Ravenswatch Review

The roguelike genre is a crowded one. Nowadays we are seeing a number of genres meshing together in the hopes of being that next roguelike gem. Ravenswatch doesn’t necessarily reinvent the genre but provides a set of unique characters, entrancing music, and a great feeling progression system, showing that there are many more ideas to come in the roguelike space yet.

Ravenswatch is a top-down action roguelike developed by Passtech Games, the studio behind Curse of the Dead Gods. Previously only available on Steam in early access, Ravenswatch hit 1.0 in September and has now made its way to PS5 and Xbox Series S/X. We were provided with a PlayStation 5 version for our review.

Ravenswatch takes many of your favorite fables’ characters and thrusts them into a dark, gothic interpretation. These heroes band together to take on the The Nightmare, who has invaded the world of dreams and is spreading corruption. You pick from a healthy roster of unique characters to take on the nightmare in lengthy runs, split into timed day and night cycles, with 4 maps in total, each culminating into a boss battle. Over the course of your run, similar to other roguelikes, you’ll build your character up in the form of skills, magic items, and stat increases, allowing for a wide range of builds. After each run, depending on your performance, you’ll unlock other characters, skills, and story pieces that develop a character’s backstory.

Combat in Ravenswatch is the main star of this ghastly nightmare, and it delivers a weighty, customizable, and rewarding experience. Combat is tense; enemies from the beginning hit hard and do not provide a cushy experience and can easily overwhelm an unprepared player. Each character I played felt vastly different in combat, rewarding to learn, and a fun experience during each run. An example is Scarlet, who is the Red Riding Hood during the day, providing nimble and quick movesets, then at night shockingly transforms into the Big Bad Wolf with a slower, tankier feel. Each character provides a unique feeling combat skillset that feels exciting and rewarding to learn. 

Throughout the progressively harder areas in a Ravenswatch run, there are many points of interest in each map, which can be a little overwhelming at first. The game remedies this with a very detailed compendium, but this is not made obvious to players, which may make the opening hour quite jarring until things fall into place. These points of interest range from fountains that grant max health increases and side quests (such as you helping one of the three little pigs with putting together their house) to optional bosses that provide a high-risk, high-reward scenario. Each run randomly generates these points of interest, making each run feel varied, rewarding, and suitable for different strategies. As the days pass, there is a sense of urgency to exploring, weighing up which way to go and what you need at the present time.

Combat in Ravenswatch is the main star of this ghastly nightmare, and it delivers a weighty, customizable, and rewarding experience.

Ravenswatch is full of unique and equally gothic renditions of enemies that continue to grow more demonic. Morphed pig-ogres, wisps, spiders, humanoid trees, and Cthulhu-like tentacles are just the start for the many enemies you can expect to encounter. There is a ton of varied enemies, each with their own move sets to be aware of and adapt to as you make your way in Ravenswatch.

One of the interesting aspects that is not too common in the roguelike sector is the addition of multiplayer. Up to 3 players can band together in runs in Ravenswatch. This provided a great opportunity to synergize abilities with characters and have someone to take the heat off the ever-ongoing onslaught of enemies. However, enemy scaling almost entirely cancels out the additional players, making runs feel even more chaotic and deadly than solo runs, almost requiring precision teamwork, and one error could be fatal. Multiplayer is a fun addition, but I felt more in control on my own, and my demise was my own doing rather than teamwork confusion.

Ravenswatch rewards continued play, revealing more lore entries, unlockables, and characters with each run. This loop feels compelling and exciting, but after only a few hours in, I had grown accustomed to Scarlet and her moveset and completed a whole run quicker than expected. A game that feels very difficult at the beginning can quickly become much easier if the right build is found. This can make runs feel unbalanced when it comes to difficulty, with a certain lucky skill or map placement benefiting me more than my skill level. After a run, higher difficulties can be chosen, different characters can be used, different modifiers, etc., but it all involves the same core content, so I felt like this was much shorter than originally anticipated during the opening hours. 

Similar to other roguelikes such as Hades, which presents the story over time, Ravenswatch also follows suit but in a more barebones fashion. As you progress, you’ll learn more about characters and their story through such things as journal entries. The setting is an interesting one, but it feels like it’s only just scratching the surface in terms of each character’s involvement and what Ravenswatch could really do with these characters and the place within this nightmare.

Ravenswatch retains the unique cel-shaded art style from its previous game, a great gothic aesthetic, contrasting with the typically more fantastical environments and characters. Enemies all look great and distinct, and each playable hero is unique in their visual design. Ravenswatch also delivers a thrilling music score throughout each run; tracks pick up whenever I’m surrounded by grisly creatures, reaching epic heights in each boss battle with pounding drums matching my pounding heart as I weave in and out of deadly attacks. As mentioned before. I played the PS5 version, and this ran solid throughout. Visually, I noticed no major difference from the PC version; however, I did notice that sometimes levels did take a while to load, but it was nothing deal-breaking, and once the level loaded in, there were no other noticeable performance issues.