Fallen Tear: Ascension Review- Build Bonds And Battle

Hira is a young boy living with his adoptive mother and brother. It is the day he gets to become a hunter, like his brother. However, just after completing his first hunt, demons appear and his hometown is attacked. His family goes missing, and he is shunned from the village with no idea what happened. He goes to look for them, only to find himself wrapped up in a plot to save the land of Raoah by defeating the gods and purging the land of corruption. Along the way he’ll meet, befriend, and fight alongside a colorful cast of characters. In fact, befriending strange characters is the primary way he’ll get stronger.

Starting out, Hira has the ability to jump, attack, dive kick, and back dash. He can also swim, but has limited air and cannot attack underwater. He builds mana by fighting enemies and casts spells to heal himself. As this is a metroidvania, he’s going to need additional movement abilities – in Fallen Tear: Ascension they’re called Ascensions – to get around. The first of these, wall jumping, is found in the wild, but most of them are learned at Hira’s home base after finding enough allies to collect trust points. The finding of these allies and the selection of Ascensions defines much of Fallen Tear’s early game, as deciding whether to learn to double jump or air dash first decides the areas – and thus allies – Hira can travel to first, as does the selection of the next three Ascensions, each of which breaks different barriers and unlock new areas for Hira to explore. There are also hunter skills, some which can be unlocked via one of Hira’s allies after killing a certain number of optional bosses, and some of which are learned as part of the story. Hira’s combat feels fluid, both grounded and aerial, and there’s good reason to keep switching between the two, using bond attacks, and especially your bond special when it’s available.

Hira’s allies are wild and eclectic, each with a unique attack that requires MP and must cool down after use (but are very powerful in fights), a helpful passive while equipped, and a permanent bonus even while not equipped. Many also serve functions at camp. Bjorn, Hira’s first ally, has a fire attack, grants extra HP while equipped, and also grants HP just for being recruited. He can also take one of the game’s collectibles, healing spices found around the map, and increase Hira’s max HP when talked to from the central hub. Another of Hira’s allies improves his swimming by giving him unlimited breath and an underwater dash attack, which is quite helpful as one of the game’s main dungeons is entirely underwater and there are several secrets hidden below them as well.

Many of the allies have interactions with NPCs, with some being needed to recruit other allies, and some having quests to simplify or even largely bypass the major dungeons for the game’s four elemental bosses. Each ally can be upgraded three times, with each level upgrading the damage of the ally’s attack, as well as the bonus from their passive and permanent stat boosts. They all also have a final locked upgrade level that may be related to the eventual DLC the developers want to release. Upgrading an ally’s bond requires fulfilling an ally-specific condition, which can be anything from filling in the map to defeating specific monsters, or even finding specific items out in the world. There’s also an item found in the wild that can boost an ally’s bond level, which can be useful for allies with aggravating requests, like the one who just wants increasingly large amounts of the upgrade currency. As far as I can tell, none of the game’s allies are permanently missable, but one can be lost, requiring a sidequest to either keep or replace them depending on when you finish it.

The most common of the three upgrade currencies are Korr shards. These drop from enemies, are partially lost on death, and are used to operate the game’s teleporter function and upgrade the bond with allies. There’s also Fated points, which are gained by recruiting a new ally, completing sections of an area’s exploration checklist, or killing a specific amount of certain enemies in an area. These are used to buy ‘Masteries’, which modify Cai’s offense, defense, healing or bond attacks in some way, and provide a permanent stat boost when unlocked. The last currency is Trust points, which are used to buy new Ascension skills. You get one each time you recruit an ally.

Both the overarching story and the character stories are done pretty well. Almost every character has voiced lines. For example, after each of the major bosses, there’s a lore dump told by the just defeated boss, and each boss can be tackled in any order, so any boss can give any of the lore dumps, depending on which one is defeated when. The allies also have incidental dialogue between each other at base camp, depending on who is in your active party when you talk to them.

Fallen Tear hasn’t been all smooth sailing though. While the game auto saves regularly, it doesn’t do so until you change screens or stop at a rest spot on the map. This can mean having to redo a bunch of upgrades at base camp if your game crashes or the power goes out before you can save. The game puts you into a run after using dash, but you lose the running speed after jumping and there’s tons of little ledges Hira can’t quite just run across throughout the map. There is also one section of the game, a mandatory very tight platforming section, that unfortunately suffered slowdown every time I had to enter it, which made completing the section a pain. One Ally who has an extremely useful power in that she literally helps you find secret areas, but her bond action of blooming flowers in these areas can’t be done before you find her, resulting in a lot of unneeded backtracking to improve her bond and thus ability. Fallen Tear slogs a bit in the middle while you are trying to find enough allies to gain enough trust points to unlock the second tier of Ascension abilities, but it actually really opens up and becomes incredibly fun once they are unlocked and the whole map can be explored.

That said I have enjoyed Fallen Tear: Ascension. I’ve completed it twice now, playing it wildly differently each time. On my second playthrough I managed to avoid a boss fight simply by not attacking a random enemy and ignored an entire dungeon by doing a side quest instead. I’ve found three endings thus far, none of which exclude the other, and am curious to see if there might be others. If you want a longer metroidvania experience with a lot of strange characters and a very customizable play style, this will be right up your alley.

Tim reviewed Fallen Tear: Ascension on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and our score will not be changed.