Fallen Angel is a weird little gem of a game. It plays like a cross between ITTA and Lucah: Born of a Dream and allows you to play as Lucifer as he rebels against God. Or something to that effect; despite a respectable amount of voice acting, the story and character motivations aren’t fleshed out anywhere near as much as they could (and probably should) be, leaving many of the archangel confrontations lacking a sense of narrative weight. However, it’s when you begin to view Fallen Angel as a gameplay-centric game that things begin to click; between the unexpected openness of the world and the new weapons, perks, and melee attacks that are constantly being handed to you, you’re always given more than enough to break the difficulty wide open. And even when you feel absurdly empowered, it’s still possible for Fallen Angel to humble you with unexpectedly close fights.

Fallen Angel‘s story lacks an explanation for why things are the weird way that they are

Leading up to one of Fallen Angel‘s many boss fights, I had to guide Lucifer through a packed club of enemies and dancing NPCs who could be slain. I don’t know why I enjoyed cutting down a bunch of dancers so much, but little things like that and the destructibility of environmental objects add a lot of flavor. Regardless of how much I liked it, though, the question remains: why does this action game featuring biblical figures include a dance floor in the first place? Many realms are designed to reflect the archangel who lurks in them, but you never get a sense of why that style suits them.

The more I think about it, the more confusing the story gets. Lucifer begins the game by waking up in purgatory, but why purgatory if he was thrown into the lake of fire? Whose voice tells him to arise? Even if the answer is who I suspect it to be, then I’m left with another unanswered “why.” I never stumbled across any of the answers. I spent the entire game assuming that God had gone on vacation or abandoned everyone. Then he appeared.

Fallen Angel begins with a quote from Paradise Lost, and this Lucifer shares some personality traits with that Lucifer, most notably his unwillingness to be subservient, but some of his dialogue options are sarcastic and more in line with the Darksiders franchise’s take on biblical characters. All of this comes across as a reference to something despite my increasing confidence that there’s no mainstream depiction of these characters that fits. The store page mentions nothing either.

It’s not like you’ll be drowning in story cutscenes. In fact, apart from one or two characters who talk to you when you get close to them (and even then, only to set up shopkeepers for later on), the only dialog in the entire game occurs before the “main” boss fights against archangels. I suppose that’s what kept all of my lingering story/lore questions from overwhelming my enjoyment of Fallen Angel; yes, I’m brimming with questions about what specifically is going on, but 95% of my time was spent exploring the world for screens that I missed, fighting the enemies that populate each screen, and finding the best way to incorporate new attacks into my combat strategy without throwing off my timing.

The gameplay doesn’t waste your time with meaningless padding, which is refreshing

I was sent a key for Fallen Angel back in mid-September, but it came with an expiration date (which you’re never privy to for some reason) and ended up expiring weeks before the game’s release. Fortunately, I was sent a new key yesterday and managed to play through the entire game because nothing about this game is designed to waste your time. I’m only a few reviews shy of my 500th, so I’ve covered a lot of games, and that means fighting through a lot of padding—mandatory experience and/or equipment grinds to keep characters competitive in new areas, fetch quests, and a general reticence games share out of a fear that they’ll be considered too short if they don’t stall—but Fallen Angel doesn’t suffer from any of that.

You’re never far from a boss fight in Fallen Angel, be that a sub-boss or an archangel fight, and they can be tackled in whatever order you find them in. Even better, archangel bosses drop new abilities, and the roads leading to them often have new equipment that you’ll stumble across, so it doesn’t take long before the strict “3 equippable items of each type” limit forces you to pick items that suit your play style. And if a boss comes along who requires a different approach, digging into your unused gear for a powerful new combination is often the answer.

Fallen Angel relies primarily on its melee combat, with the slashing and dodging feeling like a less slick take on Lucah: Born of a Dream‘s combat system. Like that game, it also allows you to fight with ranged weapons, though doing so isn’t comfortable during a first playthrough; bullets frequently drop from enemies and crates, but different ranged weapons use up different amounts of bullets, and I was reluctant to risk wasting bullets because they’re also used as currency in Fallen Angel‘s shops. Knowing now how little you have to buy and which weapons are most powerful, though, I imagine it’d be possible to play a ranged-only character.

While Fallen Angel‘s gameplay comes together for the most part, it can be a little rough

There are no traditional level-ups. In fact, ammo drops are the only thing you get from fighting regular enemies, though dealing damage to them with a certain upgrade equipped can heal you (which was one of the only reasons I ever went out of my way to fight them). That’s not to say that there’s no progression, though—you gain new attack abilities, health upgrades, and other traditional perks of leveling up by finding rare obelisks. The first few of these provide you with new attacks such as an uppercut that knocks your opponent into the air, and this is where things start to get a little sketchy—I never figured out how to chain an uppercut into a combo, with it only ever working to begin a combo. I suspect that the problem has something to do with your uninterruptible melee attacks. That’s something you’ll notice when you button-mash against a boss and can’t dodge away.

