Devotion Review — GameSpot
Home sweet home.
By
Richard Wakeling
on
Editor’s note: Devotion was unavailable to purchase for over two years after China revoked its publisher’s Chinese business license over an in-game art asset mocking President Xi Jinping. The discovery and mounting controversy surrounding it led its developer, Taiwanese studio Red Candle Games, to remove the game from Steam just one week after launch. CD Projekt was prepared to list Devotion on its own digital storefront GOG late last year, but retracted the decision after receiving complaints. Now, for the first time since 2019, Devotion is available to purchase—this time through Red Candle Games’ official online store. Our original Devotion review, first published in February 2019, continues below.
The most effective horror can seep its way into the mundanity of our everyday lives, ruminating beneath the surface before wrapping its malevolent tendrils around our sense of comfort and familiarity. Years after it was removed from sale, the bite-sized slice of P.T. we were privy to still manages to evoke those trembling feelings of unease more potently than almost any other horror game since—making each trip around that unremarkable L-shaped corridor an intimidating test of nerves. Devotion, a new psychological horror game from Taiwanese developer Red Candle Games, evokes P.T.’s terrifying spirit to paint an inventive, thought-provoking, and insidious portrait of family life within the claustrophobic confines of a small Taiwanese apartment.
Set throughout the 1980s, Devotion focuses on a strained family of three: struggling screenwriter Du Feng Yu, retired singer and movie star Li Fang, and their sickly young daughter Mei Shin, who aspires to be like her mother. The game predominantly takes place within the five rooms of their modest apartment, with a narrative that takes you on a distressing tour through the years and various configurations of this intimate space. The attention to detail in each facet of the apartment is striking, as every nook and cranny is thoughtfully assembled to replicate an authentic, lived-in home. There are old newspapers being used as makeshift tablecloths, pencils and discarded scripts messily strewn across desks, a corridor that’s extravagantly decorated with the haphazard art of Meh Shin and her litany of crayons, and a calendar hung above the CRT TV that notates significant dates in the family’s lives. Each detail, no matter how meaningful or insignificant, establishes and effectively reinforces Devotion’s disconcerting sense of familiarity.
This nuanced sense of place ensures that whenever your eyes are averted elsewhere and the apartment begins to shift and transcend its limitations—sometimes dramatically, other times subtly—it’s all the more unnerving when you turn around and come face-to-face with a surreal distortion.
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Gallery
All of these details, from the apartment’s transforming arrangement of rooms, its varying lighting, the tempestuous weather rattling away at the windows outside, and the way the building mutates around you, are all in service of Red Candle’s profound storytelling. The central tale is intimately focused on the family of three, but Devotion manages to weave a tangled web that deftly examines the impact that mental illness, societal pressure and expectations, and religious fanaticism can have on a beleaguered family. For as much as Devotion is about its characters and the fantastic way their development coalesces with that of the ever-changing apartment—with the increasingly dishevelled rooms acting as a poignant metaphor for the family—it’s also about a specific time and place; delving into the role of women in 1980’s Taiwan, feminine beauty standards, the infancy of mental health research and the stigmas attached to it, and the sometimes dangerous faith desperate people will place in religion.
Explorations of Taoism and Buddhism might not completely resonate with a Western audience, but the story is told in such a way that it’s relatively easy to read through the lines and understand the awful, heartbreaking extremes people are willing to go to for those they love.
Taiwanese developer Red Candle Games, evokes P.T.’s terrifying spirit to paint an inventive, thought-provoking, and insidious portrait of family life
Impassioned voice acting brings Devotion’s limited number of cutscenes to life, but most of the story is told through the myriad items you gather, read, and manipulate as you traverse through different variations of the family home during 1980, 1985, and 1986. Puzzle solving is relatively straightforward, with any items you find inevitably being used to solve a particular conundrum. All of your interactions are geared towards unravelling the mystery of exactly what happened within the unassuming walls of this family home.
A note you found earlier might inform a scene later on, while coming to understand the family’s relationship with one another will gradually evolve the context and meaning of certain trinkets aside from the revelations discovered in its most gut-punching moments. Devotion might be mechanically simple—knowing to put a camera on a tripod isn’t going to wrack your brain, for example—but its strengths come from simply immersing you in a place with an engaging story you’ll want to see through to its conclusion. There are a couple of jump scares, but they feel earned within the oppressive atmosphere achieved through ominous music, sounds, and unsettling imagery, with striking motifs tracing everything back to the family’s shattered lives.
