Flynn: Son of Crimson
I was browsing GamePass and saw an interesting looking indie title. Looked up how long it would take to beat and it said ~6 hours. So I decided to check it out!
Flynn: Son of Crimson is a charming action platformer that has enough character to keep you hooked and just short enough to not overstay it’s welcome.
I’m going to touch on some drawbacks first. There is a lack of enemy variety, and each enemy pretty much employs the same “dodge, attack, repeat” mentality. Only a few changes to that formula exist, in which you need to cast a magic attack instead of a physical attack. Their isn’t much of a difficulty curve… until you hit the last boss. The last boss is way harder than the rest of the mini-bosses and the “challenge battles.” The difficulty spikes in the first hour and then pretty much plateaus the rest of the game until the final battle. I would have liked to see a more consistent increase. Honestly, that’s it for negatives. Maybe I’ll play through again on hard mode, and some of that will be a non-issue.
There are a few “areas” each with their own unique design, with some good music to match. Some levels you even get to ride a big oversized doggo, and that’s pretty awesome. There are three different weapons you can freely switch between (sword, axe, and claws) and four magic missile attacks you can also freely switch between (crimson, ice, lightning, and fire). There is also a heal spell, which saved my butt more than once. I really enjoyed the claws for their speed and the lightning magic for it’s utility. Some enemies required the axe to break their shield down, so it added a little element of strategy once in a while.
There is a skill progression system you can leverage by spending crimson gems found in your adventures. You can get a nice boost of these by collecting trinkets and giving them to an oversized toad as well. There’s about 20 of them in the game to find, and they’re all pretty easy to locate if you know what to look for! It wasn’t difficult or grindy to get enough gems to max out the skill chart either.
I 101%’ed this game without any guide, and I enjoy games like that. Sometimes I just want to play a game and not feel like I need the internet to find everything. It took me about 10 hours because I like to take my time and explore every nook and cranny on a short title like this. There were optional exits to levels, think Super Mario World, where if you opened them you could find “challenge levels” to test your battle prowess, and one seemed to be a shrine of some sort to all the (what I assume to be) Kickstarter supporters. I thought that was a nice touch.
A very solid action platformer with charm. Nothing too unique or mind-blowing, but if you have a free weekend, I’d say give this a playthrough. I’m might glad I did!