You have to learn the timing of bosses to know how many attacks you can safely fit in, then, which is fine, but there are all sorts of little things like this that feel slightly off. You can’t dodge through enemies, for example, which can become a problem if you ever let them smother you from all sides. The hit detection can also be questionable, with the giant sword slashes of some bosses damaging you even once you’ve visibly cleared their attack. And while Fallen Angel expects you to utilize jumps both for platforming and to give yourself some extra space in combat, the art style doesn’t communicate height very well.

Fallen Angel also has a few bugs and odd design decisions that I encountered. The first—and by far the scariest—was when I quit out of the game for a while, only to come back and realize that my save game was missing. After digging into my AppData folder to try and figure out whether the save was gone or corrupted, I realized that my save had been put into a Fallen Angel demo folder despite having never downloaded or played its demo. Moving the save file from the demo folder to the full-release folder fixed the problem. The other problem I encountered was that the final phase of the final boss became invincible, which forced me to spent minutes dodging around until I had finally been worn down and lost.

And while it may not be a bug per se, the inconsistency of Fallen Angel‘s save system can be puzzling. The way it works is that waypoints automatically save when you first come across them, after which they serve as fast travel points. If you leave the screen and return to them, all non-boss enemies will respawn and the game will be saved. If you fast travel to a waypoint that you’re already standing at, all non-boss enemies will respawn and the game will be saved. If you find something interesting on the same screen as a waypoint that you’ve already saved at, though, nothing will be saved, which caused me to absentmindedly lose huge chunks of progress early in the game after failing to notice the non-save.

Somehow, though, all of these minor issues balance out the game’s difficulty somewhat

Fallen Angel is a game where it’s easy to feel comically overpowered. Restoring your health bar by dodging past a wave of enemies, damaging them with a health-leeching trail of fire is very entertaining. Carving through a boss fight on your first try is also entertaining. The thing is, I died quite a bit. Bosses may not have giant health bars, but neither do you. Getting stun-locked by some summoned minions is always a possibility. In many ways, Fallen Angel makes up for its rougher qualities by allowing you to play every bit as dirty as your opponents do. For example, beating one of the archangels unlocks an ability that operates on a cooldown and gives you a powerful homing attack that can cut through bosses and regular enemies like butter, which would be massively overpowered if it didn’t sometimes get confused and leave you stuttering in place. It balances out.

Fallen Angel looks and sounds nice, with some minor caveats like judging relative heights

Fallen Angel puts its best foot forward, with the art and music in its opening purgatory area being eye and ear-catching. There are a lot of great things about the pixel art, which largely avoids fuzzy post-processing despite being moody enough that you could be forgiven for thinking that there’s a ton of it. The trees are animated and move in the wind, the visuals always adequately telegraph enemy attacks (with only one or two minor exceptions toward the end of the game), and the variance of each location makes it easy to remember where you have and haven’t explored. I only have two issues with the art style, with the first being the lack of transparency. If an enemy wanders behind a tree, you won’t be able to see what they’re doing, and the visual effects of attacks during boss fights can produce a similar effect. The second issue is that height isn’t communicated well. The platforming is fine thanks to a drop shadow, but figuring out where you need to jump from to damage flying enemies is a hassle.

The soundtrack is designed in an interesting way, with the area themes tending to be repetitive and reinforcing a single musical idea (which is great if you’re rushing forward but could become grating if you get lost). I’m especially a fan of some of the early tracks that use synth bells, which used to be more common in games between around 1995-2005 but have since Fallen out of favor. Several areas lack any kind of music, however, which is a pretty big letdown given how good Fallen Angel‘s music can be. The boss music is especially great, taking simplistic synths and using them in different ways to reflect the personality of different archangels. Michael is imposingly large and serious, so his fight has a choir and an ominous melody. Raphael is fought in a club, so the synths that play during that fight are more playful and club-inspired. All of this is better than average.

Story: N/A Gameplay: 5/6 Visuals: 1.5/2 Music: 1.5/2 ★★★★★★★★☆☆ – 8/10
*Click here and scroll to the bottom for a detailed explanation of what these numbers mean

*A Steam key was provided for this Fallen Angel review. It took me around four and a half hours to beat every boss and reach the ending, but I’m probably more comfortable with this genre than most.

Fallen Angel review – There’s a semi-biblical dance floor massacre first appeared on Killa Penguin