GFEditorials

Coridden Review

What’s better than sitting on a couch with friends, playing through a cooperative experience together, joyously enjoying each other’s company and a shared love of gaming? Well, riding them like a mounted cavalry into battle as you both combine powerful magical attacks sounds better, doesn’t it? That’s what Coridden promises will separate itself from the pack of action RPGs out there. In Coridden, you and up to 3 friends explore the world of Heera cooperatively, completing quests and fighting mobs of creatures and bandits to try and find your way into the legendary and locked away city of Aasha. To accomplish this, you’ll have to level up and choose to go down a plethora of possible specialization paths to equip yourself with new attack spells, defensive buffs, and, even more excitingly, beastly abilities. For a small dev team, Aftnareld has given gaming friend groups a nicely packaged adventure that is 100% worth playing.

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Gauntlet with Gauntlets

The story of Coridden revolves around trying to fix these gauntlets that you and your siblings are given at the beginning of the game, which have a mysterious AI embedded into them that convinces you you absolutely must get the gauntlets fixed. These gauntlets also allow you to transform into the beasts you defeat throughout the campaign, the reasons which are explained throughout the story as it builds to a final act. As you progress through the campaign, you’ll have main and side quests to complete. These primarily involve going out and defeating a mob or finding an item and returning it to the quest giver. During these expeditions out into the open world, you’ll pick up lore logs that further explain why the city of Aasha is locked behind a forcefield, and eventually try to find your way inside. The quests themselves, and their quest givers, were interesting enough, and the characters and backstory behind their reasonings was amusingly told at times. I didn’t find it too distracting, and it worked well enough to drive the story forward. Just like many hack and slash action RPGs, as long as the story isn’t absolutely unredeemable, you’re really there for the “action” part.

Coridden Gif (10)

The Beastly Burden

Coridden Gif (13)

The highlight of Coridden is the always available ability to seamlessly switch between your human and beast form, each with their own stamina bar for abilities. You acquire these forms by picking them up just like any other loot in the game after you defeat enemies, and find new and improved versions in the same way you do weapons or armor loot. Each beast has its own progression levels and abilities to choose from, which is all at once exciting and overwhelming. While playing with friends, we would take turns on who was navigating around the map and who was riding on the back of one another so that we could do our upgrade and inventory management whilst exploring. It was actually a pretty nifty setup that we appreciated the more we played. It was incredibly cool to run around together across the lands as creatures and riders, and the ability to teleport directly onto another mountable player was a greatly appreciated ability that we used to allow for one person to hop down and try a difficult jump or open a chest, or some other task, without the threat of wiping the team. Some creatures also allowed for quicker running, or swimming through currents in water, or busting through doors. It was fun to switch your roles to navigate the platforming and exploration puzzles in some of the maps.

Coridden Gif (12)As we leveled up and specialized through the skill trees, it became apparent that the enemies were difficult enough that we needed to organize teams consisting of tank-like damage absorbers, healers, and big AOE and burst damage dealers. We found that staying alive was sometimes a bit of a challenge, and did have to make use of the ability to revive each other (or stay alive long enough to auto-revive) at times throughout our gameplay. This wasn’t too frustrating, as I do appreciate a growing challenge in action games, where as I level up, I start to feel more and more powerful against my opponents, but I’m constantly having to work on refining what works best to take on stronger foes. The beast forms to choose from allow for a satisfying range of playstyle choices, including creatures like raptors, crocodiles, and other dino-like beings that can poison, ignite, or wallop in various ways. There are plenty of enemy mobs to encounter as you run around the maps finishing quests, and defeating enemies is the primary way of leveling up your beast and human forms. We just had to be careful how many we took on at once, and that the first person taking the hit could handle all of the mobs targeting them primarily at the start of the fight.

Coridden water

All Things Bright & Beautiful

Visually, Coridden has a very classic-feeling style, with a healthy use of colorful glows, particle effects galore, and lovingly crafted environments that have just enough detail to make you appreciate the polish. Most of the game takes place outside, where the visual design really shines. Foliage and dirt reacts to your stomping attacks, the water gleams and flows as you dart through it as a crocolisk, and your magical attacks shine with ambient colors across the enemies’ forms. While spending a lot of time sprinting through the levels, it looks really smooth, and getting to enjoy the heightened ability of your beast forms felt exceptionally cool. Here at Gaming Furever, we’re always ones to appreciate playing and controlling a different form, and Coridden shows how much fun that can be in so many ways. Additionally, you can unlock cool visual styles for your beast and human forms, allowing for some neat step trails or shiny creature colors. The map system was also a highlight, with a very well designed waypoint marking system, along with a topographical map of each area. This helped with navigating vertical obstacles and deciding which way to pursue our goals. There was also a nifty fast travel system, which is always a plus.    

Coridden Story

When speaking of sound, I’ll have to say this was one of the spots I felt things were just fine. The voice acting and writing leaves something to be desired, with a few actors sounding a bit forced, and some sounding like they didn’t fit the style of the game. The backing music was good and provided a completely serviceable soundtrack to the adventure. It was orchestral and dramatic, and exactly what you’d want for a game like this. Sound effects were the highlight, and with so much going on, it needed to be. I used sound cues as much as visual cues to help tell what was going on (and there was often a lot going on) and it filled the battles with chaotic goodness.

In Conclusion

Overall, Coridden is a unique cooperative action adventure with plenty to enjoy. It includes some great ideas executed well, and the inclusion of 4-player combat and campaigning in a succinctly told story is a breath of fresh air from the battle pass laden, constantly pushed DLC blockbusters that dominate the genre landscape Coridden rides into. Rally a couple friends and mount them valiantly as you ride into battle again and again. You won’t regret the experience, especially at the very affordable asking price.


Coridden Scores

Thanks to the devs for a review key. Coridden is available on Steam.

Daxel
About Author:
Hey I’m Joshua Hyles! Owner and Editor of Gaming Furever. Lover of cruises, travel, flavors, my wife and my family.
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