“The customer is always right in matters of taste”. That’s the full version of one of the most misquoted expressions we constantly hear from the demanding public. It means that while you do not have to agree with your customer’s choice in something, it should be respected. I bring this up here because if I was to be a picky brat, moreso than usual, Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand is exactly the game I would end up with. It’s far from a faultless game, but when it comes to a gaming experience delivering what I personally want, its quality borders on perfection.
The criteria are simple: Spectacular combat. Beautiful world. Protagonist voiced by Ben Starr. That’s all there is to it. Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand is, in theory, almost exactly the same as Final Fantasy XVI. In execution however, it’s a very different beast entirely.
How this game flew under my radar for so long, I’ll never know. What started out as a brief excursion into an interesting looking game I spotted while browsing the new PlayStation Plus Extra additions turned into fifteen of the best hours of gameplay I’ve had in recent memory.
I’m going to spoil some early to mid-game story points in this review, but don’t fret, it hardly matters. The plot is merely a calcium deficient skeleton to carry the player between absolutely outstanding battles in its colourful open world. You play as an Unnamed, the lowest of the low in the social hierarchy, who discovers a magical gauntlet that when worn imbues them with Godlike abilities. The God in question, Nyaal, is not shy about piping up to talk to you constantly, delivering world details and exposition that never interferes with immersion and mostly gets directly to the point.
This premise may sound eerily similar to that of Forspoken, and that’s because it’s absolutely the same. The key distinction is that while Atlas Fallen starts out with the same building blocks as Forspoken, they are leagues separated when it comes to quality. This game is what Forspoken, a game I looked forward to for so long before playing, could have been. A game delivering on the simple joy Forspoken totally fumbled was not on my gaming bingo card, yet here we are.
The main antagonist of the game is Nyaal’s rival God: Thelos; his representative among humanity, Captain Morrath, and Thelos’ sizeable army of sand-based monsters called Wraiths. Wraiths come in various shapes and sizes, but all of them want the same thing: to crush you viciously into the dirt. Looming ever present over the landscape is the colossal Watcher. A creation of Thelos who occasionally will send waves of enemies against you while exploring, in an event called The Watcher’s Fury. Emerging triumphant from these battles will net you a welcome tonne of experience as well as the crafting materials required to upgrade your vast array of abilities.
You need all the help you can get when it comes to upgrade materials, as the game showers you regularly with new combat options you will want to sample to see how each compliments your play style. As soon as I established what worked best for me I didn’t experiment as much as I probably should have, but very few of the descriptions for new attacks made me question their viability.
I said earlier that the game isn’t perfect, but the things it attempts and doesn’t quite pull off aren’t anywhere close to bad. At their worst they are merely unwelcome, like olives on pizza; I see they are there, discover they’re optional, so I avoid them forever. This is the path to inner peace.
The game has platforming; though it’s kept to a minimum and mostly withheld for the back half of the game, by which time you will have either stopped playing and therefore never experience them, or will be so invested that they won’t bother you. Luckily for me, I am in the latter category.
It also has time trials where you must quickly travel to a handful of checkpoints while an extremely grating high pitched whine pierces your eardrums. Some of these are tied to story progression, but provided you don’t have the hand-eye coordination of a tube of Pringles, you won’t have any reason to struggle with them. As soon as I discovered the non-story related ones in the world were completely optional, I never even attempted another one, and I’m confident I haven’t missed anything as a result.
My biggest gripe with Atlas Fallen came very early on. Upon finishing the story in the tutorial map and before moving on, the game will notify you that you will not be able to return to this area for a while and that you should finish all side objectives before progressing. I didn’t take this seriously, even though I had sat through starting nearly every side quest in the area; every single one of which I irreversibly failed by leaving, as every single NPC comes with you when you leave! I had absolutely no idea that this would happen, and my quest log suddenly being filled with failed objectives was deeply frustrating in the moment. I have since found out this doesn’t lock you out of any trophies or worthwhile items, which is fortunate.
The game shines most in its combat, particularly in the ability variety unlocked as you progress. Very few games successfully make airborne combat as easy to pull off as it is on the ground, but Atlas Fallen achieves this while also making it feel thrilling. Thanks to its gorgeous fluid movement and delicious visceral crunch of whacking a flying enemy down to the glistening sand below, combat never felt anything close to a chore in my play time.
There is a parry system, because of course there is, called Sandskin. This provides you a generous window to become briefly invulnerable to damage; enough consecutive parried attacks will temporarily freeze your enemy, causing them to take more damage. While I do typically favour dodging over parrying in all games, the hollow ring of a successfully parried attack added to my overall satisfaction with the combat, incentivising me to drift into a different play style than I would traditionally favour.
Combat centres around ‘Momentum’, which is a bar that fills gradually as you inflict damage and defeat foes. At three stages in any fight you unlock a new tier within the battle, granting a new ability from a generous list you can equip as it suits you. As the Momentum meter fills, you deal more damage and the power of your abilities, as well as the size of your equipped weapons, takes a sizeable leap. The first level ability can be something as simple as throwing a hammer at your opponent which returns to you for a second strike like Mjolnir, with the third and highest tier summoning lightning that devastates all around you.
I remember one boss fight mid-game was crushing me, and while parrying their relentless attacks I recalled how I’d just unlocked the ability to use a third tier Momentum attack. It obliterated the boss and all their minions in an instant. I absolutely loved it.
You can also sacrifice your entire accrued Momentum to inflict a colossal blow against one opponent, referred to as Shatter. At times when the tide of battle appeared to be against me, I found that throwing everything I had into a Shatter attack was the only way to save my skin. Fortuitously this doubles in satisfaction with the fact you look incredibly cool doing it, as if it was the plan the entire time.
Objectives and collectibles in the open world are helpfully colour coded, so even across great expanses of map you can often discern what an object of interest is before you get there. I felt this was a nice touch, particularly as it enabled me to avoid the time trial triggers I mentioned earlier.
The final point I want to gush about is very straightforward: Ben Starr. When I first loaded the game and found myself in a generic character creator screen; my first thought was to create a butch, manly looking character but give them the female voice. When is that not hilarious? However, upon hearing the male voice option, I recognised it immediately and selected him. There’s something about Mr Starr’s voice that’s simply captivating. He could read my utility bill to me and I’d still be utterly enraptured. Maybe one day, if he ever comes to Cameo..
With exceptionally spectacular combat highly reminiscent of one of my favourite games of all time, Final Fantasy XV (yes, 15), a detailed world which is exactly as big as it needs to be, allowing you to get lost in it but also able to get where you need to quickly, I cannot praise this game enough. The final boss and story end on a bit of a dull note, but in a game where I’m barely paying attention to the plot, focusing entirely on an addictive combat system, it hardly matters. Atlas Fallen: Reign of Sand was added to the PlayStation Plus Extra catalogue in January of this year, so for most of us it is free to play. I had a tremendous time with the game and can’t wait to start New Game Plus as soon as I finish writing this review. Please play it, you won’t regret a moment spent in its world.
As a customer who is ‘never wrong in matters of taste’, this game achieves everything it sets out to with all the self-awareness required to be engaging, epic and exciting; while also not losing its audience in lengthy cutscenes or cramming in microtransactions for the sake of it; I score this superb sandstorm of satisfaction
10 / 10
Written, edited and images captured in-game by Alexx.
Reviewed on PlayStation 5 Pro.