Flintlock: Siege of Dawn mixes fantasy and gunpowder – Review
Flintlock: Siege of Dawn stands out with its mix of guns, magic, knights, and gods. It sets up a great base for a much better sequel, if we ever get one.
In many ways, Flintlock: Siege of Dawn lives up to its name. Like a flintlock weapon—beautiful yet inconsistent and often unreliable—this game has its hits and misses. As a follow-up to the impressive Ashen, Flintlock: Siege of Dawn shows A44's attempt to break into the double-A gaming market with a cinematic 10-15 hour adventure. It's worth playing if you have Game Pass, but it struggles to stand out on its own.
The game’s world and story immediately caught my interest. You play as Nor, a sapper in a world filled with black powder, knights, and trench warfare. An army is desperately trying to hold back an endless wave of undead emerging from a fortress with a mysterious portal. The world is in chaos, with deep trenches, sandbags, and visible destruction showing the ongoing battle. When Noor's father figure embarks on a dangerous mission to destroy the portal, she convinces her commander to let her go after him.
Really, it’s the world and its massive potential that speaks to me the most strongly. Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn’s mixture of black powder weapons, swords, magic, fantasy and more reminds me a little of Brian McClellan’s Powder Mage trilogy, a series of books where people were able to use black powder to fuel their magic. There are a lot of cool elements mixed in this game and while that can sometimes lead to a slightly muddled visual style, it’s a world I think has oodles of potential for great storytelling.
Unfortunately, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn’s storytelling isn’t great. It has its moments, including some genuinely good interactions between Nor and Enki, but overall the plot is barebones and the writing often trips over itself. Nor’s hatred of the Gods and her motivation to kill them all is barely explored, nor are the companions she gathers along the way, despite the game repeatedly telling us she is close to them. Her feelings toward Enki seem to fluctuate wildly between cutscenes and in-game banter, too, which really doesn’t help the development of their relationship which should be the central pillar of the whole story.
Nor has a few moments where she stands out, but mostly she’s just another forgettable lead with a dull story. It’s a missed opportunity that A44 doesn’t use her role as a sapper—someone skilled in demolitions and clearing obstacles. Instead, she just acts like a regular soldier swinging an axe.
The developers call Flintlock a “souls-lite” game, and it’s easy to see why: you lose resources when you die and have to collect them again, there are bonfires to rest (which respawn enemies), and you have a healing flask with limited uses. When I realized it was inspired by the Souls games, I thought, “Oh no, not another one.” In truth, Flintlock only vaguely resembles Souls games and doesn’t have the challenging gameplay or deep character builds that define them.
I’d argue that Flintlock draws more from the modern God of War games than from titles like Dark Souls or Elden Ring. The over-the-shoulder perspective, semi-open environments, and combat mechanics all remind me more of Kratos’ adventures than of those other games. A useful comparison might also be the recent Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden, another AA game aiming to exceed its weight class.
Nor primarily wields an axe, which she swings with a tap of the shoulder button. She can also use her black powder pistol, which is crucial for interrupting enemy attacks that flash red. To replenish black powder charges, she must strike enemies with her axe, although this mechanic is somewhat inexplicable. Regular attacks can be dodged, blocked, or parried if you're up for it. Enki contributes to combat by dashing in for quick attacks on your command, building a special meter that can stun enemies and leave them vulnerable to more attacks. He can also use some powerful abilities to help shift the battle in your favor.
The combat system is more nuanced than described here, but overall, it’s fairly straightforward and enjoyable once you master the somewhat peculiar parry timing. However, it doesn’t evolve significantly over the short game duration. The combat pace supports a Souls-lite approach, encouraging brief engagements before retreating. I found interrupting enemies with a black powder shot to be quite satisfying, but I wish the camera would zoom out when faced with multiple enemies, as the combat system struggles with large groups.
There’s a reasonable amount of platforming in Flintlock, and to the developer’s credit, they really let you use Nor’s double-jump and air-dash to get around the environments. But its during the leaps and bounds that Nor’s floaty physics comes into play, giving it a sense of weightlessness. It doesn’t help that sometimes she’ll bump into a ledge and turn sideways instead of immediately grabbing on, which does admittedly look hilarious. Sometimes though, she doesn’t grab on at all, which is considerably less hilarious.
Enki helps out with the platforming by occasionally being able to open purple portals in the air which he and Nor can traverse. It’s a cool idea but its primary function is to form shortcuts and is otherwise rarely ever used.
There are a lot of hints that Flintlock was intended to be even more ambitious than it is. For example, there are random villages you can enter where the goal becomes to fight and defeat the leader, at which point the village is freed and all the people will magically move back in like nothing ever happened. A coffee shop opens up as a reward, giving you an extra use of your healing flask, some nice new cosmetics and maybe a side quest or two. Liberating these towns is kind of fun, but it’s a gameplay mechanic that also feels entirely separate from the rest of the game. It doesn’t really fit in with anything else.
There’s also Sebo, a coin-based mini-game that Nor can play with random characters she meets. And I mean truly random—Sebo players can show up in odd places, like rooms where you’ve just fought enemies. It looks like the developers tried to replicate the success of Gwent from The Witcher 3, but instead of placing Sebo players in logical spots, they put them everywhere. These Sebo players are the only NPCs who actually react to you; everyone else will ignore you no matter what you do. You can swing your axe in a village, but nothing breaks and no one comments on your actions.
In Conclusion…
Like a flintlock pistol, Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn doesn’t always hit the mark. The combat is fun but simple, the world is beautiful but empty and unchanging, the story has potential but doesn’t fully deliver, and the platforming feels too floaty. Each part of the game needs more polishing.
Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn isn’t a bad game, but it feels like a test for a better idea. I’d like to see a sequel, though I’m worried it might not happen given the low early player numbers. The ending hints that the developers plan to expand on this world.
If you have Game Pass, it’s worth trying out. I personally enjoyed it, but the game needed more time to develop.
