Test: Lysfanga: The Time Shift Warrior, attack of the temporal clones

Obviously, this is not limited to distributing the enemies between each loop because very quickly, you will have to destroy a root to open a path for your acolytes, cooperate to eliminate twin monsters often very far from each other and who regenerate mutually, or to attack a monster protected by a shield from behind, etc. All this is seriously complicated with binary doors that close when you cross them, teleporters or even your brother Kehör who shoots you at regular intervals… Fortunately, Imë's arsenal is also evolving. For each arena, it is possible to equip three skills of different types, unlocked as the adventure progresses. First there are the spells, which can be used to attract enemies towards you as well as to instantly liquidate those already killed by a previous afterglow, to rush towards an enemy regardless of the obstacles or even to place beacons of teleportation… But these magics are subject to a cooldown and, if this can be extended from one afterglow to the next, due to the simultaneity of the actions, we can trigger the same in two places at the same time! The second type is runes, passive abilities which will generally save time, either by making you faster, more powerful or even by extending the time of each loop. Finally, there are the four “powers of the goddess”, extremely devastating but which must be charged by chaining together frags or instantly by walking on the appropriate areas. In addition, two others will be added to the basic weapon, chakrams which attack from a distance and a trident with a very powerful charged attack, and this time it is possible to switch from one to the other. other at any time. All these elements must be taken into account because Imë is not invulnerable, and you can therefore move on to the next loop even before the time runs out if you are killed – or voluntarily by pressing the trigger.

The Stranger's Fury

Provided you don't want to improve your times too much, it will take ten to twelve hours to complete the adventure made up of three acts, themselves made up of several increasingly dense and labyrinthine zones. Each one also contains objects to collect even if we often collect them more out of a spirit of completion than out of real interest. The most common are magic seeds, blue spheres hidden in the decor and which allow you to purchase purely cosmetic armor customizations, following diagrams found in chests. These may otherwise contain new skills, as well as fragments of afterglow which, grouped in fours like the quarters of hearts from a famous series, will make it possible to obtain additional afterglow (knowing that we will also gain some at other key moments of the adventure). But even this reward is not always essential to the extent that most arenas can be completed with few passes, or even have to be completed in order to achieve the reference time. Indeed, a portal placed after each arena will invite us to start it again to beat it. However, in the end, it is this challenge that will undoubtedly motivate fans of 100%, as it is, for example, frustrating to have completed a level using an afterglow just to eliminate an enemy forgotten in the corner of an arena – a radar would have been welcome – before wandering aimlessly until the objective is reached by another clone… So, rather than decorating the Mayura Academy or changing outfits there, we will potentially be more tempted to go see the golem Longis which allows us to redo each arena with additional modifiers and challenges, knowing that we then obtain a more detailed evaluation of its performance for each of them. Enough to significantly extend the lifespan.

That said, we must admit that once the difficulty increases towards the end of the first act, we will sometimes be so happy to narrowly complete a recalcitrant arena that we will prefer to move on, even if we are aware to have played very badly (see insert) and that we have benefited from a generous number of afterglows, even if it means coming back to it later once we have unlocked more convenient powers. We also appreciate that each act restarts in a gentler manner with shorter arenas, after bosses that are more focused on reflexes. Generally speaking, Lysfanga manages to avoid the weariness that a strong concept often implies by varying the rules, as in this arena where our afterglows turn out to be explosive, and there are many other ideas that are certainly fashionable (the mechanics of polarity) but which clearly spice up the gameplay, or shake up our habits by forcing us to change weapons for example. However, there are perhaps a few too many skills and we sometimes have the impression that we have not really had time to test them when we are offered another one which seems much better – the news is also automatically selected – not to mention that we will probably forget the one we had just obtained (and therefore potentially thought for) when revisiting old levels.

Antala narration that takes a back seat

Sand Door Studio made no secret of wanting to focus above all on gameplay. A choice which results in a classic plot, not so poorly written and not free from twists and turns but without much originality, which does not harm the experience. In the same spirit, it is bathed in a fantasy atmosphere with an oriental theme already seen, with cutscenes in the form of frescoes which recall Zelda both visually and in certain storyline motifs. The artistic direction is rather successful; the graphics are seen from far enough away to not show too many imperfections, and the whole thing has enough personality to not seem too generic, thanks to fairly neat Hades-style portraits during the dialogues, and very detailed settings – or even deliberately cluttered during the exploration phases, just to make the collection of objects a little less basic. The arenas are judiciously more stripped down, even if the isometric view sometimes makes the readability of the altitude difficult.

Thus, it is rather during exploration that the framerate turns out to be unstable and this, on a configuration that is certainly modest but nevertheless close to that recommended by the developers. The action is fortunately more fluid during the fights where it is obviously critical, and we do not think we have been handicapped by the technique. Certain optimization issues should in any case be quickly corrected, if they are not when the game is released. We were treated to a few minor bugs and above all to several crashes which seemed to occur while navigating in the skills section of the menu, before or out of combat, but we didn't have any during our last sessions. And fortunately, the game saves regularly even if you return to Mayura Academy each time you load your game.