Elemental beings can become your allies and help you combat larger beings as part of a challenge. That’s the premise of Primal Fray, a roguelike where you travel across stages fighting various enemies. Keep your team alive as you fight several enemies, gather resources, and enhance your team. Defeat a powerful boss at the end and keep strengthening yourself to fight more powerful enemies.
Primal Fray leans heavily into its roguelike aspects to introduce as much unpredictability as possible. You choose the element you want to battle but everything else is shaped by your choices. There’s not much in this game other than battling and you must love the gameplay to avoid losing interest. If you are a fan of roguelike strategy, this can be a fun title but it’s just strategy and resources.
Primal Fray is available on PC for USD 11.99 or Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4/5, and Nintendo Switch for USD 15.99.
Where you go makes a big impact on your success.
Story – Pursuing Greater Challenges
The story of Primal Fray consists of taking on greater challenges and fighting bosses to prove yourself. You repeat this several times until you fight tougher bosses or switch characters. Different characters have different motivations for their journey but all of their goals involve proving themselves. By connecting with different elementals, they gain allies and fight until their goals are achieved.
It’s easy to forget that there is a story since you won’t succeed in your runs very often. Similar to DAIMON BLADES, the most memorable parts of the game are the combat. There are a variety of characters you can unlock and fight with. Each of them has their own backstory that you may consider exploring. Unfortunately this isn’t given much focus throughout the game even outside of battles. You only spend money on upgrades before going back into battles.
You aren’t fighting this boss for any reason other than proving yourself.
Gameplay – Planning Every Move
Every run of Primal Fray starts with a team matching the element realm you’ve chosen. The beings you get are random, chosen from a pool from said elemental realm. You must make your way to the boss by fighting enemies, recruiting new beings, or gathering resources. Resources are often used to reroll spaces or upgrade your stats after every run. Battles consist of turn-based combat on a grid where you defeat enemies as quickly as possible.
There’s a deep layer of strategy similar to Door Kickers 2: Task Force North. You must select your team from the beings you recruit while considering the enemies on the field. Terrain is an important factor since you can push enemies off ledges or hide behind cover. Every being has a variety of moves that tap into their specialties and can turn the tide. Your party is not fully healed between battles and you can lose your entire party if you are unlucky.
The battlefield can be unpredictable, claiming the lives of your team.
Paying attention to your needs and capabilities is important since you don’t know what the next battle holds. Healing or recruiting a new being could be more important than resources for the future. However the game often lacks a good explanation about a being’s actual capabilities, only revealing them once they are recruited. You always learn from experience with a roguelike but more explanations and insight would help guide your choices.
Audio & Visual – Grid-based Combat
The beings you recruit and the characters you control have detailed designs. It helps that unit designs are prominent, letting you identify different races easily. Your battlefield is a grid of hexagonal tiles and you can clearly identify what terrain is on a tile. It’s slightly harder to tell what tiles are inherently dangerous but that is part of the design. Bosses are large and their design takes up lots of space on the grid.
The sound effects are loud enough that you know what skill is being used. Every being has their own movement sounds and there’s sufficient notice when they are being attacked. There is some background music that you hear during battles but it’s most prominent when you are choosing another route.
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- You choose the order of elemental realms that you explore.
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- Be careful as capabilities aren’t as clear as described.
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- Bosses often require multiple tries due to difficulty.
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- Accumulate upgrades slowly to strengthen your teams.
Primal Fray was reviewed on Steam with a code provided by Streamers Connected.
