Crimson Alliance Preview

Geek Piki is the latest website to offer a preview for Certain Affinity’s XBLA hack’n’slash Crimson Alliance, courtesy of some hands on time spent with the title at PAX Prime. Here’s a snippet:

Crimson Alliance gives you three classes to choose from warrior, rogue and wizard. They each play completely different from one another, and having all three in one game opens up the most options. Levels are loaded with secret doors that are specific to one class or another, so it’s good to have all three classes represented. Being partial to big swords and powerful attacks, I chose the warrior and dove right in.

Combat in Crimson Alliance is pretty straight forward. The X button performs a sweeping, horizontal attack, Y performs a vertical strike, B is a shield bash and A is a dash maneuver. The advantage Crimson Alliance has over, say, Torchlight, is that attack animations can be canceled, so you’ll never find yourself stuck in a lengthy, ill-timed animation, unable to defend yourself. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but as subtle as it is, being able to cancel animations is hugely beneficial.

The action in Crimson Alliance is also a lot faster and feels more tactile than other games in the action RPG genre. It’s easy to find yourself completely surrounded by bloodthirsty demons, so items like deployable, arrow shooting turrets, and health wards are great additions.