![]() In what feels a bit like the old-school active time battle system from some of the older Final Fantasy games, you must choose and charge up your attacks while keeping an eye on the movements of the Rust-infected wildlife, gradually whittling them down to a point where you can ‘pacify’ them and cleanse them of their corruption. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing depends on your personal preferences for crafting systems in your games: for my money, I found it just the right balance.Ĭombat is where things risk getting a little unintuitive. It’s simplistic in its execution: you can only ever combine two ingredients, and there are some limits on what can be used for what purpose (you can’t cook with Rust, for example, but you can use it to create combat items) so you’ll never be overwhelmed with creative choice. Uh, so to speak.Ī limited crafting system of sorts opens up fairly early on as well: as you explore Source you can gather fruits and plants along with the Rust that covers the islands which can be brought back to the Nest to be cooked into meals or combined into healing items or combat aids. Quick 180° reversals and sharp turns are easy and intuitive to pull off and the camera is usually quite good at keeping up with your movement so you rarely lose track of where you are or where you’re going. You can use your feet, but walking is so slow that even Kay and Yu will comment on it if you opt for that over gliding effortlessly across the grass. The first thing you’ll discover is gliding, the primary method of movement as you traverse Source. ![]() There’s a real grab bag of gameplay mechanics and systems at play in Haven, most of which work pretty well together. They crossed galaxies just to be together, and all they got was that spectacular view.Īll in all, it’s a very satisfying story to play through on several levels: the main plot itself has enough twists and wrinkles to keep you interested and engaged if you do want to just blast through it, but it really shines in the smaller, more personal scenes, and you’ll soon find yourself endeared to and invested in your two main characters. It all feels remarkably three-dimensional, a far cry from the lifeless romances of many other games. They laugh, they cry, they joke, they tease, they bicker, they play board games, they talk frankly about their sex life, they adopt a local alien lizard as a pet. These scenes will provide extra information and lore about the world – there’s no Mass Effect-style codex available so if you want to learn anything about the Apiary, its connection to Source, or the morally-ambiguous ExaNova corporation, you’d best pay attention – but more often they’ll simply explore the relationship between Kay and Yu, in what amounts to a surprisingly honest and heartfelt portrayal of two young people, intensely in love and forced to go to great lengths to preserve it. As much as I wanted to progress the main story and continue unravelling the secrets of Source, I still found myself putting things on hold to seek out another little vignette between these two immensely likeable characters again and again. What on paper might sound relentlessly dull is masterfully executed with a wonderful harmony between the writing, the emotive character art and the first-class voice acting. Much of the game plays out like a support scene from Fire Emblem or a skit from a Tales game, where you simply watch the interaction between the two characters and occasionally make a dialogue choice. That is certainly the main story arc for the game, and it’s a compelling one with elements of exploration, fleshed-out science fiction and low-key conspiracy all rolled together in a neat package, but the real narrative draw of Haven is in its incredibly nuanced and beautifully rendered exploration of the two lovers’ relationship.
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