It’s been almost 20 years since the launch of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. The deceivingly simple and linear action RPG introduced one of the most arresting, blunt, and impactful melee combat in video game history. Its influence can be seen in many of the first-person RPGs that have graced us with their presence since, but Fatekeeper might be the spiritual successor people have been waiting decades for.
Developed by Paraglacial and published by THQ Nordic, Fatekeeper launched in Steam Early Access on June 2 as an action RPG where combat and exploration prevail over story and worldbuilding. The latter elements are present in the form of cutscenes and the occasional conversation with other characters. But I didn’t pay much attention. I nodded to every lore exposition without being able to stop thinking about when the game would allow me to return to the combat.
Fatekeeper puts you on a fixed narrative path. It’s nothing to write home about, mainly serving as a motivator to get you moving from point A to B. In essence, the portion available in the current Early Access build tasks you with ascending a locale named Mar Guran. This took me through catacombs, sewers, halls, and courtyards full of enemies.
The objectives are loose enough for you not to feel too cornered by them. One of the best aspects of Fatekeeper is its exploration, even when the level structure is linear in nature. There isn’t a minimap or fixed points of traversal guidance. Rather, you must run in circles and look for the next door or entrapment to move forward. Did I get lost a few times? Yes. But at no point did I feel like I wouldn’t be able to progress entirely.
Whenever you enter a new area, as you’re looking for the next door to open, you’re bound to encounter enemy after enemy trying to stop you in your tracks. For the most part, you can expect an assortment of fantastical creatures, mainly orcs, who all wield spears, swords, shields, and poison grenades. In the grand scheme of things, it’s fairly easy to learn each enemy’s attack patterns and how to defend yourself from them. The charm, then, lies in the creative ways in which you can approach each encounter, turning it into a playground of physics and well-timed counterattacks.
Your main weapon is both an offense and defense mechanism in one. You can use it to deal light and heavy attacks, as well as a method to block upcoming hits – as long as the timing is right. There’s also the possibility of dodging in any of your four main directions. Perform it just before you’re about to be hit, and you’ll get a short animation in slow-motion, giving you a moment to recenter yourself and retaliate.
Combat is fun and dynamic. Yet, taking a cue from Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, you can also perform a powerful kick. This movement is perfect to cause an enemy wielding a shield to lose balance, thus creating an opening for an attack. But you can also use it to simply kick smaller enemies around, putting them to the ground with a swift and frankly hilarious move.
But hey, it’s not only might, but magic as well. Your character has access to multiple spells that also play a part in the environments and the physics-based combat. At this stage of the game, they’re quite rudimentary – a fire projectile that can light oil on the ground as well, an ice attack that is perfect for slowing down foes, a telekinesis spell that is best used during exploration to activate devices from afar, and a big gust of wind that is ideal for, you guessed it, pushing multiple enemies off balance. Or even better yet, pushing them off a cliff simultaneously.
It’s too early to say whether Fatekeeper is able to let its combat and exploration features flourish properly, but the accompanying mechanics around them are pointing in the right direction. At different points during the game, mainly around campfires – save points that resemble the ones in the Dark Souls series, with the substantial difference that these do not respawn enemies upon use – you’ll find alchemy labs.
These cauldrons allow you to use ingredients you find scattered around the environment, as well as inside chests, to create your own potions. All materials have a specific property attached to them, from simple attributes like replenishing health and mana to gaining poison resistance, being able to leech an enemy’s health upon attacking, having a more stable stance when attacking, and more. Each potion can hold up to three ingredients at a time, so you can either double down on a specific element to increase its effectiveness or mix-and-match however you like. There is a hint of the alchemy system encompassing more than just potions, thanks to recipes you can find scattered around that can grant you access to grenades, among other items. But as it stands, the spin on the usual crafting feature you’d find elsewhere is enticing as is.
As for combat, this is still an RPG, meaning that you get to level up and increase your stats. This is done in the form of a large skill tree, which resembles the one from the Path of Exile series. It’s not as gargantuan as those, thankfully, but it still offers the right amount of paths to make you stop in place and plan what to focus on. Since you can’t gain that many levels in the current build, it’s hard to say how the latter parts of each branch will come together. Yet, increasing health, stamina, and mana was all making a difference to my playthrough already. It’s especially interesting to see so much attention given to quite specific stats of the character in a single player game, when that level of depth is usually reserved for multiplayer ARPGs.
My main gripes with the current state of Fatekeeper come down to polish and being unaware of how the campaign will feel to play in its entirety. There are promising moments and use cases of the physics in place. Early on, I saw a dead body impaled with a weapon that was out of reach, but I was able to use my telekinesis spell to bring the weapon toward me, immediately adding it to my inventory. It then became my go-to sword for my playthrough. When I think of Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, the memories that come to mind all pertain to specific “a-ha!” moments in which the mechanics in place all came together with one unified synergy. There are indications that Fatekeeper might be on the same path, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Regarding polish, a recurring problem I encountered is that enemies aren’t that smart. Again, there are definitely exceptions – one enemy in particular seems to be rather aggressive, continuing to attack even after you’ve cut off their arm, and using an arrow meant for their bow as a projectile to attack you in close quarters instead. But generally speaking, boss encounters are the ones that stand out the most. Similarly to regular enemies, you don’t know how much health they have left. In turn, this forces you to keep your wits about you and keep attacking them until you see the notification on screen showing that you’ve gained experience from the kill XP. This is even more pronounced in boss encounters, as their attack patterns are brutal and relentless. Not knowing exactly when you’ll be able to catch a breath greatly adds to the overall tension.
During the last couple of years, it seems as if RPGs have been competing with each other to see which one can present the biggest world and the most side quests. Games like Fatekeeper, which focus their ambition on a much smaller scale without sacrificing ambition, are a welcome change of pace. I hope the fully realized campaign can maintain that pace. But even in its current state, it has already provided me with cherished moments to remember.
