Once in a blue moon comes a game that takes you on a memorable journey that you never want to end. Artis Impact manages to pull the unique out of the mundane in every interaction with the world. The game carries a joyful tone with glimpses of emotional signs throughout its run time. Nearly all the gameplay mechanics flow well without disturbing the overall theme of Artis Impact. The overall fun adventure is what made finishing the game a bitter pill to swallow.
The Game is Beautifully Made
All characters are just simple pencil drawings without any flashy colors, and this imagery of all characters ended up becoming the strong point for Artis Impact. Every single picture of any character in the game delivers a strong sense of raw emotion without even uttering a single word. The artist has done a marvelous job in bringing out the subtleties in every picture frame.
A single cutscene features two to three pictures with dialogue boxes to deliver the story. Even if you take out all the dialogue boxes, you can easily tell the message the game is trying to communicate through the characters’ expressions. In many cases, the visual style reminded me of the style of Junji Ito’s discography, with a similar haunting vibe lingering in the air all throughout the game.
Artis Impact Tells an Exceptional Tale
The game follows Akane and her bot on a journey that has her fighting giant monsters, cleaning dishes, and bashing a locked door with a mallet. From the very first scene of Akane waking up in bed, snorting with little care for her behavior, sets the overall tone of the game. She carries the entire game on her back; her unusual personality in dealing with every situation is what makes the game feel like an adventure. She is written incredibly well, as her personality steals every cutscene and dialogue interaction.
Plenty of times, I saw Akane letting things stay the way they are rather than making any difference to them. She willingly became the butt of the joke in a conversation by letting herself get robbed voluntarily to help out the muggers. These moments raise a question whether Akane is acting real or just playing a character to make people happy without bothering them with her problems. This sort of uniqueness applies to all characters in the game. Almost all of them have different personalities that make them distinctive from the very start. They don’t change; they just want you to be part of their lives, accepting their flaws.
All the emotions here are delivered through strong writing and character pictures set at different angles to create a theme that goes well with the message being delivered. I found myself interacting with every character to know more about them and their relationship to the world.
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Nothing Goes to Waste
The game has set a reward for every action in the game, from pressing a button a hundred times to willingly getting yourself scammed. Nearly every interaction will result in a reward beneficial to the gameplay. This reward-incentive gameplay became the focal point in the journey. I found myself interacting with every object in the game countless times, and I would always get rewarded with unique passive skills. So many of the interactions with characters reminded me of my first play of Undertale, where I am interacting with the world, not to progress the story but to learn more about it.
My first three to four hours in Artis Impact are less about fighting monsters, more about cleaning the floors of the mall to make money, hitting the gym, and buying food. The game acknowledges the player’s choice as it never forces me to concentrate on the quest. The freedom to do anything you want without being forced into playing the role of a main character is definitely the strongest point of the game.
The game is confident enough to let you wander around the city and partake in many of its missions and interact with people. And all of them transpire naturally without any objective markers. This is what kept me invested in the starting area for hours as I waited to see something interesting in the next dialogue exchange or job, and lo and behold, it would happen.
Deep and Rewarding Combat
The turn-based combat is flashy, and its variety is what makes the entire experience even better. While the choice of weapon is limited, the customization options for each one make up for it. Ignoring them is also an option, as I‘ve taken down bosses twice my size with a little customization to the gear and equipment. While the turn-based combat follows the RPG Maker’s game system, Artis Impact has added its own unique animation and the cinematography behind each battle to make them stand out.
Every battle has Akame with unique postures, with a background that makes the entire combat area feel a breath of fresh air. The game also allows you to learn an arsenal of new moves to deal more damage and witness new sick movement animations behind the attacks. However, none of them felt necessary, as one can easily blow through the game without relying on fancier moves.
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I didn’t have to spend hours grinding an item to make the weapon stronger, as most of the offensive aspects of Akame’s abilities came from her passive skills. Completing various side objectives can inherently make your character stronger than focusing too much on equipment. Exploration will lead you to a chest with high-level equipment and gear to beat almost every foe in the game.
The game doesn’t push you to become a master in combat; you always have a healthy number of rations to fight off the bosses without leading to annoyance. I did not feel any sort of challenge from combat because I had a dozen passive skills from completing a plethora of side objectives in the game. Even facing down the final boss, I managed to take him down in under three minutes, but at that point, I was not bothered by the boss but by the lingering thought of gaming coming to an end.
| What Works | What Don’t |
| Engaging Storytelling | Choppy Combat animations late-stage |
| Character Visual Style | No Help section that lists out all the information |
| Reward Incentive Gameplay Mechanics | |
| Unique Side Objectives | |
| Exploration Priority | |
| Engaging Combat with Fluid Animation | |
| New Game + Mode |
Everything Artis Impact sets out to do, it does it. The game consistently hits its mark and only misses a few shots. The game has its problems, but compared to the entire game experience as a whole, the problems appear minuscule and unnoticeable. When I think about my 15-hour journey into Artis Impact, I don’t think about the game’s few problems; it is the memories that keep my brain ringing. Completing any good game fills you with an emptiness of never seeing the same character again, and Artis Impact managed to claw out the same emotions from my heart.
We’ll give Artis Impact a 9/10. Make sure to pick up up from Steam if it sounds like something you want to play.
