French developer Doryah Games’ action-roguelite Savara is set in the same animated universe as 2008’s Wakfu series. While the connections between the two are limited, the roguelite’s “Hades meets Dauntless” DNA is much more obvious.
As the titular Savara, a typical run includes picking a basic loadout of two weapons and progressing through floor after floor, each one full of enemies and traps capable of tripping players up. Once a floor has been completed, a blessing can be chosen. These are passive power-ups grouped into eight “families” with their own dedicated passive effects and status effects. Only one of these blessings can be held per “applicator,” those being the basic attack, charged attack, and dodge. Other blessings can be chosen to replace one of these applicators or for a flat passive bonus.
Savara‘s weapon and armour crafting system is reminiscent of Dauntless and other similar hunter-style games. These weapons have flat stat differences and some nice visual models, but don’t change the game too much beyond a few unique passive effects or ‘traits.’ Each weapon carries the same clunky basic and charged attacks of its basic weapon type, of which there are seven to choose from, all accessible after the tutorial. These include a longsword, hammers, dual blades, and the sword and shield, to name a few, with each one having three distinct traits that offer some build variety.
Weapons are further divided into three damage types (bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing) with specific enemies being vulnerable to their matching damage type. “Effective damage,” as it’s known, will turn stacking damage numbers yellow and deal more damage.
However, the differences are negligible, as each weapon can be used to spam attacks rapidly with the right blessings stacked together, provided incoming attacks and environmental traps are dodged, to defeat most enemies rather quickly. Those enemies themselves are not overly responsive per hit, with seemingly no reactive animations. Enemies only react to damage dealt when a part is broken, causing them to be stunned temporarily.
The levels or floors those enemies inhabit are sparsely decorated, repetitive, and become rather boring as they settle into a predicable rhythm as a run goes on. In games like Hades, a part of the “perfected formula” is making each new run exciting in some way. However, new attempts in Savara can quickly become bland and tedious.
Savara herself also gets easily lost inside of the much larger enemies, allowing multiple enemies to gang up on and attack her at once, creating a bit of unnecessary jank unless the dodge button is actively spammed, which rapidly drains the already rather limited stamina. Switching weapons allows Savara to recover some of that stamina every two seconds, albeit a minuscule amount in terms of how cost-heavy attacks and combos are, especially when facing off against one of the boss enemies.
Bosses are much larger and more interesting than basic enemies but suffer from nearly the same amount of jank. Each one has its own area attack, some easier to dodge than others, which serves as the gimmick for that boss’ floor. They consists of three parts, which can be broken to deal considerable damage and take home more loot from a run.
Savara also features numerous optional achievements, with some focusing on the prestige mode, which is similar to Hades‘ “Heat” system. Other achievements require defeating one of the five major bosses with the weapons crafted from another one of the five.
As for the story, protagonist Savara is a likable but underwritten elf warrior who is mentored by Karn, one of the numerous NPCs that can be encountered in the Participant’s Hall hub space. The narrative revolves around Savara and is told through bits of banter with each of those NPCs. There isn’t too much to it; Savara herself is one of many such participants in a festival hosted by the warrior god Iop from the Wakfu animated universe.
Savara‘s voice acting, provided by Emilie Rault (Raya and the Last Dragon), is significantly stronger than the writing itself, with enough emotion to carry a story arc but no arc to actually deliver.
Despite numerous flaws in its mechanical and narrative presentation, Savara’s visuals are a mixed bag of pleasantly bright colours and lush backgrounds, which are poorly balanced with a lot of visual clutter on the screen. Similarly, the soundtrack carries a soft, adventurous cadence but soon loops after an hour or so, adding yet more repetition to new runs.
