Dustborn review: "Almost lives up to its promise as an epic, political road trip saga"

2024-08-14

GamesRadar+ VerdictDustborn is a unique visual novel-style adventure that brings combat and even a rhythm game to its sometimes-intense choice-driven dystopian world, where your decisions matter. But it often gets in its own way, mechanically and otherwise.Pros+Engaging combat and rhythm game elements+Deep, easy to understand choice-making system+Colorful cast of characters and solid worldbuildingCons-Writing varies wildly in terms of quality-Ending and overall message undermines itself

GamesRadar+ Verdict

Dustborn is a unique visual novel-style adventure that brings combat and even a rhythm game to its sometimes-intense choice-driven dystopian world, where your decisions matter. But it often gets in its own way, mechanically and otherwise.

Pros+Engaging combat and rhythm game elements+Deep, easy to understand choice-making system+Colorful cast of characters and solid worldbuilding

Engaging combat and rhythm game elements

Deep, easy to understand choice-making system

Colorful cast of characters and solid worldbuilding

Cons-Writing varies wildly in terms of quality-Ending and overall message undermines itself

Writing varies wildly in terms of quality

Ending and overall message undermines itself

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Dustborn is a game with a message — many messages even — and it’s all impossible to miss. Take, for example, its screed about the power of choice. The events in your life aren’t the result of just one momentous choice, but the culmination of many smaller ones. I know this because the main character Pax, when looking over the progression of her life throughout the 15-hour game, says “It was never a single choice. It was every choice, adding up, every step of the way.” As if I couldn’t figure it out.

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(Image credit: Red Thread Games)

Dustborn screenshot showing campfire hangout

Fast Facts

The general plot unravels in predetermined ways, but your choices can affect if your actions come back to bite you later. The addition of your Vox also allows you to sometimes find the easy way through a situation, but then a character might feel taken advantage of. Whether you rely on what you can do as a person or what your ability does is a constant bit of tension, and sometimes, the game will throw a timer at you to make it more stressful. Despite this being a dystopian setting with tons of dangerous threats, this is a story about people, so your most impactful choices involve how you interact with others and help them develop.

Each of the main members of your party have three possible paths they can take, and certain choices can lead them down one. For example, your sister Ziggy can remain defeatist, or she can become an idealist if you approach your shared trauma in a specific way. There is no “correct” path either, so even when I thought romancing your party member Noam was the way to go, it didn’t turn out like I planned. You can keep track in a separate menu, and you’ll see a little icon in the top left corner when a decision can impact a path. There is a lot going on here, with plenty of surprises as the characters and mysteries of the world unravel, but the biggest twist in Dustborn is that your carefully selected choices might not lead to the best outcomes.

But there are other systems at play. First, there’s combat, complete with a small upgrade tree for your main weapon — a magnetic bat you can use like a boomerang. There’s also a whole rhythm game in here, where you have to hit the buttons on your controller or keyboard at the right time to play one of your songs well at a performance. Finally, you can capture hidden energies called Echoes that are scattered throughout each major map. You can then use them to learn different Voxes for conversations and, yes, even battles.

(Image credit: Red Thread Games)

Dustborn screenshot featuring conversation tree

Dustborn loses power when it feels the need to look straight at the camera and make sure you understand it

Neither of these systems are complex or engaging in a way beyond just being there to break up the monotony of quicktime events and choice-making, but they work. Combat isn’t anything groundbreaking, but it’s smooth, easy to master, and has just enough depth that you’ll have to do more strategizing as you go. You can whack your foes, throw the bat to make hits from a distance or knock them from the sky, or make a larger impact with two special attacks that build up as you land more hits. One is a taunt that requires you to press a random series of inputs to complete successfully, and the other is your Vox, which you can use for varying effects, like convincing enemies they’re on fire or forcing them to attack each other. Most of the strategy in battle comes from this area in particular, since you have to decide which Vox ability will work best in a situation. Many don’t work on robots, for example, but some you learn later can have some effect.

All these systems work together enough to make Dustborn feel more dynamic than other visual novels. The combat and rhythm sections are more fast-paced than the conversations, but don’t feel out of place; everything works together to make you feel like you have more control over the narrative. Granted, there aren’t outcomes where you’ll fail a fight, and destroying a performance doesn’t mean you somehow become a bigger threat to authoritarianism, but it’s able to inject life into what could easily be a passive experience.

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(Image credit: Red Thread Games)

Dustborn screenshot showing Pax vs. Justice

Dustborn takes place in a world gone to hell, and the developers put a lot in to ensure you know it, with details like: internment camps for children, underground library networks slowly dissipating, the growing presence of robots, and the presence of Echoes, which use disinformation to fill people with paranoia and anger. The developers also provide reasons for why this all exists, even if the historical event that signaled this alternate history is that Jackie Kennedy got assassinated instead of JFK (don’t worry about it). You might not believe that all of it could stem from one changed assassination, or that any of the technologies or events could happen, but it’s something, and the game follows its own internal logic well.

This isn’t just about dialogue either. The Echoes spread what Pax calls disinformation, and while what you hear from them in game is mostly garbled, you can make out snippets about how the media is lying to you or that the deviants (one of the words for people with Vox) are spreading their illness through the air. You’re running from two groups: The Puritans, who are against your kind, and Justice, the military corps that rule the Republic. Dustborn is many things, but it’s not subtle.

Yet, there’s something genuine about it, regardless of how embarrassing it feels to hear a character scream “Girl power!” during battle. How you go about making decisions, interacting with others, and what kind of message you put out into the world is more important than making some spectacular display of violence or hope, and thatislovely. It’s also unabashedly queer – complete with a coming out story involving an agender robot – is gorgeous to look at, features a raccoon with a sweater named Mr. President, and is overall engaging to play. Dustborn’s execution could be cleaner, and it could avoid undermining itself just to get its point across, but it’s nice to play a game with something to say, even if it struggles to do it.

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