No Place for Bravery review: Sekiro-inspired action RPG with unfair combat

Red is the color associated with the most heightened of emotions — passion, violence, pain. This is the color that also happens to be my favorite hue There is no place for braveryIn its most crucial and goriest scenes, often invokes. Thorn, the gruff protagonist, often bathes in blood pools and disembodied bodies, with his knife smeared by his enemies’ guts. But such vignettes are interspersed with sights of the game’s exquisite pixel art environments, its overgrown, emerald forests and dilapidated, rust-colored ruins teeming with vibrant details and immaculate textures. Once every few scenes you’ll even chance upon truly imposing sights, like that of the bone-dry carcass of a colossal dragon, its remains towering over Thorn’s diminutive figure.

That said, even breathtaking beauty can’t detract from the tedium of There is no place for braveryThe action RPG ‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace,’ a shambles its tales of redemption and revenge with long bouts of tedious, repetitive combat.

A battle-hardened former soldier and father called Thorn, you shared a moment together of peaceful, tranquil hunting in the woods. But, with one click, a warlock took your little girl away. The same warlock was found 10 years later. This began the relentless pursuit of your abductor.

Glitch Factory/Ysbryd Games

There’s a strand of sincerity in There is no place for bravery that, at times, wavers on gut-wrenching; I can’t imagine it’s easy to move on when it comes to the loss of your own child. However, it is serious in its reflections on fatherhood. There is no place for braveryIt also enjoys the brutality and cruelty of its fights. For the bulk of your time here, you’ll be hacking and slashing away at waves of demons and men, reducing them to fleshy meat bags amidst the slaughter. You’ll spend hours marinating in the reflexive routine of killing, dodging, guarding, parrying, and executing. The coins can then be taken out of the victims’ bodies and used for small weaponry or potions. To unlock additional abilities and pulverize the evil inhabitants of this world, you can exchange your coins for skill points.

Most fights, however, are extremely punishing and even unfair. One stab from There is no place for bravery’s goblin-like fiends, for instance, may seem superficial, but these devils usually arrive in droves and are typically accompanied by a band of crossbow-toting creatures that rain arrows on you, even from beyond the confines of your screen. Glitch Factory feels like it took the wrong lessons from Dark Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki. A whole genre of games which thrives on difficult combat while still remaining technically fair, (There is no place for bravery’s Steam page claims it has “brutal Sekiro-esque 2D combat.”)

Sometimes enemy projectiles can also pass through walls, making it difficult to dodge them. You may have to be careful when crossing gaps between floating platforms. This is because the game expects you to use precision and not make a mistake that could lead you into the pits below. What’s more, save points are infrequent and scattered across the map, with your efforts erased if you succumb to your death before you reach the next. They bring back an old-school rigmarole that’s more frustrating than it is inspired.

Glitch Factory/Ysbryd Games

Finally, there’s the game’s finicky targeting system, which often locks on to an opponent off screen as you try to snipe them with an arbalest. For a couple of precious seconds the camera moves between Thorn’s target and him, looking for the right focus. This is a recipe for disaster when there are droves of monsters trudging toward you, bows and stumpy swords in hand, and you can’t even see yourself on screen.

What’s most curious about the game, however, is its compulsion for grisly executions. Thorn can perform an elaborate beheading of his foes when they are incapacitated, but if your bloodlust still isn’t sated, the game sometimes gives you a few seconds — a brief window of opportunity — to rip their cadavers asunder with your sword, all as the camera leers uncomfortably close to their pixelated viscera. As far as I know, this move does not award you additional resources; it’s simply a test of twitchy reflexes, as well as a showcase of Thorn’s appetite for brutality.

That’s not to say that I can’t see a point to all this violence. There’s definitely a statement, embedded somewhere within these ceaseless, blood-soaked battles, about the stark contrast between Thorn’s instincts as a badass father figure, and the sense that he actually draws some twisted pleasure from butchering his foes into a pulpy mash. He feels a tug of war between trying to save his son and feeling schadenfreude at the deaths of his foes.

This is a hollow statement given the length of the games, how tedious and frustrating these fights are. A string of difficult skirmishes ends with little relief and no sense of accomplishment. It is difficult to flesh out characters, as soldiers and villager alike repeat the same list of dialogue every time they interact with you. And when you eventually meet the warlock, they’re somehow ambiguously but enormously distressed, only muttering variations of “No, it’s too soon!” after randomly materializing right in front of you. It’s difficult to make sense of such moments (and they are not just a few).

Glitch Factory/Ysbryd Games

The most confusing suggestion is that you should retire from your crimes. At several of the game’s climatic turning points, There is no place for bravery also offers you the option — several times — to simply give up your quest for vengeance and return to a humdrum life as a tavern owner, which will abruptly conclude the game. You can do it until halfway through. There is no place for bravery for the tale to take a more interesting turn, weaving a much-needed change of pace in its scenes by hinting that Thorn isn’t all that he seems — that is, if you even made it that far in the first place.

Was there anything that surprised you the most? There is no place for braveryIn spite of its obsession with violence itself, its determination to be more than its brutal displays of cruelty is what makes it so compelling. Glitch Factory seems as though it’s reaching for something loftier than violence for violence’s sake, crafting a game that’s more than just crashing skulls with a gigantic hammer or curb-stomping a downed foe as he pukes his lungs out. The long and sombre monologues in which Thorn talks about the decision to set out on his expedition are a clear indicator of this. All we have to be reminded of is the ending. There is no place for bravery is the red from all his murderous encounters — the bloodletting Thorn has committed from brutalizing his foes, the insurmountable pain of his cheap, repetitive deaths, and the immense frustration of never seeing the game reach its fullest potential.

There is no place for bravery On Sept. 22, the game will release on Windows PC, and Nintendo Switch. A pre-release code was provided by Ysbryd Games. The PC review of the game was done. Vox Media is an affiliate partner. They do not affect editorial content. However, Vox Media might earn commissions for products bought via affiliate links. Find out more. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.