Seraph Review

Seraph has been released from her prison cell and a being known as Guide tells her that Deamons have entered the current plain of existence – Seraph must defeat them. She fights her way through the prison as she learns new powers that have a holy theme around them – when Daemons are slain they give off essences and materials. Seraph can perform a blink which is similar to what other characters have been able to do throughout video-games including Tracer from Overwatch, this is where your character can move in a specific direction as a fast pace. The enemies in the game vary in their health, strength and power – some will just hit Seraph and she will lose a little bit of health whereas other require three+ stages of health that require an ability to be used on them a few times after dealing damage. The game plays almost exactly like the old Metroid games where the player can run, jump and shoot through a 2D-plaftormer and it also has similar art style to Shadowrun Returns which is different kind of game but features the almost cyberpunk style. The game plays better when using an Xbox controller and the game tells the player that is a better experience. The soundtrack is a good selection of Techno, EDM and Dub-Step, the game uses the soundtrack to alter the experience which gives the player a good sense of immersion.

At the end of each level the player is met with a summary of their completion which includes the amount of time it has taken for them to complete that mission, the amount of shards that have been collected and the collectables that were found throughout (these are documents that give the player more information about the story) – the player is also shown what experience they have gain both from completion and from the enemies that have been defeated. There are blessings that are shown up in the summary menu and with each level that Seraph gains, the more blessings/blessing upgrades are available – these are basically buffs that give Seraph more power and better healing.

There is separate upgrade menu (it can be found on the start screen and on the summary menu) which requires shards that are collected throughout the missions as well as materials that are gun parts and other items. When upgrading the player is met with weapon upgrades which can be either a Mark two+ version or a Mark one because the player was unable to find the weapon during one of the missions, these upgrades can give the player more room for ammo, better damage and other bonuses for weapons that can be found in many other games. Also, the player can create new powers known as Miracles using the shards, one of the first ones allows the players to breakdown an unwanted weapon to gain more weapon parts and there are also wards available which are just temporary buffs.

Many features are offered within this game which includes the difficult modes for the story which are slightly different from other games, there are the regular difficulties which resemble Easy, Medium and Hard, then there’s Time run which is simply completing each mission within a designated time and Twitch mode where viewers can vote on in-game modifiers as to whether they are good or not, along with Twitch mode there are Twitch settings that allow the player to sign into their Twitch account making it a lot easier to stream a game.

Challenge mode is split into two parts, daily challenge which is where the player will be asked to complete a task and gain as many points as possible – when the player manages to reach the highest score then by the end of the twenty-four hours if the player has the highest score then they will be granted the rarest shards. The other part is the weekly challenge which is similar to a horde mode and ends when the player has lost all of their lives (resurrections), the same scoring system rules apply – gain the highest score by the end of that week and gain the rarest shards in the game.

Seraph is a great game, it has interesting graphics, a good soundtrack that allows you to be immersed into the game and the beta price is good at £6.99 on Steam – the story is quite interesting too and it could possibly lead up to a sequel in the future, who knows. The downside is that the soundtrack is a bit too repetitive which can become annoying after a few hours of gameplay and the soundtrack is the exact same even when the game is paused so when there is a tense moment the same tense music is playing which in my case made me think the game had not paused. It is hard to believe it is a beta.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.