The performance of “Malicious Endless” in the early access stage is already full of surprises. Most of the time, the experience is great. For example, the previous second I was marveling at the slow and steady combat feel (which is almost unprecedented in action role-playing games), and the next second I was decorating my house, as if I had suddenly traveled to the world of “Animal Crossing” for all ages.
On the other hand, although this is a game that is obviously still under construction at this stage, it does have some less pleasant “surprises”, such as various technical problems, loot and inventory management systems that need serious adjustments, and levels that are very headache-inducing to watch from a fixed top-down perspective. However, this game does not have any flaws, and after more than 30 hours of game experience, those issues have become insignificant.
There’s not much subversive about the setting of this game: you play as a magical warrior, a typical “chosen one”, who vows to fight against an ancient evil plague, which seems to be a serious problem for humans, because once infected, they will inevitably become Cthulhu-like horrors.
After arriving on the desolate beach of Sanctuary Island by boat, you immediately embark on a mission to save these poor souls, killing all kinds of cruel wild animals, infected humans and vicious bandits along the way. At the same time, the suspicious church with a sense of justice and radicalism has not rested, needless to say, they will definitely become the main villains in the later stages of the game.
Sanctuary Island is not a paradise worth visiting, but the first-class voice acting makes the characters soulful, and the environment also suggests that this devastated place was once a beautiful world, but it was destroyed. These environmental narratives quickly attract players to continue to move forward, through each painful area and face each deadly boss.
We can’t experience the full story at this stage, and it’s coming to a halt just when it’s about to get better, so we’ll have to wait until the official version to see how good the script is. But for now, this start is still very shocking.
Every frame in “Malicious” is a pleasure to watch, thanks to the hand-painted art style, expressive and memorable character creation, and those breathtakingly beautiful plants. Moon Studios is really good at creating vegetation, and it’s obvious that their experience in designing parkour forests for Ori in “Ori and the Blind Forest” has come in handy now.
But I want to complain that the weird characters in the game may be a bit off at first glance, especially when you enter the character creation interface and find that the default character that comes into view is a big foot who looks like he is covered in oil, because they all have very creepy and disproportionate gorilla-like limbs. But once I got into the game and saw how the body design fits into the top-down perspective, I quickly understood their intention.
The combat experience of this game is as unique as its art style, because this unique action RPG does not adopt the fast-paced design of small-scale battles in “Diablo” or “Path of Exile” (in which players can unleash a series of powerful skills to kill hundreds of enemies in a few seconds), but instead uses a steady, methodical and deadly sword-fighting mode against a small number of enemies.
You are no longer a war god sweeping across the battlefield. You can only be a flexible adventurer who must master dodging, perfect blocking and various tricky combat skills learned to stay alive. Such battles are more challenging and require you to play twelve points of attention. Although there is no need to travel thousands of miles to recover your corpse after death, nor is there a pitiful limit on the number of healing items you can carry, the game is still quite difficult even for masochists like us.
This new style of trial is quite successful, making the player’s journey more challenging than most games from the beginning, and every victory over the opponent makes people feel that it is a hard-won victory. For players who have played all the dungeons in “Diablo 4”, this gameplay is still more attractive than mindlessly sweeping through the enemy hordes (of course, each gameplay has its own merits).
Exploring the island of Sanctuary in the early game is a very pleasant experience, whether you are wading into the fetid sewers full of bandits or wandering among the ancient ruins that will shatter you with just the slightest misstep (even if you don’t die from the fall, it is annoying to fall all the time). In the few explorable areas I’ve found so far, I’ve found a wide variety of enemy types, including infected rats with rotten faces, four-legged monsters that are slimy and explode into clones when they die, and witches that fly around the field and throw fireballs at you.
Crucially, there are a lot of secrets to discover, a lot of hidden loot to find, and a lot of new paths to explore by climbing, jumping, or walking on single-plank bridges, which are rarely seen in isometric level design.
There are also some very clever shortcuts designed to quickly return to the only safe area in the center of the map on the Sanctuary Island, so there is ample opportunity to re-explore various areas and dig every nook and cranny. The only problem is that since you can’t turn your camera while exploring, the fixed perspective sometimes makes it difficult to judge whether something is climbable or how wide a narrow chasm you are about to jump over is, which caused me to accidentally fall to my death more than once.
The game’s role-playing mechanics also follow a high degree of freedom. Players have a high degree of customization and are not limited to a specific class or role setting, so there are many different play styles (at least in the early stages). Because your character build is largely determined by the weapons and armor you bring to battle, each of which has corresponding attacks, skills and properties, you can use the game’s RPG mechanics as you like.
For a while, I played the assassin style in light armor and a pair of daggers that could deal elemental damage. Later, I switched to a machete and a shield that could restore health when successfully blocking attacks. The game’s construction gameplay is quite deep, and I have figured out several combinations. It’s really hard to choose, but it’s a sweet trouble!
Unfortunately, the specific choices of players are still determined by the face of the god of luck, because it is unlikely that you will swipe a good weapon that just fits your play style. What’s even more frustrating is that you might finally pick up a weapon you really like, but find that you don’t have the right attributes to use it, and there is currently no way to reset your points, so you will eventually be trapped in a certain play style, and find that all the loot you pick up is basically useless, unless you are willing to spend hard-earned skill points to change your play style.
For example, I invested all my skill points in Agility and picked up a very good two-handed greatsword, but you need enough strength to use it. In theory, once the multiplayer mode is turned on, you can give away loot that you don’t use to other characters or players, but most of the time, it’s still very unpleasant to get a good thing that you can’t use. This design will waste the fun of trying different builds, and the longer you play, the more boring it becomes.
