Crisol: Theater of Idols review: "This blood-powered shooter intrigues me, but never manages to live up to its dark folklore promises"

Crisol's main gimmick – weapons use your blood for ammunition, meaning that you lose HP each time you reload – is interesting and well implemented. Unfortunately, pretty much everything else – combat, story, characters, puzzles – is not. There are some solid ideas here, but they've been used to build a throne of mediocrity for the game to slouch on.

The blood for ammo thing ties directly into the plot. You play as Gabriel, a soldier for the cult of the sun (yay!). He's been sent to infiltrate the welcomingly-named island of Tormentosa, ruled by the cult of the sea (boo!). However, his first encounter with an enemy doesn't go very well, so his god resurrects him with the power of god-flavored blood. This makes Gabriel's gun stronger but, more importantly, it also makes it look cooler.

The Crisol Maze

Reloading hurts, which encourages you to pick your shots carefully and keep your distance whenever possible (enemies can also knock your health down, after all). You regain chunks of health by absorbing human or animal corpses, or by using the syringes that can be found. Opportunities to heal are fairly spaced, so long as you're careful.

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Despite this well-implemented mechanic, combat starts off poor, and never gets much better. The pistol is slow, weak, and not as smooth to handle as it should be. The horror vibe Crisol is going for wouldn't gel well with Ramboing your way through it all, of course, but Gabriel is a soldier. He should be comfortable and competent with his arsenal. Worse, the next two guns to unlock - a shotgun and a sniper rifle - demand so much blood to reload, I pretty much ignored them. I instead upgraded the pistol at every opportunity, and that saw me through most of the game by itself (until I got my hands on the much more enjoyable final two weapons).

With its gloomy retro-styled environs and animated statues with faces frozen into a single expression, Crisol appears to be going for a Resident Evil X Bioshock vibe. There are whispers of those games in the background, but the atmosphere is weak. It has neither the intelligence (nothing meaningful is said about religion or faith) nor the confidence (there's no attempt to embrace and justify Resi's B-movie silliness) to bring the world to life.

The dialogue, too, can be odd and (especially with Gabriel) stilted. The highlight for me is when, shortly after his arrival on Tormentosa, an unknown voice tells Gabriel "We have been expecting you" over his radio. "Who are you?" he demands, immediately following this – hilariously – with "Do I know you?".

There are puzzles dotted throughout the story and they're, y'know, okay (I found two to be bugged at time of writing – reload a save if you're confident you have the right solution to one). There are a few where elements are spread out over much too wide an area, which can make trying different solutions tedious. There's also a late-game area where the same puzzle type is repeated a few times too often, and when Gabriel says "How many times will I have to do this?", it takes me a moment to realize that it wasn't me speaking out loud.

Bad blood

I haven't exactly been singing this game's praises, but to be clear, it isn't awful. It's just unambitious and unremarkable. For example, while I'm not a fan of 'hide from the huge invincible monster' gameplay sections, I don't mind the ones here because the monster in question is slow and easily avoided, and has no instakill attacks. The whole thing is a bit silly though, because if it sees you run into a spot it can't reach, it'll run over and say "You can't hide forever!" then walk off in the opposite direction as though nothing happened, asking where you are; but you can't have everything I guess.

The final hour or so is actually quite good, though it's telling that this section turns its back on most of the design philosophy that powered the previous 10-12 hours. I can't go into detail as it's all very spoilery, but I was left wishing that the whole game was like this. Crisol undoubtedly ends on a high (where ironically, it dives into its darkest depths) – but it can feel like a bit of a time waster when only about a tenth of a game can confidently be described as 'good'.

Prior to that enjoyable finale, a few moments of frustration aside, I plodded through Crisol thinking that it was okay. It was fine. It wasn't a chore I was keen to have finished as soon as possible – I was happy to explore for upgrades, which contributed to the fact that I only died a few times across the whole game – but nor was I excited to jump back in for the next session. It's not scary and it doesn't make you think, but there's still satisfaction to be had in conquering a tough puzzle or taking down a strong, aggressive enemy.

If you're craving a slow-paced shooter that offers something different, then you might get a kick out of Crisol's blood ammo system and folklore-religion fusion imagery. Without this very specific craving, however, all you're likely to find is a few neat ideas surrounded by a lot of unrealised potential.

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