Dolmen Archives – Xbox One Mag

Massive Work Studio, a young Brazilian studio made up of people who have worked, among other things, on games such as Injustice 2, Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft, is behind the game Dolmen, the name of which can evoke many things for us except this which it is actually.

Let’s start with what Dolmen is not:
Dolmen is not a simulation of stacking rocks (Megalithic structures to be precise)
Dolmen has nothing to do with the Celts
Dolmen is not a video game adaptation of an old TF1 summer series with Ingrid Chauvin

Dolmen is a tough Souls-style action-RPG set in a horrifying sci-fi universe where humanity has colonized numerous star systems. Why the name Dolmen? In the game, Dolmens are coveted red crystals mined by Zoan Corp. Zoan Corp whose intentions are not very clear, discovers that the Dolmens have inter-dimensional properties. Things go awry when many creatures called the Nightmares invade Revion Prime, planet where the game takes place, thanks to the power of the dolmens.

Our role here will be to contain the threat, but also to recover sensitive information and material belonging to Zoan Corp, which is trying to salvage its investments. Basically, we’re doing the dirty work for an unscrupulous corporation… The scenario is quite simple, it draws on many works of science fiction. The story therefore lacks a bit of originality and the staging will not mark the spirits.

Dolmen respects the DNA of modern action-RPGs by offering to customize the hero from the start of the game. The choice is quite limited and does not allow you to create an avatar in your image or something very personal. Luckily, the gear acquired and crafted with the items picked up makes the avatar a little less generic.

There are three skill trees to develop. Human which favors attack speed and damage in combat, Revian which reinforces resistance and defense, and Drier which increases hit points and endurance. Dolmen adapts quite well to each way of playing. However, it is easier to keep enemies at a distance during fairly long confrontations than to attempt close combat, the outcome of which, even if faster, is very uncertain… and will most often lean towards death. This is where we can make an analogy with the Souls: the difficulty. Dolmen does not share the same universe as the Souls, but it borrows from them this desire to make players suffer. If you like From Software’s games for that die and retry aspect, then you might well find in Dolmen, not a successor or a challenger, but rather a complement. The bestiary is not very original or very extensive, the menu is colder than granite, there remains the challenge to hope to satisfy Souls players.

From the point of view of gameplay, the only originality lies in the management of energy. It’s not only used to power up ranged weapons, it also allows players to deal elemental damage directly to enemies using their melee weapon. Energy also allows you to recover life. Clearly, this resource must be well managed in order to progress and survive.

Added to this difficulty is a lack of precision in close combat. Sometimes we take damage when visually we are not affected, we will not ask the linesman to replay, but still… Dolmen suffers from some finishing problems. The gameplay is not the only one to suffer from some shortcomings, so a few sound bugs, a not very shrewd AI or even a few decorations finished with a trowel give an impression of unfinished. We hope that patches will correct and improve the experience.

The progression is strewn with Bosses and if your skill and your eyes of the puss in boots prevent you from going further, Dolmen offers the possibility to ask for help to do battle, with several, against the Bosses. A good idea, suffering is better tolerated when you are accompanied. The problem is to succeed in finding volunteers. Either you have friends who have Dolmen (well done, you are one hell of a sales rep), or you bet on other players likely to be playing at the same time as you. Dolmen not being a well-known game, it is almost more difficult to find a partner than to advance alone.

Let’s talk technical, the game was played on an Xbox Series X. There are 2 graphics modes, one favoring fluidity and the other graphics with light effects and reflections as the only real differences. Dolmen is quite average technically, the modeling is correct overall but suffers from a very heterogeneous quality concerning the textures. One can be surprised by fairly clean passages and then face extremely poor places. We are therefore not facing a game where the eyes will shine. That said, the ears are hardly more at the party, the sound environment is bland, the sound effects are in the norm, Dolmen just does the taff, we will not be surprised to hum anything.

Dolmen is an alternative to the tenors of the genre, it does the job without shining. It’s a modest production that would have deserved more risk-taking from an aesthetic and screenplay point of view. Some finishing issues could be corrected with updates, but the heart of the game will nonetheless remain generic. It’s a shame, the atmosphere of the game sticks easily with the genre of die and retry, but something is missing to captivate us in our quest.