In the ever-expanding landscape of Souls-like games, a new contender has emerged from South Korea that promised to blend gritty Korean folklore with challenging action RPG mechanics. The Relic: First Guardian, developed by the twelve-person indie team at Project Cloud Games, arrived with ambitious marketing claiming “fresh takes on combat” and a narrative steeped in mythological intrigue. However, after extensive hands-on time with this title, it becomes clear that ambition alone cannot compensate for fundamental design flaws, technical issues, and a world that feels more procedurally generated than lovingly crafted. While the game contains moments of genuine quality, particularly in its parry-focused combat system, the overall experience is marred by problems that make it difficult to recommend to even the most dedicated fans of the genre.
A World Consumed by Darkness and Confusion
The Relic: First Guardian transports players to Arsiltus, a medieval realm once protected from monstrous threats by a powerful artifact known as the Great Relic. When this protective device is destroyed, the world becomes engulfed by a malevolent Void that corrupts humans into fearsome creatures called “Brutals,” who serve as the game’s primary boss encounters. Players awaken as an amnesiac guardian, guided by a mysterious dark maiden who hints at a forgotten relationship, embarking on a quest to collect fragments of the shattered Great Relic. This narrative framework draws obvious inspiration from the fragmented storytelling popularized by FromSoftware’s Dark Souls series, which revolutionized the genre when it launched in 2011 and has since spawned countless imitators attempting to capture its distinctive blend of atmospheric world-building and challenging gameplay.
The game’s open-world structure presents immediate problems that compound throughout the experience. Unlike the carefully interconnected worlds of Dark Souls or the brilliantly designed legacy dungeons of Elden Ring, The Relic: First Guardian offers little guidance about which quests advance the main story and which are merely optional diversions. Fog gates block progression until unknown criteria are met, forcing players to wander aimlessly through repetitive environments, defeating every boss they encounter without knowing whether the effort contributes to meaningful progress. This design philosophy fundamentally misunderstands what makes open-world exploration rewarding—the sense of discovery and purposeful adventure is replaced with tedious uncertainty and frustration.
Combat Mechanics Show Promise Amid Technical Struggles
Where The Relic: First Guardian shows genuine potential is in its parry-focused combat system. Drawing clear inspiration from titles like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Lies of P, the game centers its fighting mechanics around well-timed defensive maneuvers rather than pure aggression. Players must fill invisible stagger bars through repeated parries before they can deal significant damage with special attacks. The parry window is relatively generous, making the system accessible to players who might struggle with the frame-perfect timing required in some competing titles. Multiple weapon styles are available, including two-handed longswords, sword and shield combinations, and magical battle staves, each featuring unlockable skill trees that can be swapped freely at checkpoints for minimal cost.
The game heavily promotes its roster of nearly 80 bosses, and these encounters represent both the highest peaks and lowest valleys of the experience. Standout fights include a cursed knight that evokes memories of the beloved Artorias of the Abyss encounter from Dark Souls, a thunder-wielding warlock set against a haunting graveyard backdrop, and a series of noble knights and priests encountered in the later stages. However, many boss encounters devolve into forgettable duels against generic bandits, and artificial difficulty spikes emerge from cheaply designed one-hit-kill mechanics rather than fair but challenging combat design. One particularly frustrating witch enemy could curse players through unavoidable attacks, leading to instant death regardless of remaining health—a design choice that feels more punitive than rewarding.
Technical Issues and Asset Repetition Undermine the Experience
The technical state of The Relic: First Guardian is perhaps its most damning aspect. Frame rates regularly plummeted to sub-10 frames per second during testing, transforming what should be precise, responsive combat into a frustrating guessing game. Boss arenas cluttered with environmental debris caused camera issues that obscured crucial attack tells, and the final boss encounter was so plagued with bugs that basic controller inputs failed to register properly. Healing items became non-functional, requiring over 150 attempts to defeat what should have been a challenging but fair culmination of the journey. These aren’t minor inconveniences—they fundamentally break the core gameplay loop that Souls-like games depend upon.
Beyond performance issues, the open world itself suffers from obvious signs of rushed or automated development. Assets like trees, barrels, and environmental objects appear randomly scattered without apparent human oversight or quality control. One checkpoint became inaccessible after a major boss battle because a boulder partially blocked it—a basic quality assurance failure that should never occur in a released product. The environments themselves are repetitive to the point of absurdity, with players encountering what feels like the fiftieth identical farm village populated by the same three enemy types. The reward structure offers no meaningful scaling, with pickups granting the same pittance of gold and resources throughout the entire 20-30 hour experience, rendering character progression largely meaningless by the final act.
Narrative Ambitions Lost in Translation
Project Cloud Games positioned the narrative as a major selling point, promising meaningful backstories and emotional depth for each enemy encounter. Unfortunately, the English translation undermines whatever quality the original Korean text might possess. Weapon and skill descriptions read as pseudo-poetic nonsense that neither entertains nor informs players about actual functionality. Quests typically involve following ghostly mirages that deliver awkwardly written text boxes, now made worse by AI-generated voice acting that sounds robotic and emotionless. The decision to use AI voices rather than silence or genuine voice actors creates an uncanny valley effect that strips any potential emotional resonance from the narrative moments.
The quest structures themselves follow predictable patterns: NPCs mention someone by name—often incongruously Western names like “Taylor” or “Gus” in a supposedly Korean folklore-inspired setting—and players follow text breadcrumbs until discovering that individual has transformed into a Brutal boss. Every quest concludes with depressingly bleak outcomes that, combined with the inhuman voice delivery, make the game’s attempts at emotional storytelling feel hollow. FromSoftware’s environmental storytelling works because it trusts players to piece together narratives from subtle environmental details; The Relic: First Guardian misunderstands this approach entirely, burying players in exposition while showing them nothing of consequence.
It’s worth noting that the publisher informed reviewers of an upcoming patch scheduled for release prior to the game’s public launch. However, this patch will render existing save files unusable, making it impossible to verify whether technical issues have been addressed without replaying the entire 20-30 hour campaign. While hope remains that some problems discussed here may be resolved, the fundamental design issues—the repetitive world, meaningless progression systems, and narrative failures—cannot be fixed with technical patches alone. Players considering The Relic: First Guardian would be wise to wait for post-launch community feedback before investing their time and money in what currently stands as a cautionary tale about the challenges of indie development in one of gaming’s most demanding genres.
Expert Opinion: The Souls-like genre has become increasingly crowded since Elden Ring’s massive success in 2022, with many smaller studios attempting to capture that magic without understanding what makes FromSoftware’s formula work. The Relic: First Guardian represents a common pitfall—prioritizing quantity (80 bosses, vast open world) over quality (polished combat, meaningful exploration). Unless Project Cloud Games can deliver substantial post-launch improvements and prove the day-one patch addresses core issues, this title will likely fade into obscurity as players gravitate toward more polished alternatives like Lies of P or the upcoming Elden Ring DLC.
