Holmgang is about the land of Dracorum, a once peaceful and prosperous land until the Emporer’s death caused the lands to suffer great darkness and wickedness in the entire kingdom. Three heroes will come together to fight the darkness and bring back the peace and prosperity Dracorum once had. Holmgang will allow you to experience a very rich story with connections to the novels by David Cabrera and developed by Zerouno Games.

At the beginning of the game, there is a very nice comic experience that informs you about the characters and their place in the story. What you will be experiencing is the prequel to the comics versions of the story but in video game format. This is what allows you to experience the rich story and the character involved, who are Kandar, Valentia, and Tatsu.

From what we were told, Holmgang has a mechanic blend of Castlevania, God of War, Dead Cells, and Golden Axe, with art looking like spray paint, charcoal, and watercolors much like Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China, The Wolf Among Us, and art references from Dave McKean and Lem—who also participated in the development of Holmgang. There are some wonderful RPG elements in the game that allows your characters to evolve and enhance their arsenal. You can also craft in the game by coming up with your own combos to fit your playstyle, and even buy and sell weapons, trinkets, and potions from vendors to prepare yourself for what is to come.

Now, let’s move onto our experience with the Holmgang: Memories of the Forgotten

Once you get to the end of the comic at the beginning of the game, you will have to choose to continue the game with Kandar or continue with Valentia. Since this is the pre-alpha demo, the Kandar path was not available so you have to choose to continue with Valentia. Right off the bat, you know that choosing a specific character will place you on a different path from the others.

There was a small taste of another level you can try in the pre-alpha demo called Swamp. There will obviously be more levels to play-through upon the release of Holmgang: Memories of the Forgotten, so stay tuned. The levels vary from environments to help with the ambiance of the game and provide many challenges as the map can be quite the puzzle to figure out but not impossible to complete. You will travel from land and sea environments to progress the story and will come in contact with many enemies which we’ll discuss in a bit.

The combat is very nice and does feel like the aforementioned titles Holmgang resembles as it is a hack n’ slash game using a PS4 or XB1 controller—sorry, no keyboard and mouse option. To describe the combat mechanics, there are single-action buttons and then you have consecutive combos to perform as you repeatedly press on an action button. Each action button performs a different type of attack which are piercing attacks with the spear—Valentia’s weapon to start—and the other attack is a swing attack to cover more area. You can also press and hold an action button to perform a high attack which there will be chances that you can perform critical hits as well. When you do perform a critical hit, the health of the enemy depletes tremendously after the second strike from your attack.

The right trigger will perform a dagger throw for attacking in the distance, which becomes really helpful when trying to kill one of the enemies moving around and/or teleporting… There is a defense button to block that is also a counter/parry, and when you activate a counter/parry, the game will enter in a slow-mo experience so you can plan ahead and choose your targets carefully as this is also a chance to regain the upper hand. You also have a dodge button to help you evade any enemy when they decide to attack/charge at you. There is also a lock-on button to focus on a specific enemy/boss while ignoring the rest. The character movement is rather hit or miss when fighting an enemy sometimes. This is because the AIs defensive coding has them perfectly dodging your attacks which is annoying at times. Because of this, it is kind of hard to stay focused on an enemy without the lock-on feature and you will be dancing the whole time.

If you defeat an enemy with combos, you will be able to activate a finisher on the enemy for added depth and experience of the kill. We imagine later on you can enhance these specific moves. You also have a Sidekick(s) you can activate to help you in combat by pressing the left trigger which will bring up the sidekick menu and then using the buttons activated (XB1: A, X, Y/PS4: X, ◻, △), you can summon your sidekick.