Unlike a lot of contemporary horror games, Devotion also resists the temptation to dabble in frustrating trial-and-error stealth sections or monotonous conflicts with monsters in an attempt to heighten any perceived sense of excitement. There is one regrettable chase scene late in the game, which is undeniably Devotion’s lowest point, but it’s also brief and easy enough that it doesn’t overstay its welcome.
At three hours in length it’s feasible to reach the end credits in one sitting, and that might be the ideal way to experience it. The pacing is almost immaculate aside from a plodding stroll towards the game’s final act, but even this is easy to push to the back of your mind once you’ve reached its stunning conclusion.
Devotion doesn’t quite match the anxiety-inducing frights that permeate each cautious step forward in games like P.T. and Amnesia: The Dark Descent, but its domestic terror burrows deep inside your psyche long after the final credits have rolled. The sorrowful story it tells meshes malice with tenderness, metaphor with stark truths, and achieves it all with the nuanced kind of environmental storytelling other games can only strive for. There are moments when it jumps out of the genre completely, surprising you with a sudden tonal shift, and others where the oftentimes clichéd presence of a children’s doll is used to signal a character’s poignant detachment.
Everything Devotion does is in service of this story and its character development; you learn about these people’s lives, empathize with their plight, and come to understand their actions, even if you don’t agree with them. Home is where the heart is, and Devotion is a shining example of what the horror genre is capable of.
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Review: Dark Devotion – PS4
BY JUSTIN MCKAY
Writer and Storywriter
PUBLISHED 3 YEARS AGO
Good looks, intelligent, great sense of humour… these are all things I’d like to add to my portfolio, but alas, cannot. I do, however, take pride in my patience levels, and man do you need that for Dark Devotion by Hibernian Workshop, out now on the PS4.
Let’s address that big fat elephant in the room now: there will be many comparisons to Dark Souls, Salt and Sanctuary and Dead Cells, among others – and for a good reason.
I’m not going to deem Dark Devotion as a rogue-like, Metroidvania or other sub-genre. For me, it’s subjective. Instead, I’ll say that it is a 2D side-scrolling, action-adventure that puts emphasis on timing and above anything else, your patience levels.
Dark Devotion is dark. Literally. There aren’t any hands to guide the way, but a fair amount of NPCs that give you a few hints. The ‘tutorial’ in that sense is very vague and insinuates what is to come later in the game. My immediate impression was “How do I jump?”. I don’t know about you, but I seldom jump in real life though expect it in a game like this. It takes some getting used to as you will need to use the left analogue stick to scout what is beneath you and hope for the best by rolling off the ledge into… well, that’s for you to find out.
It’s a bit dodgy. As you can’t jump over anything, the options are to either parry or dodge past them. Dark Souls reference #32, if you’re accustomed to evading a lot, then this will roll into your hands nicely.
My methodology is always the same: build a tank and smash through stuff with big pointy things. It doesn’t work here. Especially in the beginning, as you can expect to die over and over again, so be advised that you need to play it safe until you become accustomed to the attack patterns.
In ‘other games’, when you die, it’s not the end, but you could go back and pick up dropped loot or return to a spawn point with the same gear. Not in Dark Devotion. When you die, you lose your equipment. That was my first issue. I would explore the murky dungeons, find a two-handed sword or some claws, die and then return to the base camp only to have to get a blacksmith to forge the weapons again. It doesn’t cost any resources, but it was a nuisance. Especially as I died a hell of a lot at first.
As with these types of games, if you just persevere, you start to improve on your skills and what was initially impossible, becomes a walk in the park. You’ll then encounter other enemies that are ridiculously hard.
As mentioned, you don’t keep your gear, but you can earn permanent skill increases. These are unlocked by killing some baddies and using the purple orbs they drop to buy power-ups – anything from speed to stamina regeneration. That’s right – Dark Devotion relies on stamina so rolling, blocking and attacking is at your detriment as run out and you can’t do anything until it regenerates.
The controls are simple – maybe not so much as Door Kickers: Action Squad, though having two roll actions as L1 and R1 was confusing as I’d hit them instead of attack/defend (L2 and R2), plus you can’t change the configuration. Early on, some notifications say that the enemies you will encounter are simple beings, often with the same patterns of attack. In this situation, you need to learn their behaviours and respond accordingly. Don’t expect any button-bashing here – notably because of the effect it has on your stamina. Attacks are also quite limited. There aren’t really a range of moves and are the same for most of the melee weapons (there are ranged weapons too), but I was okay with this.
