Atlas Fallen Review (Steam)

by Jim Smale · August 9, 2023

For this Atlas Fallen Review, where we rise from the dust and glide the sands of a timeless land, filled with ancient dangers, mysteries, and fragments of the past. Hunt legendary monsters with powerful sand-infused weapons and abilities in spectacular, super-powered combat.

Atlas Fallen Review

Atlas Fallen Review Pros:

Beautiful graphics.
Download size.
Steam achievements.
Full controller support.
Can rebind controls for both keyboard and controller buttons.
Graphics settings – GPU device, refresh rate, fullscreen, resolution, window size, v-sync, frame rate limit, dynamic resolution Factor, AMD fidelity FX super-resolution 2, camera fov slider, gamma correction, motion blur intensity, bloom intensity, lens flare intensity, lens dirt intensity, chromatic aberration intensity, depth of field, sharpening, radial blur, graphics preset, texture quality, shadow quality, volumetric lighting quality, and vegetation quality.
ARPG gameplay.
Three difficulties – Easy, normal, and hard.
Cutscenes are a mix of FMV and in-game interactions.
Can skip cutscenes and fast-forward interactions.
A 3D game world with full 360 camera control.
Photo mode
Opening tutorial section.
Hack and slash combat.
Can Invert axis.
Full character creator – hair, skin tone face, eye shape, facial features, outfit color, and a handful of preset characters.
Multiple choice encounters.
Full Co-op campaign support once you finish the opening tutorial.
Fully voiced characters.
Momentum is generated from attacks you do with fill the bar and increase your damage but also increases the damage you receive.
Momentum can go down if you don’t keep up the attacks.
Ascending is where you fill your momentum bar and continue doing damage, your arm/weapon gets bigger and you do more fantastical attacks.
A compass at the top shows mission markers and distances.
Sandskin is where you time your parry just right and you freeze the enemy along with resetting the Sandskin cool down.
Full load-out and inventory management, equip a main and secondary weapon along with any armor sets.
Fast pace from the movement to the combat.
Essence stones can be earned and equipped to add new powers and effects in combat.
Sand sliding is where you slide along the sand and move at a rapid pace.
Find and open loot chests.
Resources and materials can be found and dropped from enemies for crafting.
Interact with parts of the sand world by raising large structures or finding loot boxes.
You can also get aerial combat along with air-dashing and juggling actions.
The map fills in as you explore, and highlights places of interest. You can set custom waypoints.
The essence stones come in different colors and shapes which dictate how many you can have equipped at one time.
Find vantage points to uncover hidden Collectibles, chests, resources, etc.
Shatter is an attack whereby you use all your momentum to do a ridiculous amount of damage.
Nyaal is your companion that currently inhabits a Gauntlet you wear.
You have Nyaal senses where you can scan the area for markers.
Perks are unlocked by upgrading your armor, then you use the perk tokens on the perk tree to open it new abilities and buffs.
The anvil is where you can upgrade your gear and armor, save, and fast travel between all visited anvils.
Cool effects such as chests turning to sand after opening them.
As you play the game Nyaal starts to remember things which helps shape the game.
Guiding lights show objectives.
Play the game how you want.
A huge open world full of beautiful locations.
Three types of quests in the game – main, side, and errand quests.
Treasure maps can be found and show a place with a mark on the location of the treasure.
Lore and sound files can be found.
Materials within the world are clearly marked.
You can collect materials as you are sand sliding.
Collect recipes to then fuse essence stones together for new ones.
Massive enemies have multiple parts and you can target and break parts but doing so makes them enraged which is bad.
You can see the enemy in the world roaming around and engage if you want to.
Get new Gauntlet skins.
Collect air shards and other ability shards to improve your distance and strength in harder-to-accomplish tasks.
Fast loading times.
Wild animals can show you treasures, follow them without alerting them and if they turn gold you will find treasure.
Quick and easy ability to change quests on the fly.
If a mission/errand/side quest requirements are met before you trigger it then it still counts.
Armour customisation options – dye to change every part of the fabric color, cosmetic item, and a transmog to change the appearance.
You do get a fair warning if leaving an area means you cannot come back.
The further you get the more vertical it all gets with platforming and puzzle-like Labyrinth routes up buildings and mountains.
The watchtower has a boss and minions but beating them opens up the area by clearing the haze, allowing characters to return and animals start to show up.
Tainted stones drop from elite enemy types and they are stronger but they do have downsides.
Watchers Fury is a self-contained event that you can escape or fight through for massive rewards.
The second world is really good and a different take on what you have seen so far.
Bestiary fills in as you face new enemies and if you find bestiary entries.

Atlas Fallen Review

Atlas Fallen Review Cons:

No benchmark test for the graphics.
Doesn’t offer text size options.
You have to be in an exact position to trigger an interactive button prompt.
The graphics pop in and out at times.
At times you don’t know if the skip cutscene button will fast forward a part or just skip the whole scene.
The combat can get very mashy.
Going between sliding and running takes some getting used to.
Timing the Sandskin takes a lot of practice.
The camera is less than ideal with aerial combat.
A lot of sand!
So much to take in.
The Sand sliding is not always ideal, one bit of rock or a small ledge will have you stopping dead.
Had it a few times where enemies would go through walls or structures.
You cannot manually save whenever.
All you get told is the time of the last save and not how long ago you saved.
Using fast travel is a pain, you can’t just cycle through unlocked fast travel and instead have to navigate the map.
At times conversations go on way too long and you can only speed it up so much.
You have to hold a button down to show markers on the map.
Few times just hard crashes.
Found a fair few areas where I could pass through walls and scenery.
The game Kate on gets very fetch questy and drags out a simple advancement with unnecessary extra steps.
Having to hit points to open the next one in order to get a shard gets really tedious with bad platforming mixed with a short time limit.
A couple of the quests, later on, have no real guidance or hemp where to finish the quest.
The side quests and interactions feel empty and serve no real purpose.