AI Limit is, strangely enough, a game that’s all about mud. Your player character, Arrisa, is formed from mud. When you die – which you will a lot – Arrisa is respawned from mud. Most foes you encounter are made from mud, heck, you can even eat mud balls to regain health. Also, when you meander down the umpteenth dingey dull brown subterranean tunnel as you make your way through a level, you’ll be thinking the environment looks darn muddy too. AI Limit’s predilection with the goopy brown stuff is a little bit odd…
It’s not the only odd thing about AI Limit, as the story is, quite frankly, bonkers. An assembly of random proper nouns haphazardly glued together – probably with mud – proceedings are overly complicated, make little sense, and are likely best ignored. Suffice to say, Arrisa is an immortal Blader, tasked with traversing a post-apocalyptic landscape to protect the last city of Havenswell. She’ll do this by slaying numerous beasties in a third person action adventure Soulslike.
Unlike a Souls game however, the levels here are almost completely linear. There are some shortcuts to be found, but you’ll generally be traipsing through the exact same level, along the exact same route, again and again. What is initially fun soon becomes a chore, as the identical hidden cultist ambushes you as they always tediously too, like some confused inhabitant of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Finally, you’ll open a shortcut and get to avoid the hidden cultist, but AI Limit will push your patience in the wait to do so.
Combat is decent if unremarkable, a selection of light and chargeable hard attacks are available, though light attacks are much more effective, so you’re unlikely to do much charging. Rapid and capable of staggering most foes, light attacks prove so potent that hammering their button proves a more winning strategy than all the dodging, parrying, and special abilities combined. Particularly when the controls are a little bit off, as they are here. Inputs are regularly laggy and the targeting fussy, often leading to death as Arrisa insists on not looking at the demon about to kill her.
The Sync Rate mechanic is a neat addition, though. The more you hit opponents the more powerful your attacks become, but being hit or using abilities lowers your Sync Rate and thus your attack power. The risk and reward balance is intriguing but poorly implemented and under-explored; when light attacks are by far your best option and can quickly boost your Sync Rate, why bother troubling yourself doing anything else? As a result, combat is perfunctory and soon becomes rather dull, a significant issue when hitting stuff forms the majority of the game.
Boss encounters are fine, with some memorable behemoths to take down, but they are resolutely cheap in their tactics. Relying on insta-kill attacks to make the game difficult, rather than increasingly dangerous and varied attack patterns to fend off before finding your opening to strike back. Again, decide to stick with it, hammer light attack and force Arrisa to look in the right direction, and you’ll eventually defeat the boss, I’m just not sure how much fun you’ll be having in the process.
Visually, despite the dull as dish-water environments, the characters and enemies are well-designed and fluidly animated, with a lovely anime aesthetic that serves to make the game look more interesting. But don’t be fooled; this is a paint-by-numbers Soulslike offering little of note to differentiate it from the multitude of other games in the genre.