Surprise, I’m back with another review, this time it being Chronos: Before The Ashes, the sequel, or more the prequel to Remnant: From The Ashes, a hit game from 2019 which I played and very much enjoyed. Chronos: Before The Ashes is developed by Gunfire Games and THQ Nordic while published by THQ Nordic and THQ.

Story
The events in Chronos: Before the Ashes take place a month before the Remnants: of The Ashes events, and has you taking on the role of a nameless warrior. It’s their lifelong quest to save their homeland from an evil dragon that resides within a great labyrinth. You must travel the lands, solving puzzles, and defeating enemies, all the while staying alive, as falling in battle will cost you to lose a year off your life with every defeat, though you’ll grow wiser and stronger as you do.

Gameplay
I did channel my inner Stace-Rage playing this as I travelled through the labyrinth, especially with some battles as it felt as if the enemies could interrupt my attacks. However, I could not return the favour, especially during one boss fight. The Golem was trapping me underneath him, not allowing me to move. Other than those moments playing, it was challenging with varying enemy types, which resulted in a lot of thinking, planning, learning their attack phases, and looking for weaknesses. I like to think my memory is pretty good as no map/minimap resulted in trying to remember where every puzzle piece is, as well as where it went, and in the end, I just did a lot of backtracking after defeating the first boss. No objective came up, nor was one mentioned leading me to read a playthrough. On where to go next, I backtracked to the beginning of the world just in case I missed something, only to discover a puzzle that I only needed to press across to select a different picture.

Exploration was one of my greatest enjoyments and I came across some hidden secrets resulting in new weapons, upgrading from my starting sword to an axe, followed by a sweet ass hammer that I used more than the mission weapon you get called (Morning Star). You can upgrade your weapons as I did to my sweet hammer as you kill enemies, and some may even drop Dragon Shards. If you die enough, you can even select a perk allowing enemies to drop shards more frequently. Talking about dying, starting at the age of 18, and potentially hitting the years of 20, through 80, the game will enable you to choose certain perks to help you along and ages your body. I have a sexy beard to go with my excellent hammer.

Controls
These are reasonably easy to pick up and play, though an option to button swap would be nice. I found myself parrying instead of blocking, though that might just be muscle memory from all the other games I play. Even an auto lock-on would have been helpful. When facing more than two enemies, dodging attacks while trying to click the right stick in to lock on can cause you to lose some precious health bar.

Audio/Visuals
I played Chronos: Before The Ashes on the Xbox One S, and it is an absolute treat with brightly light zones, dark and foreboding areas popping and creating the right atmosphere, and the fire just looks downright amazing. I was really impressed with the war the rain was done, settling on the rocky paths giving off the reflective mirror look. When it comes to the audio, the system plays music that helps in setting the mood to whatever it needs to be. Boss battles are particularly ragey. However, the music helped me keep my calm instead of throwing my controller across the room in a fit of Stace-Rage. (She has done that before.)

Critiques
Of the few critiques I have, the main is dodging. If I didn’t have the left stick in the precise location, my character would roll forward at the enemy, causing me to move into incoming danger instead of away. Having an objective or map something along those lines would have also helped immensely. I wandered all over the labyrinth for an hour before getting irritated, cheating, and referring to a walkthrough for help.

Another thing that didn’t make sense to me was Chronos’ events that happened a month before Remnants of The Ashes, yet there are no guns almost like they don’t exist, but in Remnant there are. Guns are everywhere, which was slightly confusing or I have my timeline wrong.

Overall
Even with my few grievances, I did enjoy my time with Chronos: Before The Ashes. Watching my character age over the years was a really enjoyable mechanic, and watching the labyrinth take a heavy toll every time I failed every time made me want to do better. I often wondered how I’d fare as an elderly 80-year-old warrior would fair, but could not justify the number of deaths and loading screens it would take.

Dark Souls fans will surely get a kick out of this title. Once I’m done with this, I have a Remnants From the Ashes itch that I’m going to need to scratch, so until next time, Peace.

Written by: Anarchy Risen