The above problems are not the only reason why the loot mechanic becomes boring. “Endless Malice” uses one of my most annoying action RPG mechanics, that is, small backpacks that require constant item management. Enemies constantly drop gear, and while you can gradually upgrade your inventory space, it’s a slow process (editor’s note: you need to use special items that only boss-level enemies drop), and you have to play for several hours before you can unlock the proper storage box function, which forced me to sell or discard many items I originally wanted to keep. Since upgrading, enchanting, and forging weapons require a large number of different materials, you often have to run back to store things you no longer have room for, which is very annoying.
This design may be more useful in games like Baldur’s Gate 3, which can prevent players from looting every plate they encounter along the way (if you really can’t bear to give it up, you can always store it at camp). But in this game, I had to stop exploring every few minutes to run back to sort out the items in my inventory and agonize over which items to keep, which was really unpleasant.
You will also find that the design of this game’s healing props is also weird. You must consume raw materials to make food, and they are not replenished when you die. This means that if you encounter a particularly tricky battle and die after using up a lot of healing items, you can’t continue what you are doing. You need to go back to the previously explored area to collect herbs and mushrooms, make more healing items, and then return to the challenge.
If you get hurt in the process and need to use healing items urgently, it will be even worse (even Bloodborne enthusiasts have to admit that the health bottle is the worst design design in the game). The developers may consider making healing items more accessible, or setting some of them to be replenished after the player dies, because it is really tedious to run around and refresh them before going back to seek revenge.
When you take a break from the daily routine of defeating mutant monsters and fighting with your pitiful backpack, you can return to the cozy town of “Sacred City” to rest. At this time, your goal unexpectedly changes to rebuilding this place, as if you have suddenly walked into the gothic version of “Stardew Valley”. You can save materials to invest in renovations of local facilities and infrastructure, turning the place into a veritable oasis with friendly merchants and pleasant scenery, a cozy tavern and restaurant near the town entrance, and an elevator in the center of town to quickly travel between the lower town area and the more upscale upper area.
You can even buy yourself a property and spend a lot of time decorating your little home and filling it with all the loot you don’t have the space to carry. Although it’s a strange addition to such a dark and brutal game, it has become one of my favorite elements. Every piece of wood or ore you collect can be used to build a new facility or help merchants upgrade to expand their inventory, which in turn makes your life more convenient.
Besides, it’s a good pastime to be able to free yourself from the monsters who want to kill you, stay in your own house and empty yourself, and make some furniture from time to time. You can rest whenever you want.
Once you beat the main campaign, you can start a roguelike mode that involves visiting dungeons filled with powerful enemies and tons of loot (assuming you have enough weight to carry them). This mode is quite fun and makes the Early Access version of Endless Malice feel more fulfilling.
Unfortunately, you need to grind for consumables before each dungeon, because you may use up too many healing items during the dungeon, so in order to be more prepared for the next challenge, you may have to re-explore the areas you have explored so far to get the items you need. Not only did I have to fight, but I also had to manage my items, and I found myself spending most of my time studying recipes instead of practicing perfect blocks.
There is another problem with this game. Although it is not surprising that the optimization is poor for an Early Access game (after all, many official versions of games are also poorly optimized these days), Endless Malice does have performance and technical issues that need to be addressed. No matter how fancy your computer is, you’ll always have framerates (as evidenced by my Ryzen 9 processor and RTX 4090 GPU). Sometimes you’ll get stuck on a cliff and have to dodge a few times to get free, and large parts of the environment (like bridges or certain ground surfaces) won’t spawn in time as you explore, only to suddenly reappear in front of you later.
Some things that appear to be there aren’t, like one time I dodged all the way to a certain location to avoid an enemy, only to fall through the model and die in the open space below. But these are common problems people encounter in early access games, and they will gradually disappear as development progresses, so they’re not big enough to stop me from exploring. Except for the falling through the model to die, which is really annoying.
It’s also worth noting that the current version of Endless Malice does not have any kind of multiplayer. Although this is the first content that Moon Studios plans to release, people like me who are eager to play the game with friends are already eager to get started. The addition of allies can change the balance of battle and perhaps make the game more interesting. Considering that the entire campaign feels quite suitable for single-player play, I can hardly imagine what it would be like to do these missions online with multiple people. But I am very much looking forward to it!
Summary
“Endless Malice” is a striking and uniquely designed action RPG work. Although various shortcomings can be felt in the current early access version of only the first chapter content, it combines a lot of excellent ideas from similar games together and has a promising future. The problems of this game include but are not limited to unreasonable loot mechanics and item management, poor optimization, and some designs that need to be slowly adapted to due to the influence of isometric perspective. There are still many things that need to be adjusted in the months before the release of version 1.0.
Personally, I hope that the balance performance of item management and health recovery props can be better done, so that players can invest their time in skill training and actual combat. But even in this early version (before co-op), I’m already drawn to the game’s solid and challenging combat, memorable exploration, excellent art style, voice acting, and character development, which have kept me motivated to continue to advance the story and further explore the high-risk, high-reward roguelike mode. Considering the critical acclaim this game has received so far, I can already foresee that it will become a landmark work in the action RPG genre, and this potential is really exciting.
Advantages
Solid action design style
Unforgettable and distinctive art effects
Interlocking and detailed map design
Disadvantages
Unreasonable item management mechanism
Early version optimization issues are prominent
The balance of some builds needs to be adjusted
Review results
“Endless Malice” is an eye-catching and uniquely designed action RPG. Although various shortcomings can be felt in the early access version of the first chapter, it combines a lot of excellent ideas from similar games and has a promising future.