The Skylia Prophecy [Xbox]
A game having an age-rating of 7+ is a shock when the description talks of a setting where “young women are being raped and men are being slaughtered”, but that’s what we’ve got here. A side-scrolling action-adventure RPG, 7 Raven Studios’ The Skylia Prophecy follows 18-year old Mirenia, armed with her huge Shield Blade, as she returns to Tirkin Fortress to perform a spell to banish evil - the very same evil she herself unleashed just three years prior after slaying the previous demon-in-charge, ushering in the dawn of a new, more powerful foe.
As you work your way through the world, you’ll come face to face with monsters ranging from bats, creepy cactus-crab things and decomposing corpses, to naked mud-ladies, flexible tree-girls and other ‘sexy’ designs. There are a variety of quests you can pick up from townsfolk, that will make you stronger as you complete them. You can of course skip them, and head straight to the end at its most difficult - but that would just be unnecessarily punishing to do so, as even some of the smaller enemies can easily wipe you out in one hit in the early stages. There’s no map, which is super frustrating, as it makes it very easy to feel lost - especially as there are certain ‘points of no return’ with some that are easy to bypass without realising, although you do frequently come across a character who will make deals with you for certain things, including her retrieving everything you’ve missed; which we both required on multiple occasions due to accidentally passing these points.
The pixelated art-style is well detailed with a variety of subtly macabre locations filled with skeletal remains underfoot and twisted horror-trees. Without harping on about the age-rating too much, there’s a lot scantily clad female characters and statues (although Mirenia herself doesn’t follow that typical blueprint) - which is honestly not that much of a shock when it comes to games, but the game description already had us on high alert, thinking surely there can’t be anything too extreme. Aside from some crude humour that is likely to go over the heads of kids (happy endings - or the lack thereof - from the nurses at the hospital (yep, odd setting for that statement!); and self-proclaimed ‘working women’ trying to conduct their business after dark) - we haven’t come across anything quite as severe as the description implied - although once you reach the swamp you’ll come across bloody, hanging corpses.
There’s certain design elements that were more than a little frustrating, such as poisonous water that kills you instantly, despite looking identical to the water you could walk through just seconds before, as well as mushrooms that look like they are just part of the environment, only to violently explode (and kill you) if you hit them. Thankfully, the music is pretty decent, with a gritty atmospheric vibe filled with orchestral tones.
The controls feel a bit lacking, and having a double jump that requires the use of mana (when you’ll often trigger it without thinking after spending such a large portion of the game without it), makes the game quickly feel tedious, due to the amount of backtracking that you’ll need to do to find save points to replenish all of your stats. Allan even ran into an issue where he ended up trapped in an area as a double jump was required to exit, after wasting his last double jump checking a far-off corner for anything interesting (there was nothing) and returning to jump out, only to find he couldn’t. It feels like it is desperately trying to appeal to those who love a challenging game, relying on a lot of pointless, cheap deaths to do so.
For £5.79 on Xbox, The Skylia Prophecy offers up a short tale with attractive art and a loose, Castlevania vibe, but a myriad of odd design choices and frustrating controls causes it to fall flat. It’s hard, but not in the traditional sense; causing a lot of issues with your frequent deaths from awkward enemy encounters - and boss fights that are slow and boring, but will still cause you to require multiple attempts due to attacks that are at times impossible to manoeuvre around (which is almost hilarious to say, considering how slow they are), whilst they soak up hit after hit like a colossal sponge. Overall, we found it to be pretty lacklustre, with bland Castlevania inspired gameplay that just didn’t hit any of the right buttons for us, especially when there are so many out there to choose from.
In the end, we decided to give The Skylia Prophecy the Collecting Asylum rating of 5/10.
Have you played The Skylia Prophecy yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to 7 Raven Studios for The Skylia Prophecy Xbox review code!
