Written by Patrick Orquia
Title: The Ambassador: Fractured Timelines
Developer: TinyDino Games
Publisher: The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild
Genre: Action, Adventure, RPG, Twin-stick shooter
Number of Players: 1
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: August 13, 2020
Price: $14.99
The Ambassador: Fracture Timelines is an action adventure game with twin-stick shooter gameplay in a fantasy setting. The game has a 16-bit pixel art style, which is typically used in indie games. You play as Gregor, the newly-appointed Ambassador of Time of Tamaris. One day, Tamaris gets destroyed and Gregor is one of the few to survive. He is now tasked to travel different worlds to find out why this happened and who is responsible for it.
You are equipped with two weapons: one regular melee weapon, which you can throw at enemies and they magically return back to you (most of them); the other is a magical weapon that shoots out magical energy and it consumes mana. Mana generates overtime. You also equip a good variety of armors that offer different advantages and disadvantages, like having a higher HP but you move slower in it, etc. You can mix and match to your liking, depending on your play style.
The worlds are divided into levels, and the goal in most levels is to clear the area of all enemies before being able to proceed to the next one through a portal. This game has a good variety of enemies to kill. As you progress into the game, these enemies become harder and harder to kill, and they also hit harder and in great numbers, with some of them even bigger than the rest on screen. You will have to continuously move around or risk getting killed yourself. The last level of each world has a boss in addition to the hordes of enemies.
All of this stuff makes this game kind of generic, but it has one cool feature in its gameplay that somehow makes it stand out from the rest: the ability to slow down time. Well, such mechanic is not unique to the game, and a few games have done it before more effectively, but this game does make good use of it for what it is worth. This ability is time-limited, but the gauge for it also gets replenished over time. It is also only effective within a certain radius from your character, so if you trigger it, objects outside of the radius will not be affected, so you have to position yourself at the right place for it to work well. Short bursts of this ability are enough to escape enemy attacks and in hitting switches that require to be hit in quick succession. Depending on your play style, skill, and armor, you may not have to use this time slow down mechanic often, but if you need it, it's there to save you.
By the way, there are multiple challenges that you can aim to beat for each level, and thus, levels can be replayed. You may get stuck on a level but come back to it once you have the ideal weapon and armor to beat it, especially during boss fights. The worlds are available to you to play all at the same time, and thus you can choose which one to play first and play different levels from different worlds. It is up to you and play however you want to maximize your enjoyment.
Overall, The Ambassador: Fragmented Timelines is a good game with good, solid gameplay, varied customization options, and a cool time slow down mechanic that works well. The pixel art aesthetics is nice, but other games look better. The soundtrack is also ok, but I don't think there are any standout tracks to be really excited about. But, at $15, I think it is a decent buy for the good amount of content it offers.
REPLAY VALUE: High
PROS
- Good 16-bit pixel art style
- Good level design
- Solid gameplay mechanics, with a good level of challenge throughout
- Multiple difficulty modes
- Good variety of weapons and armor to customize your character with
- Collectibles and challenges provides high replayability
- Levels can be replayed
- Plays well in handheld mode
CONS
- Bland story
- Font used in the game is a bit hard to read, especially in handheld mode
- Floaty controls at times
- Repetitive gameplay
- NPCs have the same gibberish voice, whether male or female
- Soundtrack is not too remarkable
RATING: 3.5/5 time-slowing goodness
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