The Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn Demo Makes Me Love Fast-Paced Souls Games

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The Steam Next Fest was by far one of my favorite events to cover this year. While there have been amazing experiences at Summer Game Fest, GDC, and PAX East, none are as accessible to everybody as the Next Fest is. I played so many demos for upcoming titles, and surprisingly, one of my favorites was a demo that couldn’t run that well on the Steam Deck. But Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn stole a lot of my attention due to its interesting world and fast-paced combat that felt like a great balance between strategic and cinematic.

The entire concept behind the game is quite intriguing. You play as Nor Vanek, who is hell-bent on killing the gods, causing chaos for you and mankind. You will end up teaming up with Enki, and with their knowledge and magical power, you will go up against the tyrannical gods to tear them down. I adore the concept, and combining the magical world with an 1860s-like aesthetic looks phenomenal. Using the flintlock pistols and US Civil War-inspired outfits helps it stand out from similar games. The color palette sometimes looks a bit monochrome, but it wasn't offputting.

As for the gameplay, well, I loved it. Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn markets itself as a souls-lite with faster and more dynamic combat, and I would say this describes it well. Attack enemies and how they react and attack you does feel similar to other souls likes, but it feels a bit more strategic and faster-paced than usual. You can attack with your axe in standard attacks, but you can also draw your Flintlock Pistol to attack enemies from afar or interrupt some of their attacks. It's really easy to swap in and out, and creating combos is easy and inevitable.

You can also dodge or parry, which can give you opportunities to counterattack and hit them back harder and pick up new types of weapons with different attacks or elemental abilities, like lighting them on fire, and swapping between them.

Enki can also be utilized in combat. By pressing the "Y" button, they can attack enemies to build up their stun bar. Once this is built up enough through a combination of attacks from yourself and Enki, you can cinematically take down the enemy or remove their armor instantly. Figuring out how best to attack groups of enemies will constantly be a strategic selling point for the game, and it's probably the biggest reason I want it myself.

There is no leveling-up system, but as you attack enemies in different ways, you will build up a reputation, which can be combined to unlock nodes on your skill tree. When you are gaining reputation, you will get added points as you attack, slide, or dodge, and you can choose when to combine it all to be sent to your reputation score to use to upgrade. By holding onto it instead of combining right away, you can increase the multiplier and get even more, but you will lose it if you get hit. You also lose all your reputation when you die, but you can pick it back up if you return to the location where you perished.

Playing on the Steam Deck is not easy, and it does eat up a lot of RAM, but it isn't impossible. I found setting the UMA Buffer to 4G to help out a lot with the framerate, and I am sure CryoUtilities could help further. It does have XeSS, which will definitely help with performance, and if the game can get to 30 FPS, which I feel it will be able to, this will be an amazing game to play on Deck and one I would personally recommend!

Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn will be available on July 18th and can be pre-ordered for $35.99 (10% Off until July 25th. The demo is still live right now too, so definitely check it out when you have the chance!

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