Morbid: The Seven Acolytes [Xbox]

Developed by Still Running, Morbid: The Seven Acolytes is a horror-punk action RPG that sees you take on the role of the last surviving Striver of Dibrom. Your purpose in life is to hunt down and kill the Seven Acolytes, each of whose flesh is possessed by evil deities known as Gahars. A pixel-art Souls-like, Morbid has far more focus on the challenging gameplay than in the plot, but the lore can be found if you’re willing to look.

Right off the bat, it feels great to play. Movement is tight and combat is satisfying, and with a world that is described as being filled with “Lovecraftian horrors and Cronenbergian gore”, it is fantastically interesting to explore. Very reminiscent of Dark Souls, with lots of hitting and dodging, as well as trying to conserve your stamina. Enemies are fairly difficult, and attacking causes blood to spray absolutely everywhere. For the more casual players, Morbid could easily give you a shock with how intense it can be, as it definitely aims to test you. I enjoy the challenge that comes with these kinds of games, but at times I did feel a little frustrated due to how much I was impacted by my stamina running low so often. Once I got the hang of managing my stamina a little better, this was less of an issue - but still caused me problems at times during big battles.

Morbid has a very dark, gritty atmosphere with gorgeously grisly visuals and grotesque enemy designs. Being called “Morbid”, you expect a certain level of macabre, and boy does it hit the mark. With death and gore being so integral to the world, there’s always a somber tone amidst all of the violence and destruction. You’ll find the bodies of fallen comrades where you can collect items, and you can find NPCs in need of help - giving you a bunch of side-quests to expand upon the story. Enemies are well varied, and bosses look fantastically horrifying, and learning their attack patterns is straightforward - though they still put up a good fight. The soundtrack, composed by Simo Talasranta is fantastic, with very orchestral tones that throughout the world are quite peaceful and melancholic - but really turn it up a notch when facing off against bosses, with powerful, striking tones.

There’s a game mechanic that focuses on Sanity, with a Sanity Meter that depicts how high or low it currently is. As your Sanity decreases, you may become more anxious and panicky, dealing fiercer attacks - but you might also notice that your enemies will feel more powerful, too. You can find flesh plants to eat, which will increase attack speed for a short period but will cause you to lose sanity. It’s a careful line to balance, as having lower sanity not only makes you deal more damage, you also seem to take less - despite enemies feeling stronger. But the more you descend into madness, the more other things start to be affected, such as vision impairments covering the screen, and enemies may spawn Spectres upon death - which are tougher, shadow-y versions of the fallen enemy.

You can complete all of Morbid: The Seven Acolytes in around 10 hours or less, and you’ll have plenty of ground to cover in that time. The game is challenging, but you can search for little statues around the map, that once broken will give you Blessings, which you can utilise and level up, to give yourself various buffs such as increased damage with certain weapons, or quicker stamina regeneration, and these all help to make things more enjoyable. Without making use of items and Blessings, (and failing to use your skill points when you have them to upgrade your Blessings), the game feels unbelievably difficult, and it can easily turn into a bit of a slog, so be sure to make use of everything! There’s a wide range of weapons such as axes, swords, firearms and more, that you can find and utilise, with some being slow and clunky but more powerful, and some being nimble and satisfying to wield. You can equip them with different runes to give them buffs and elemental damage, which gives you a lot of freedom in your loadout.

So if you’re looking for a new game to challenge you, and a gory Lovecraftian world sounds like just what you need - then you can nab Morbid for £20.99 on the Xbox Store. Sadly, there’s no physical release for Xbox, but PS4 and Switch players rejoice - as you can get a boxed copy on those platforms - one of my pet hates, as many titles seem to suffer that same fate, but that’s a story for another day! Overall, we had a decent time with Morbid: The Seven Acolytes, and would recommend it to fans of souls-like titles, as it might just be a tad too challenging for a more casual player.

In the end, we decided to give Morbid: The Seven Acolytes the Collecting Asylum rating of 8.5/10.

Have you played Morbid: The Seven Acolytes yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!

- V x

Thank you to Evolve PR for the Morbid: The Seven Acolytes Xbox review code!