The other half is a charming RPG, complete with cosy villages and varied biomes. Like I said though, the relentless bullet hell is just one half of Archvale. These battles are exhilarating and well-designed tests of skill, with some victories dishing out levels of jubilation usually reserved for the likes of Ornstein and Smough. As with games like Dark Soulsand Hollow Knight, attacks from bosses are extremely punishing, and clumsier players face being cut to pieces within seconds if they don’t shape up fast. Here, your reflexes and exquisite timings are tested to the extreme. Many of Archvale‘s most impressive battles are found in its boss fights, which lurk at the end of dungeons and in certain overworld tiles. The best battles in Archvale feel like scenes from The Matrix, with the mercies of slow-mo ditched for a thrillingly full-speed (and deadlier) caper. Instead, you’ll have to bargain for your survival with neat sidesteps and adrenaline-heightened powers of perception, utilising carefully rationed dodges and brief gaps between projectiles to carry you through every barrage of combat. There’s no relentless dodge-spamming here, because you’ve got a limited amount of dashes.

Attacking whilst maintaining an omnipresent state of evasion requires that your brain remains in tight lockstep with the rhythm of combat. Rarely does Archvale allow you to fight blindly and actually get away with it. Perhaps I should give myself a bit more credit. Since then, I’ve giddily used everything from a far-reaching slime laser to a spinning Cactus Flail which blindly eviscerates baddies. It was just so fun to use, and did its job (melting enemies) so efficiently, that I thought I’d never find anything else as entertaining. When I launched my first sizzling salvo from the Fire Tome, just twenty minutes into the game, I thought it would be hard to justify picking up any other weapon. Within the three usual types of RPG weapon – melee, magic, and ranged – there are bundles of vastly diverse weapons to get your pixelated mitts on. Of course, that’s where the weapons come in.

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During all of this, you’ll also be expected to somehow return your own fire if you have any hope of making progress. Far from Hyrule’s familiar combat formula, Archvale is a frantic bullet hell game in which the cutesy (and fragile) protagonist is tasked with weaving deftly between unforgiving waves of attacks. Right from the start, it was obvious that – while Archvale was certainly influenced by the Nintendo classic – it had its own good thing going.

Iwent into Archvalereluctant to start comparing it to The Legend Of Zelda.

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