When your best friend has been wronged and the typical methods of justice don’t apply, what do you do? Steal a “defective” machine, equip it to yourself, and take justice in your own hands. Slave Zero X is a fast-paced action game about a vigilante trying to topple the head of a corrupt power structure. Using well-timed combos and various benefits of the machine, you fight various enemies and bosses to achieve your goal.
Racking up several combos and perfecting your combat skills is entertaining. Scores and leaderboards give you goals to work towards, as well as the conclusion of the story. The Souls-like gameplay allows you to jump back into the fight even if you die. However, the learning curve is extremely high and it’s hard to remember all the combat basics. If you want a hack-and-slash whose amazing combos take time to master, Slave Zero X is for you. For those who aren’t willing to invest the hours mastering combat, you may want to look elsewhere.
Slave Zero X is available on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox for 24.99 USD
Fighting against regular enemies is a chance to practice your combos.
Story – Fighting Against The System
Slave Zero X starts with Shou, a man who has recently lost his friend Isamu. Due to Megacity’s rule by a corrupt Sovereign Khan, Shou steals a “defective” machine, X, and bonds with it. Using its power, he will fight the Sovereign’s dystopian rule one soldier at a time. Shou gets some assistance from a few allies, who have differing levels of interest in his success.
It’s easy to forget that there is a story because there isn’t much exposition. While Slave Zero X serves as a prequel to the original Slave Zero game, it’s not clear for new players. The workings of X aren’t elaborated on, characters feel one-dimensional, and the motive isn’t immediately clear. Some parts of the story are revealed as you progress, but it feels the background could’ve been better.
Your Master wants you to return, but they don’t sound bothered.
Putting some time towards the backstory similar to games such as Ed-0: Zombie Uprising helps players understand the motivations. Instead, you are immediately thrown into the action with little understanding of the situation. While the constant nature of combat makes it easy to disregard the story, it does make you wonder about the finer trappings of the story. Even though some details are eventually revealed to you, it’s difficult to persevere when the beginning is confusing.
Fortunately, it isn’t too hard to put the story together as the details are slowly revealed as you play. Most of your time is spent fighting enemies and coming up with methods to chain long combos.
Gameplay – Extending Combos For Maximum Damage
Unlike other hack-and-slash games such as Deflector, the key to success in Slave Zero X is long combos. You still defeat enemies but you don’t have reliable ways to heal. A good offense is a good defense in this game, and long combos prevent enemies from hurting you. While you can get by with the typical hack-and-slash mindset, this results in lots of avoidable deaths and mounting frustration.
While the environment is in 2.5D, all battles are 2D. It’s easy to tell who’s coming at you but battles quickly become chaotic. Explosives can drop from the sky, trains appear from tunnels; you can’t forget about your surroundings. Not all the scenery is for show, and knowing how to take advantage of your environment is key.
Directional attacks help you reach enemies in different ways.
The benefit of having a machine grafted to your body is that you aren’t just fighting with a giant sword. X allows you to use bursts that disrupt enemies, use directional attacks, and even heal while fighting. These options help you extend combos or get out of a tricky situation. It requires practice and you will fail often, but eventually you get the hang of combat. Thankfully death isn’t the end and you can jump back into a fight easily.
However, one of the game’s biggest flaws is how hard it is to learn everything. The basics of combat are easy to pick up if you have played hack-and-slash games before. But the basics don’t cover the vast array of offensive options at your potential. You get a quick tutorial just before you start playing, but after that you are on your own.
New enemies appear as you progress, keeping you on your toes.
Tutorials – Could Use Better Implementation
Slave Zero X’s tutorial is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it tells you that everything you can do is available from the start. There’s nothing off-limits, nothing you have to unlock, nothing that you can’t do with practice. That’s great when you want to get into chaining long combos together or taking down tough enemies.
On the other hand, throwing all of that information at a player in a short amount of time is counterproductive. There’s no easy way to access it other than watching the introductory scene repeatedly. Using those moves requires practice, and you must fight against several enemies while the information is still fresh. By the time you fight your third wave of enemies, it’s hard to remember that you can throw grenades.
Helpful, but you only get one chance to view this.
There’s a training mode that allows you to practice, but you still don’t get the tutorials for easy viewing. You must remember what you learned or take pictures, then hope you remember what you’re doing. The lack of accessible tutorials means you either cut your way through or spend hours learning everything.
This isn’t to say that combat should be simple and easy to pick up, because learning is part of the fun. But most of this knowledge isn’t easily accessible. It’s too easy to fall back on traditional attacks because you realise you don’t know how to burst. Sometimes you press a button and something else happens, and you don’t know what to do anymore.
Putting together long combos should be a challenge, but the journey to becoming a master shouldn’t be confusing. Without practice, your only choice is trial-by-fire, and that can be more frustrating in the long run.
Failure is part of the process, but it will happen a lot.
Audio & Visual – Futuristic Dystopia
Slave Zero X does a nice job at displaying a dark dystopian city. There’s no sunshine, great disparities in environments, and it’s clear who has the better technology. You run through slums and high-tech environments that don’t seem unrealistic for a dystopia. Villains are easily identifiable while your allies are appropriately downtrodden.
The detail in combat shines because it’s easy to tell who is an enemy. As you progress through the stages, enemies have new moves and weapons to hurt you. The animations are smooth and there is little disruption. It can be hard to tell where you should go at times, but a little experimentation helps you keep going.
Listening to the characters in English voice acting is hard because they don’t feel as emotional. Even though most of the characters are one-dimensional, the voices sound the same throughout. The Japanese voice acting has more emotion invested into it and the contrast is stark.
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- Learn how your enemies fight to avoid constantly restarting battles.
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- Bosses are difficult fights, pushing your combo knowledge to the limit.
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- See how you performed after every fight and how you can improve.
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- Look around and you can find special enemies in secret areas.
Slave Zero X was reviewed on Steam with a code provided by Ziggurat Games.
