So...who's played Dust: Elysian Tail?

[Terminate421]

I'm currently playing it right now and I gotta say I'm enjoying it.

I love the visuals and the hack and slashy gameplay makes me feel nice and OP at times.

I do like the characters, even when they get to their extremes.

I am enjoying it now (Despite me being late to the party)! What about you guys?

 

[Orange12345]

I finished it and really enjoyed it, I loved the special blade spin moves (I dont remember the name of it) and the combat had a really great speed and flow to it. The bosses could have been better but I actually liked most of the characters even though I'm not sure how all those accents developed in one village

 

[klaynexas3]

I loved the game. I got it because I hears the game was made by one person(minus voice acting), and I have to say I am impressed. My only dislike for the game is the grind you have to do if you don't play on like easy. Or if you're just pretty damn good.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I think I picked it up in a Humble Bundle. Played it for about 2 hours, enjoyed it, then never played it again for some reason...

I think I might go finish it soon.

 

[Weaver]

I thought it was great! I simply can't believe how good the game was, given the small development team.
I even managed to do a full playthrough of it on my youtube channel.

 

[Malbourne]

Augh, what an awesome game! Fantastic soundtrack - I bought it separately - that really meshes with the colorful environments. The animations, of course, are very pleasing to look at (since the person who created the game basically started out as an animator). And sometimes the gameplay feels more button-mashy when I don't know what I'm doing, but it hides my incompetence by filling the screen with utter chaos. I can respect that.

 

[Treeinthewoods]

It's okay but nothing special. I kind of felt like it was designed for furries, the art style and characters didn't really do it for me and the gameplay was pretty shallow.

I've been pretty bored with platformers for a long time though so I am pretty biased.

 

[EternallyBored]

it's a very simple platformer game, with a little bit of metroidvania style backtracking, and a very simple stat/leveling system. I found the music to be overall pretty good and the visuals were nice and smooth.

Combat was a bit shallow, and if you do a lot of exploring/side stuff, you end up really overleveled by the final boss. A lot of the enemies right up to the final zone just aren't that challenging, even on higher difficulties (I played on tough, which is one step below the highest difficulty). The combat still looks flashy, and if you are good at it, it has a good time at making you feel like a badass.

The art direction had a nice sense of whimsy to it, and while I couldn't tell what species some of the characters were supposed to be, the character designs were nice and distinct. Yeah, the thing was obviously made to pander to furries, but even as someone who doesn't really favor furries over normal human characters, I still found the art style to be pretty good, it didn't try to get overly dramatic or dark, so it kind of felt like a kids movie with talking animal characters.

Even the annoying sidekick character was pretty decent by the end of the game, and while the story isn't really anything to write home about (is reptiles versus mammals a common furry trope?), it was passable and managed to keep me engaged enough to see the game all the way to the end.

Overall, I enjoyed it, and if you like hack and slash games with a little exploration and light RPG mechanics thrown in, you can do a lot worse than this game. It goes on sale a lot, so if you see it on Steam for a couple bucks, I would recommend it. Probably sunk a good 10 hours or so into it to beat, so its a pretty decent bang for your buck as far as singleplayer experiences go.

 

[Smooth Operator]

I had immense fun with it because the gameplay is so damn smooth, not the deepest combat and move system but it feels so very nice to handle. Also with a huge pulsing combo meter on the side edging you on to keep that flow during combat going.
The only thing I don't like is the main character, yet another emo teen nonsense.

And the furry comment is always hilarious, because as long as Disney does anthropomorphic stuff none bats an eyelid but should anyone else try it and suddenly it's all fetishes and shit. Actually this being the internet I shouldn't expect anything else.

 

[Evonisia]

I got it when it was on games for gold and I remember having fun with it and finding the characters all quirky and stuff, but just didn't finish it.

I must admit, though, it's a very beautiful game, almost besting Rayman Legends in terms of being pleasing to my eyes.

 

[AmberSword]

A simple game that I never expected to have a lot of fun with.
I too was late to the party, played it about 2 months ago.

