Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is a Bizzare Souls-like Adventure

I knew little about Clash: Artifacts of Chaos when the code dropped in our inbox. I knew it was a third-person action game but while inquiring about the game’s length on How Long to Beat, I discovered that the game is set in the same world as the 2009 fighting game Zeno Clash. Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is not a sequel (Zeno Clash 2 came out in 2013 under the publication of SEGA) and its gameplay is different from the first-person melee combat of its predecessors, but it takes only a quick glance to see the strong visual similarities between them. The original Zeno Clash was a self-published title from the developer ACE Team but for Artifacts of Chaos, the publishing duty went to the French game company Nacon. ACE Team’s latest title might have the visual flair to grab your attention, but the question for me is, can it sustain that attention?

Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is set in the punk fantasy world of Zenozoik where you take control of Pseudo, a ripped master of martial arts whose head has descriptive qualities of something I won’t go into, as he takes Boy, the tiny feathered creature that hangs out on his shoulder, under his protection. Pseudo and the Boy travel through the vibrant and bizarre land, searching for answers and fending for themselves as Gemini’s mercenaries hunt them down. From the vague narrative to the winding level design, there are fair comparisons to be made to FromSoft games, and Clash (as I will be referring to Artifacts of Chaos from this point on) does a good job of making it all unique to itself. Though, while Clash is mechanically a Souls-like, I believe it thematically compares more to 2018’s God of War. This all sounds great but, for me, the real point of contention with the game is that I don’t find it all too compelling.

Let’s start by discussing gameplay. Clash is a third-person action-adventure game and most of your time playing will be spent doing two things: fighting and exploring. The fighting is decent fun and, for those willing to master it, you can even create cool combos in the fighting style of your choice. (You can also unlock new stances for fighting via totems found throughout the map.) One-on-one fights can look pretty well choreographed if you have the patience to not just button mash. Properly timing the dodges and parries, which isn’t too difficult to come to grips with, is essential in staying alive. There is also an attack meter on the bottom left of the screen which you can activate with R1. This puts you in a first-person view, similar to Zeno Clash, and (assuming you can survive long enough) allows you to chain together some high-damage attacks. But when you’re outnumbered, fights tend to feel unfair and chaotic and not in a fun way.

Speaking of chaotic, before you even start a fight, there are Rituals to consider. Rituals are dice-centric mini-games that you can challenge intelligent enemies to play before a fight. The winner of the Ritual dictates a buff or debuff that is active for the duration of the fight. The Rituals are an interesting concept on paper but I didn’t enjoy them in execution. Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is challenging enough without a random mini-game to change up the formula. Nine out of ten times, I preferred going straight into battle, but Rituals go both ways and even if you don’t challenge an opponent to it, they can still challenge you. If you really aren’t a fan of the Rituals, you can opt to have the AI play for you, but this only makes the Rituals feel more like a random number game and no less frustrating.

At night, you take control of Pseudo’s husk. This can be used to access thorny areas that Pseudo’s organic body cannot access during the day. Along with this, if Pseudo dies, you must use the husk to find his body to wake it up and resume your adventure. This is a cool mechanic and it’s a new (to me) take on the “recovering souls” aspect of most Souls-like games. The problem is that the map is difficult to navigate and retracing your steps in a land where everything sort of looks like everything else is a real pain. I spent way too much time in Clash just retracing my steps and I found the lack of plot and character to be an inadequate trade-off for my time. Dying as a husk gives you the game over screen and spawns you back at your last campsite, which are Clash‘s version of bonfires. There are not a ton of campfires throughout Zenozoik but this does play with the risk-reward decision-making present in most Souls-like games.

There are also upgrades to talk about. You get skill points every time you level up which you can put toward any of your main attributes (Power, Endurance, Aggressiveness, and Constitution). You also burn figurines found throughout the map to boost your stances and abilities. These upgrades felt inconsequential, especially in the first few hours of the game, and to make matters worse, the upgrade menu is also a weird one to navigate with a controller.

The last gameplay point I want to touch on are the items. Throughout your adventure, you will pick up weapons to use instead of fists, though I personally still chose the latter anyway. Weapons have limited durability and saving them for bigger fights is highly recommended. Luckily armor doesn’t seem to have the same breakability mechanics. When it’s time to heal, you can use a flask tied around your hip. You start with one flask but you can get more as you play if you have the right materials for it. You can also brew potions at your campsite with items you gathered to give you additional health or temporary boosts.

I played Clash on the PlayStation 5 and one thing I cannot fault the game on is its performance. It played smoothly with infrequent frame drops and that’s a pretty big plus when playing a game where you might have to do a whole lot of backtracking if you die. There are also a plethora of settings to play around with including field of view, art rendering style, and more. These mostly change how the game looks and don’t impact gameplay but they were welcome options that I enjoyed experimenting with. Similarly, the sound is also great, thanks to a solid background score and good voice acting. All this is to say, technically the game looks and sounds well.

Unfortunately, as you can probably guess, it’s a lot of the other stuff in Clash: Artifacts of Chaos that makes me hesitant to recommend it to everyone looking for a challenge. The repetitive gameplay that often felt unrewarding, the aimless wandering that is necessary to progress the story, and the unnecessary randomness of the Rituals are all points that turned me off from the game. And the general vagueness of the narrative made it hard for me to look past its quirks and want to return for more. That being said, if the challenging gameplay and unique setting do pique your interest, then you can rest assured that it runs well, sounds great, and that you can probably enjoy what the game has to offer. Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is available now on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store. A code was provided by the publisher for review. To hear my thoughts on the first hour of the game, watch my first impressions live stream below!