind time to the start of a combat sequence. For example, if you enter a boss fight and the boss gets a few cheap shots in at the start of the fight, you can rewind and start over. You’ll have the same health, stamina and charge as you did when you entered the combat, but will have one less rewind.

100%

One strange feature the game has that I didn’t like or understand was the corruption meter. It’s placed in the top right corner of the screen and is an insistent reminder to your impending doom. Every time you enter a new area or die to an enemy it slowly ticks up. I’d say I got about three quarters of the way through my first play through before I hit 100%. And after that- nothing much happened.

I awoke at the nearest grave and the meter was put down to 50%. Now, I know from talking to the producer of the game that the corruption percentage effects which ending you get in your first play through. However, that seems to be it. I did feel like the game got easier after I hit 100%, but that might just be me thinking that.

In my second play through, I feel like the corruption bar adds to the gameplay. It continues to tick up, however now every fight you have is graded on your performance. So if you get an S rank, 3% is knocked off your corruption bar. So far, this has driven me to try and be as precise and perfect as I can be in combat. All because I want to see the ‘real’ ending and finish the game without hitting 100%.

Etched onto my screen

Knowing nothing about a game when I first see it can sometimes puts me off playing it. However, with Lucah the art pretty much had me sold from the word go. It’s so unusual but so creative. The thin, sketch book-like designs of the world and the characters kept making me think ‘what’s that?’ and encouraged me to explore the world and find its secrets.

Some people may not be the biggest fans of this art style. A few other reviewers I’ve spoken to have said it makes their eyes hurt and that it can be difficult to tell where you can and cannot go.

Just beautiful.

I do agree that at times it is hard to tell where to go. Nevertheless, the thin lines and bright colour of your character contrasts starkly with the pitch black of the background, making up for this slight difficulty. At times it felt like someone had etched the game onto my screen with a sharp knife. As the producer of the game Kevin Wong said on the latest SIF Podcast episode (I’m paraphrasing), the art is in no way traditional for an indie game. However, I think this is a good thing because the game will stand out to new players on the Nintendo eshop.

Creativeness, Uniqueness and Quality

This creativeness, uniqueness and quality has also been applied to the sound design in Lucah. The sound design is incredible! I feel like with enough practice Lucah could be a game that could be beaten blind folded. The movements and tells of the enemies are broadcasted so clearly with sound that its easier to listen to their attacks than watching them.

The same can be said for the music- it’s so good! Each track starts off slow with a simple melody or drumbeat. As time and combat go on, new layers of sound are added, creating epic tunes that make you feel untouchable. Outside of combat the same method is used, but this time to create an atmosphere and a sense of dread. It’s an incredible feat and something you should check out for yourself!

Small Complaints

Other than the corruption meter in your first play through, I did have a couple of other small complaints about the game. The first one is that it doesn’t hold your hand in anyway, which is good… However, with the inventory management and Virtue management of the game, there should have been a bit of text explaining what everything is. Especially for Virtues, since I played about a quarter of the game without equipping any!

Best Souls-like on Switch? I think so!

Secondly, the input lay out is ‘backward’ in the Switch version. B is confirm and A is back. This is because the game is being ported from the PC and is the standard layout for other controllers. Nevertheless, even after playing the game almost two times, I still always press the wrong buttons!

Lastly, and more of a tip than a complaint, enemies don’t get staggered when you use a combo on them. So be careful in combat because they can hit you at any time, even if you’re combo game is perfect!

Born of a Dream

Lucah: Born of a Dream was a total surprise for me. After playing through it almost two times I would argue that it is the best Souls-like the Switch has to offer. It borrows a lot from other games in its genre, but adds to them and evolves into something flawless. It’s by far the best indie game I’ve played this year and I hope you get a chance to check it out.

The art and the music for me are both masterpieces and the sense of joy, excitement and WTF moments I’ve gotten from the game are incredible- and there’s still more to find! There’s a few minor complaints like the input on the controllers being ‘backwards’ on the Switch, but that doesn’t take anything away from this very special game.

That’s why I give Lucah: Born of a Dream by melessthanthree my rating of

1 of 3 10/10 on SIF

I loved this game and I hope you do to. Let me know if you’re picking up the game and what you think about it. Also, Lucah has created an itch for me, what other Souls-Likes should I check out on the Switch? Let me know over on Twitter or come and join the SIF Discord.

Like this: Like Loading...