In fact it was so good that I actually bothered spending time outfitting Dust with the best possible gear in the game just for kicks and shits. Didn't finish the collectibles though, no one can arse me to do those in any game.

I do admit though, the story was just above average, nothing ground-breaking, and the gameplay got repetitive REALLY fast. After the tutorial level you barely get any new moves anymore besides the boss abilities with Fidget, you do get more moves for interaction with the environment, but its all the standard platformer staples. Other than that stats were all that mattered, the game got too easy too fast.

Still, its a good game that doesn't overstay its welcome, I could recommend it to anyone looking for a platformer.

 

[gandhi the peacemake]

The creator has expressed that the final product was intended to just be the prologue to a much larger game, with more depth to the combat system and an entirely different storyline. (He has no plans to return to the game, though.)

It's a fun game while it lasts. There are the problems mentioned by most previous people - repetitive and shallow combat/leveling/enemies/etc. - but these are merely signs of the designer's execution not quite matching his ambition. It's still a very enjoyable game.

The one criticism that sticks with me, though, is how aggravating the environmental hazards are, especially at higher difficulties. The damage they deal scales disproportionately with difficulty, to the point that at highest difficulties you can lose half or more of your health every time you bump into a thorny vine or spiked rock. And considering the amount of platforming there is in the game, and how imprecise the platforming can be...

But anyway. Extremely fun game, and doesn't overstay its welcome.

 

[-Dragmire-]

I really enjoyed playing it until I met the guys you had to time your slashes perfectly on. I got frustrated and put it down for a while and now it's lost amongst the backlog.

It really was fun until then, I'll continue it eventually.

 

[hazabaza1]

It's alright. The areas were well designed visually and from a game design perspective, and the combat was decent if a little easy. Story and characters were fucking abysmal, but hey it's one guy working on damn near everything, and the rest worked well enough.

 

[Lazy Kitty]

I loved that game.
Fidget is so cute.

 

[GabeZhul]

Yeah, the thing was obviously made to pander to furries (...)

Bullshit. I hate it when someone singles out an aspect like that, makes a logical leap with it and then sates it as a matter of fact. Furries are a minority of a minority who sexualize human/animal hybrid characters. Saying that any game or show that features such characters is automatically pandering to furries is like saying that the Castlevania games pander to the BDSM demographics because the main character has a whip. Bull. Shit.

As for the actual game, I enjoyed it a lot. The combat got a little repetitive by the end and I disliked how the roadblocks were mostly just "find the red key to the red door" instead of the traditional Metroidvania method of giving the player new moves to reach unreachable platforms and interact with the environment, but otherwise it was a really fun, flashy game with nice voice acting, great music and visuals and some pretty amusing dialog every here and there.

 

[loa]

It was ok.
I didn't like the equipment system in which everything is a blatant upgrade with very little choice involved and finding treasure became increasingly meaningless the longer the game progressed since it's mostly stuff you find everywhere anyway.

 

[leberkaese]

I really enjoyed the game, especially its visuals and combat system. I think I stopped playing nearly at the end and didn't pick it up since then. Don't know, why.
Many people probably will hang me for that: with a few exceptions, where she was kind of cute, Fidget has been really annoying. Like Navi from OoT - just shut up already!

Seems like many people disliked the game purely because of the fact that the characters are anthromorphic. Kind of sad, to reject a great game only because of "It's furry". I personally didn't saw it as "that's made for furries", rather "this is a throwback to old Disney cartoons from my childhood". Therefore I could enjoy the game despite the fact that I have nothing to do with all those furry-fandoms out there.

 

[Story]

That game blow away my low expectations. The visuals and music was great and the gameplay was fun.
My only complaints were in reguard to the story, which includes major spoilers so I won't talk about them here.
I also though in general the story became really melodramatic towards the end.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

i have, a complete furfest, but its an enjoyable furfest

nice hack and slash combat, tough the art style can seriously drive people away, i know it did for me, before that humble bundle pushed me over the edge