Reaper: Tale of a Pale Swordsman

Genre: Action-Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Reaper: Tale of a Pale Swordsman is an Action-Platformer with some RPG elements that puts you in the role of a mysterious swordsman who finds himself in a land torn apart by conflict. This is a game that started its life back in 2013 as a pretty well-regarded Smartphone game, and it shows… both in a good way and in a bad way.

For the good side of things, visually this is a pretty nice-looking game, even for a title that’s over half a decade old. It’s nothing that pushes the Switch in any way, but it has some nice, distinctive 2D character designs and a clean look to it.

For the bad, in many ways it’s clear that this was a game that was not designed with a controller in mind. The controls are sluggish and floaty, and the “auto-attack” feature is bizarre in an action game if you’re not familiar with where the game came from. Also, the game’s menus are really confusingly laid out, as if someone had never played a console videogame before. It takes a lot of getting used to, and there were a few times in in-game shops that I sold items unintentionally because the control layout is so terrible.

Then there’s also the simplicity of the game – while you have some limited ability to select branching options in quests and can equip various items to change your stats in the game, the meat of the gameplay here are the battles with enemies (some random, some a part of a quest), and those are always invariably just a matter of killing a bunch of enemies with the aforementioned floaty combat. Also, it took me a little while to realize that parts of the stage that seemed like backgrounds were actually hazards damaging me, and it’s frustrating that these elements weren’t designed to be more noticeable.

In the end, while there are certainly elements to like in Reaper, on the whole it really feels like a Smartphone game that was probably more noteworthy on the Smartphone. But on the Switch, we actually have great action-packed platformers with tight, responsive controls and varied combat, and standing next to them, Reaper pales in comparison.

tl;dr – Reaper is an Action-Platformer with RPG elements, and it’s very apparent that it’s a port from Smartphones, with floaty controls, terrible interface issues, and repetitive game design. It’s not without its charms, but there are far better games like this on the Switch – play one of those instead.

Grade: C-

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