Chronos: Before the Ashes is a reworking of Gunfire Games’ 2016 Oculus Rift release, then titled simply Chronos. It is now known as something of a prequel to Remnant: From the Ashes. It dips its toes into the world upon which Remnant would expand. While it never quite manages to move beyond its VR roots, it is interesting to see how one game evolved into the other.

The nature of Chronos: Before the Ashes essentially requires addressing combat first, since alongside puzzle-solving that’s somewhat reminiscent of old school Resident Evil, or more recently Song of Horror; it makes up a sizeable portion of the game. As such combat is fine if a little slow and heavy in the early stages before you can tweak your build through leveling.

Still, you’ll almost certainly want to make liberal use of the lock-on mechanism. The playable character sometimes seems to get confused about what direction the enemies are if you don’t help them out. Otherwise, it’s pretty familiar Soulslike fare, including an attack, heavy attack, block, parry, dodge, and so on.

Combat is livened up some (admittedly) through the Dragon Stone mechanic, which essentially imbues your weapon with various kinds of magic depending on your approach to and performance in battle. That said, the time spent fully charging your current Dragon Stone doesn’t feel entirely balanced with its results. If the difference between using the Stone and not using it remains on the narrow side, it’s hard to incentivize, really.

It’s clear how this game evolved and got polished into Remnant: From the Ashes. It’s also clear that (as mentioned) Chronos hasn’t entirely been reworked out of its VR origins. There are movement, combat, and camera angles that might make more sense when experienced closer up. For instance, there were a number of times in combat where the field of view abruptly changed to something more VR-reminiscent. Without the up-close immersion that makes VR work though, I could barely see my enemies, let alone my own weapon swings.

This isn’t the only visual snafu, either. One that’s almost more jarring is some spots in exploration where the lighting will change dramatically between one room and the next. During these sections, there is no natural shift of light and shadow.

Sporadic as it may be, the voice acting from the occasional NPC feels overall convincing and well-executed. The playable character, on the other hand, doesn’t speak so much as grunts when fighting or injured. I guess this is meant to be for self-insertion, which is often the case with nonverbal protagonists in video games. However, that’s a hard sell when you have only two stock bodies, both of them being white and binarily gendered.

I might call it less of an RPG and more just an action-adventure game, or maybe a fantasy puzzler. If RPGs stem from TTRPGs, then there needs to be an element of diversity and character choice and branching pathways to really qualify, in my opinion.

That said, the aging-upon-“death” mechanic is kind of cool. Particularly, I like the fact that you can pick new traits as you age. This might be the nearest you get to that RPG element though. While it affects combat, you can also imagine what happened in your character’s year of recovery on Earth to result in that trait.

Along the way, exploration is not just encouraged but is necessary. You can miss important items for puzzle-solving if you don’t search extensively and pay attention. This applies to your inventory, too; it’s important to periodically look through to see if anything can be interacted with, or combined. Otherwise, you might get stuck feeling as though you’ve missed something glaringly obvious.

Accompanying you through those explorations, the soundtrack could be described as subtle or maybe even sparse. We would (I think) benefit from there being more going on musically to fill the blank spaces in between skirmishes. That said, the ambient sounds (footsteps, birds, etcetera) are well-balanced and placed. The soundtrack also picks up in pace and interest during boss fights, thankfully.

The environmental design definitely gets more interesting once you get past the initial bleaker stages. However, this might take anywhere between 45 minutes and an hour, or longer still. Meanwhile, the boss fights are interesting enough, with cool-looking designs and varied combat styles. This might not make up for the fact that rank and file enemies start to feel repetitive fairly quickly in each “normal” segment of the game though.

Similarly, the story is quite simple, overall. While this may prove to be a challenge to invest in for players not familiar with the Ashes universe, it’s also fairly forgiving of the fact that the game is light on character interaction. “Destroy BBEG, save world, fulfill destiny” is far from the most original storyline ever crafted, to be sure. On the other hand, Chronos‘ general approach to story and lore involving sparsely scattered conversations and scrolls of parchment might feel ill-matched if it were contending with more depth.

Still, boss fights being a bright spot in a very linear project ultimately feels like more of a weakness than a strength. Rather than enjoying the exploration and wanting to sink my teeth into all my options as usual (I’m famously a completionist nightmare) I often found myself impatiently chasing after the next boss fight, sometimes to my own detriment. As far as the story’s ending is concerned, it does plant the proverbial seed for the post-apocalyptic waste we see in Remnant: From the Ashes. Yet as it is standing on its own it felt a little underwhelming.

It’s hard to say whether Chronos: Before the Ashes works better as a standalone project or a tied-in prequel. Remnant fans are more likely to understand its lore and overall world-build but may feel underwhelmed by Chronos‘ clunkier mechanics and less-than-stellar level design. New players may benefit from not playing the “which one was better” game, but may have difficulty connecting with or investing in the narrative, such as it is.

The desire to make Chronos available on platforms other than the Oculus Rift is an understandable one. Ultimately I’m not sure the game has managed to grow beyond its origin, and it isn’t entirely clear who the 2020 audience is meant to be.

A PC review copy of Chronos: Before the Ashes was provided by Gunfire Games for this review.

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Chronos: Before the Ashes

29.99

6

Score

6.0/10

Pros

• Interesting boss design
• Aging on death mechanic is interesting

Cons

• Some visual bugs
• Combat can feel a little unwieldy and repetitive
• Ending feels a little underwhelming
• Character customization is somewhere between bland and nonexistent