Bloodroots

Bloodroots was reviewed on a PS4

First impressions are important. Bloodroots’ first impressions are amazing to say the least. Our protagonist starts his journey by slowly trudging through snow while the wind blows in his direction. He finally stumbles upon pools of blood as he discovers that the town of Tarrytown was massacred and all of its residents are scattered in bits and pieces.

The Stylish music and the stylish cutscenes will immediately get your heart racing and your blood pumping. For the first couple of hours, playing Bloodroots is exciting and you’re always ready to push on through to the next stage of mindless mayhem and murder.

It’s not long though before the game loses that initial charm. Bloodroots begins as a carnage-filled thrill ride that slowly turns into a frustrating experience due to the unbalanced and cheap deaths that you’ll encounter around every corner.

What is Bloodroots?

Bloodroots is a top down isometric blood soaked gore fest. It’s a tale of betrayal and revenge that sets you off on the path of hunting down your past allies and ripping them to shreds. Your frenemies are eccentric, self-absorbed and they want you dead. You play as Mr. Wolf, a sadistic and stoic character with an unquenchable bloodlust.

What’s tricky about the game is that both you and your cannon fodder foes can die from a single hit, similar to what we’ve seen in games like Hotline Miami. Slashing, piercing, stabbing, kicking and punching your enemies will leave them flying across the map as a huge splatter of blood and guts bursts from them.

By the time that you’re done eradicating them; the map will be red with blood. Like a painter that’s finally ready to lay down his brush, you’ll walk slowly past the bloodied corpses and take a few moments of quiet reflection in order to appreciate your handiwork.

The bright red hue of the blood goes pretty well with the colorful backgrounds. You’ll traverse across green lush forests, beige desert landscapes, and you’ll even storm castles. The different levels of the game feel like a bunch of disjointed maps that were glued together. What I mean by that is that each stage doesn’t feel like a part of a whole.

The Leaderboards can provide a bit of replayability for someone who’s a bit more competitive than I am. You get a different score at the end of each stage that depends on the amount of combos you got, the number of deaths, the time it took you to reach the end of the stage and other variables. It’s a nice addition to the game.

A Bloody Good Time

Your move set depends on the weapon you’re equipping, and the last enemy you kill will trigger a brief but stylish execution cutscene. All of the weapons have a cutscene of their own so you can’t help but appreciate the love that was poured into this particular aspect. Combat is visceral, fast paced and bloody.

Stringing combos together is very entertaining. Ripping your enemy in half with a chainsaw after jumping off a barrel and then quickly grabbing a musket before shooting the next one is a lot of fun.

The variety of weapons is overwhelming, and each of them is a pleasure to use. A generous lock-on targeting system and tight controls means you’ll pull off those satisfying combos with ease.

You’ll do barrel rolls on literal barrels as you crush your enemies beneath you, you’ll ride hay carriages into houses like a murderous sleepy hollow and set them on fire. You can swing a metal chain around eliminating all of the baddies in your near vicinity.

The only limitation in the havoc you can cause is your own creativity, and that the enemies eventually run out. Don’t cause too much arson though, as the fires can result in a few frame drops here and there, but it’s not that big of a bother.

Some of the other weapons and items that you can equip have the ability to give you special moves. You can use paddles to lunge over gaps or swords that give you the ability to dash across the map. This was a nice twist to the mechanics of the game as relying on finding the right weapon needed to use a particular ability is interesting.

However, Bloodroots desperately needs a traditional dodge button besides having to equip the right weapon. A large number of my deaths were caused by the lack of the ability to dodge out of the path of some of the more dangerous enemy types.

Camera Issues

The camera can be a bit problematic at times, as it’s too zoomed out, which can be frustrating. There’s nothing worse than squinting at the screen, trying to figure out where the enemies are.

Most of the issues of the game are the result of the isometric view and the way that the developers decided to design the different stages. While the controls are tight and responsive, Platforming with the camera zoomed out often proves problematic.

What’s most frustrating is that you’ll often die not at the hands of your enemies, but at the hands of the floaty jumping animations. Every time that there is a gap to cross, I’d plunge to my death.

Trying to keep an eye on your attackers and making sure you’re always moving around the map means you’ll fall through the gaping cracks more times than you care to admit. Some of the stages get overly frustrating but they’re a walk in the park compared to the boss fights. Each act ends with a boss fight that will truly test your patience.

The cheap deaths really holds the game back. Reaching the next checkpoint always requires killing a substantial number of enemies which can make things a bit tedious, especially that the game might throw a new enemy type halfway through and throw you off your game.

The large arenas coupled with the fact that you die with one hit means that you could die at any second and have to sludge through the same enemies countless of times just to get to the next save point.

Another mechanic that the game desperately needs is the ability to scout the map. The game seems to want you to strategize your next move, but it never gives you the ability to properly do that.

Overall,

The problems that Bloodroots suffers from quickly waste its amazing first impressions. It starts out as a fast paced, brutal and fun game only to become frustrating, slow paced and boring less than halfway through its 6 hours playtime.

I found myself struggling to push on through to the end as the game’s formula kept going staler by the minute. The game would have been a lot smoother if it had been better paced and if the platforming was a bit more polished. Bloodroots is fun for a while, but it quickly overstays its welcome.

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Special thanks go to Popagenda PR for providing us with a review code.

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You should play Bloodroots if you

• Enjoy the insta-kill one hit formula
• Don’t mind dying a lot
• Enjoy the black humor
• Don’t mind the clunky platforming
• Enjoy the brutality of the combat
• Don’t mind having to constantly retry the large arenas

Bloodroots’ Score

6.5/10