Focus is on timing rather than arty-farty moves or having the strongest build, so you do require skill or just be named something like Reginald McFluke, and wing your way through it. Good luck with that.
The narrative structure isn’t always the best in these type of games – titles by From Software have a habit of being ambiguous, but Dark Devotion is relatively clear, yet with a mysterious quality. You play a templar who is in an apparent limbo – hence repeatedly dying and respawning. Your chums have located an underground temple that has all sorts of nasties living there, and your job is to clear out the evil with force – often disguised as a ‘quest’. During this torment, the templars rely on their faith to get through the ordeal. In fact, it’s a measurable factor in the game. Faith is slowly generated, and you drop to your knee to use this to unlock doorways, restore health or as a blessing to cure one of the many diseases you’ll encounter. There are buffs too.
Stamina is one way to measure your attributes, another is health and armour.
Progressing through the game unlocks better armour and more health points depending on your build, but don’t expect to max these out and be overpowered. The game levels organically so while there are moments of being overwhelmed, there are never really scenarios where you’re one-hit killing everything in sight – though get your timing right and you will have a massive advantage. I have no rhythm, so it was better I did the classic hit and run because that’s…how…I…roll. Genius.
So the story isn’t the strongest point, but it has a much better structure than many of its contemporaries, and there’s no need to learn up on all these different realms and species. Just get stuck in. Visually it’s a treat. Very much a 16-bit effect, the animation is simple yet effective, but the scenery and character models are brilliant – the bosses shine the most, and there are 18 of these bad boys (there’s a wall in your hideout that lights purple as you beat each one). In terms of sound, it’s subtle and atmospheric – never shying away from the action, nor bombarding you with irrelevant techno-beats.
Apparently, there are over 250 weapons, skills and spells in the game, but there isn’t the variety you would expect from a game such as Borderlands 3. Another niggle for me is that when you get a weapon drop, it’s all in one go and you can’t really carry much. You can carry two sets of weapons – ideally a melee and ranged or spell type, or you can opt for a heavy two-hander, and perhaps dual wield with the others. You can’t stack them up to you later, or drag back to your hideout. The majority of the time I picked up an item, dropped or used it elsewhere then went back to pick up what was left. As for these weapons though, they have a similar appearance and move-set to one another. The differences being things like hit points. There is enough scope to have your own playstyle, however. If you want to have a swift rogue-type character, you can have the weapons (or spells to reflect that), subsequently, if you’re going to be a meathead, there are certainly the tools to crush it.
Game length is always subjective based on skill and whether you’re attempting to 100% everything. Personally, I was trying to level up asap so that I could cheese it a bit, but when it finally sunk in that it wasn’t an option, I decided to vary my style. At the time of writing this, I haven’t finished it, despite playing intensely, though I’m close to it? I can say that my preference for attack has changed – much preferring a swift character with light attacks than a bruiser. Do note though that there aren’t any save points. There are checkpoints as such, but you need to complete a run before you can exit the game, or it will register that you failed and you will lose your swag.
When I started the review, I made reference to Dark Souls and the like. The game that this is most like from my experience is Death’s Gambit. Visually it is very similar (though Dark Devotion has the edge) and there are a lot of the same mechanics throughout. I enjoyed that game as well, but I was able to retain my equipment and max out stats.
With Dark Devotion, the key was to improve on permanent abilities but choose the right weapons for the job. Should I use a two-handed weapon or sword and shield? Maybe a bow or perhaps a spell build would be the best way. There was a good deal of options in Dark Devotion, and I anticipate playing this for some time.
Dark Devotion PS4 Review
- Overall — Very Good — 7/10
7/10
Summary
Dark Devotion is heavy going at first. Expect to die a lot at the beginning, middle and end. If you are a fan of Dark Souls or Salt and Sanctuary, then I would recommend this. The levelling system is different, but you don’t need to grind – just be a little sensible in your approach. Hence why it’s a long haul for me…
Review Disclaimer: This review was carried out using a copy of the game provided by the publisher. For more information, please read our Review Policy.
Reviewed using base PS4.
0033 Publisher:
A system software update may be required to play this game on PS5. While this game is supported on PS5, some features available on PS4 may not be available. For more information, see PlayStation.com/bc.
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Titanfall 2 Standard Edition for PS4 — price history, screenshots, discounts • Russia
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Respawn Entertainment introduces Titanfall™ 2.
