Dreamscaper

Genre: Action-RPG / Roguelike

Players: 1

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Review:

Dreamscaper is an Action-RPG and Roguelike released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2021 and ported to Xbox One in 2022. In this game, players take the role of a young woman visiting memories in her dreams and fighting various monsters stalking through said memories.

Of course, with any Action-RPG Roguelike, there’s one comparison looming over everything, so let’s address the elephant in the room right away – no, this game isn’t going to replace Hades any time soon. However, Dreamscaper nevertheless has some very good qualities to offer that make it worth a look even in a world where Hades still reigns supreme.

One area that shines right from the start is the presentation – Dreamscaper is absolutely gorgeous, using full 3D visuals with a lot of detail, great lighting and shadows, nice reflection effects, and a style that does a magnificent job evoking nostalgic memories of real-world places made a bit surreal by distortions caused by the bizarre dream world. The characters’ faces are all blank even in parts of the game where you’re awake, which detracts from this a bit, but I suppose it’s likely a stylistic choice.

These excellent visuals are backed by a soundtrack that tends to fluctuate between dreamlike atmospheric music while you’re wandering the dream world, to more techno-inspired tunes for combat, to instrumental music when you’re awake in the real world. It all works well for the game, giving dreams an extra surreal sort of feel to them.

When it comes to the gameplay, Dreamscaper doesn’t do anything especially new or unusual for the genre, but everything it does it does mostly pretty well. I felt like the combat was a tad more slow and clunky than I’d like, but I appreciate that the game uses timed flashes to indicate when you can time attacks to get critical hits. There’s also a good variety of different melee and projectile weapons, minor and major magic attacks, dash/dodge types, shield/armor types, and passive upgrades that you can get in a run, as well as permanent upgrades you can get when your character is awake.

Apart from the combat not being as fluid as I’d like, another complaint I have here is that I feel no interest or attachment to the game’s unnamed protagonist, despite that the game seems to want to feed bits of their backstory to the player. And while there’s a good variety of upgrades here, I don’t feel like I’m given quite as many upgrade choices as I would like in a run.

All things considered, all this still adds up to a very good albeit not quite spectacular Action-RPG Roguelike with a superb presentation. If you’ve finished Hades and crave another game in the same genre to add to your collection, Dreamscaper is a solid choice.

tl;dr – Dreamscaper is an Action-RPG and Roguelike where players fight monsters in the dreams of the protagonist, which are shaped by her memories. This game features solid gameplay and an excellent presentation, and while it doesn’t quite reach the same heights as Hades, it is still well-crafted enough that it’s worth checking out in its own right.

Grade: B+

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