A lot of people are already very excited for Tides of Annihilation, which was revealed at last week’s PlayStation State of Play. Some of those people even write for TheGamer – I saw several people saying in our Slack channels that it was a standout from the showcase, and our Editor-in-Chief Stacey Henley has written that, despite her reservations, the title is still the one she’s most excited for.
The action game – and it does seem to be an action game and not a soulslike, thank god – seems to have a lot of influence from character action games like Bayonetta, Astral Chain, and Devil May Cry. Yet, when I watched the extended gameplay trailer released soon after the showcase, all I could think of was Stellar Blade.
British Blade? Stellar English?
Let me be entirely clear: Tides of Annihilation is far from being a Stellar Blade clone, which is good, because I bounced off Stellar Blade within mere hours. There are a lot of things that set the two games apart. Stellar Blade had more souls-inspired combat, but Tides displays a very different type of action, one that’s flashier, faster, and action-packed. I’m into that, as someone who doesn’t find Souls games very appealing.
The traversal also feels more interesting, at least, marginally. Stellar Blade was pretty well received but fans did highlight some flaws, including the platforming, which made me want to tear my hair out from boredom. I get the sense that Tides will have similar platforming elements – the new title’s setting immediately reminded me of Stellar Blade’s opening levels, with its damaged urban city filled with strange creatures and environmental quirks put in specifically to enable the most basic, boring kind of platforming.
Tides gets a little more grace from me on its traversal and platforming because of how it plays with gravity. We see protagonist Gwendolyn leaping onto walls as reality distorts around her, which is a cool shtick. I just don’t think it’ll add a lot of complexity to character movement, nor enough interest to make it feel like more than a kind of cool mechanical feature.
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Tides Of Annihilation Just Looks Boring
But still, it really does have Stellar Blade vibes. Not because it’s full of women in short skirts – Tides definitely feels less overtly sexualised than Stellar Blade was. What’s far more concerning is that it just isn’t very interesting beyond its combat and action.
The main reason I stopped playing Stellar Blade was because I got bored. It really was that simple. I was detached from Eve as a character because she had basically no personality, the story didn’t feel propulsive or compelling, and the voice acting was bad. This is pretty common with games that are localised to English – no voice actor can work with a script that doesn’t give them decent dialogue to interpret.
I feel very much the same about what we’ve seen of Tides so far. While Jennifer English has proven herself to be an incredibly capable voice actor – that’s Shadowheart, God’s favourite princess, by the way – Gwendolyn feels like a thoroughly boring character, and the dialogue we see is stilted and lacking meat. It feels like Tide is sorely lacking voice direction, which is a huge waste. Again, that’s Shadowheart.
Like Black Myth: Wukong, the other triple-A Chinese game you’ve probably played, Tides reinterprets myth. Here, it’s Arthurian legend. I’m unconvinced that it will do this with any originality, and like Black Myth: Wukong, its setting and action seem to be the main draw. Whether its storytelling will fall short is yet to be seen, but I’m not optimistic from what we’ve been shown so far.
- ESRB
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Rating Pending
- Developer(s)
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Eclipse Glow Games
- Publisher(s)
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Eclipse Glow Games