Challenging Dark Souls in 2D. Skelethrone: The Chronicles of Ericona

For some reason our hero, Lord Erikon came to life among a pile of bones. No introductions. Just came alive and came alive. The purpose of this we have to find out inside the game.

One of the main tasks is to find a fire (it’s in the basement of the house), where we can upgrade the hero using collected souls. Souls drop from enemies upon death or we can find them when breaking jugs and stuff like that. If our hero dies, he loses the accumulated resources and will need to find his corpse to return them.

The hero has a couple of health potions, they replace Estus flasks. Immediately we are also provided with a powerful attack, which costs mana that is not renewed over time. It seems that some crystals fall out that restore mana, but this is not certain, something changes by too insignificant amounts.

The hero also has stamina, which is spent on punches, jumps and other actions. There are rolls, but it’s not very convenient to press them on the keyboard.

At the start there are things lying around, including weapons. Of course they need to be collected.

I can’t say that I saw very many monsters, but I discovered several types. They are all sharp and daring. Almost always they manage to hit the hero, which means his survival is always a huge question mark. Enemy strikes, even for a certain amount of damage, penetrate our shield block.

There is an improvement in hero stats for souls. Essentially it’s leveling up. The price for each new improvement increases sharply. In addition, there is a powerful-looking tree for leveling up for unknown signs of change (I haven’t found any).

The game seemed too difficult for me. I fought the monsters quite stubbornly, filled my souls, but I didn’t manage to make much progress. At the same time, it is clearly visible that the game is of high quality.

👍 Dark, cute graphics.

👍 Good music and sound.

👍 Big, dark world.

👍 Good leveling up of the hero, although it takes a long time.

👍 Intense battles with dangerous spins-heaven-casino.co.uk enemies.

👍 Russian text language.

😐 The game, as for me, is very difficult and intense. Personally, I wasn’t able to make much progress in just a few runs. Enemies constantly hit the hero.

❌ No obvious flaws found.

Thanks for reading. Good luck and good mood to everyone!

Best comments

A great game with your hemorrhoids, which you just need to get used to. Sometimes it happens that while spamming buttons, you do a somersault in the wrong direction that you wanted, so this is not a bull-hell shooter for you to fool around with buttons. Play systematically without aggression, remember the behavior of enemies and everything will become much clearer and simpler. There were a few bugs, but damn, try making the game solo, one person does it !@#$% there are no words, it’s practically impossible to test it well, the publisher rarely does this, everything is on the shoulders of the developer, and he is alone and has no money to hire testers, or rather there were a couple of people judging by the final credits, but that’s it, Vladik Brutal had 15 testers and wow, a shitty set of assets and a bunch of bugs. So to everyone who is dissatisfied, miscusi. It is what it is.

If you don’t like something, blame yourself, because I use your own views.

come on. run for half an hour. only the last third boss… well, you run for a long time and that’s it. and enemies – you attack and move away (roll) or jump strike, just running up and hitting won’t work.

I killed them with a two-handed sword for a long time, with which I had previously killed the owner of the mycelium, but the bats cannot fly away the first time. Plus Mobs passing through objects – is this really good game design??
I didn’t write that she is impassable, she is boring and kills with her masturbation party, passion. I’m not one of those who would take a broken sword and use it to stab a demon guard
No, I liked the game, but it didn’t captivate me. Later I’m still going to pass it.
Indicators? Which ones exactly?? Performance Requirements? Attack power, for example, I couldn’t find the radius, or attack speed, or maybe a multiplier?
But I tried to honestly use the mechanics of blocking and parrying, which were really done so-so.

What a boring subject, trying to prove something, dragging out the conversation with insipid tops. I don’t care what you write there, leave me alone, I’m tired xDDD Consider that you were talking to yourself.

Good day, opponent Fil Osof. Glad you were able to complete this game, be patient and enjoy your gaming.

all flying enemies either fly towards you at once or shoot and then approach you or make a ramming attack.

That’s it, they’re all flying at once. I just walk into a room and enemies fly at me, ignoring obstacles., I parried them, but they just fell down into the ground. And I forgot to say that beating them is just boring, and that combined with the rest of gaming, it killed my pleasure in going through it.I’m tired of spending five minutes killing small bats with a claymore, which I used to kill the owner of the mycelium before. And these flying mobs were the last straw. If the game is like this at the beginning, then I can’t imagine what will happen at the end.

Good day, opponent Jamir Erfalij.
As I wrote below in response to another person’s comments, flying opponents were the last straw. The game is too boring and kills all the fun and entertainment. And get dopamine for self-exhaustion, thanks another time. And yes, these will be a minority. As you wrote – playing with your hemorrhoids, but these hemorrhoids are too big.
Yes, I understand that this is an indie and was made by one person, as you wrote below, that’s why I don’t blame the game for its wooden animations, its so-so visual style – on the contrary, it gives the game recognition and uniqueness. About the terrible pattern of attacks of mobs (about bosses is a whole other story), about the terrible mechanics of blocking and parrying. Or about the terrible design of locations – for example, that background things block part of the screen and can hide the enemy. About the fact that many things are often difficult to see or a dark location. But tedious passage and slow progress is not casual, but a miscalculation of the developer. And it was he who was the reason to quit the game.
It’s strange that after this game I completed two other metroidvanias to platinum, maybe they were casual compared to our topic of discussion, but they felt like progress and were fun to play.
P.S. Try Ninja Gaqden Sigma on hard difficulty, Mr. Hardcore

There was (maybe still is) a free prologue available for Skelethrone: The Prey, which tells the backstory of this lord – what he did and how he died.

but to be honest, the prologue is unplayable because – as stated in the review – the enemies are constantly hitting. some of their types, no matter how you dodge and roll, instantly turn towards the hero’s heads before hitting, and there is no way to deceive them.

the game is purely for hardcore people

Don’t play hardcore? Where did your courage and pride go?? Maybe you haven’t played DS either? What scared you so much about 3D?.

Minority? Can you find out where you got this number from??

Thank you very much, I’ll get platinum in this game in a year.

convince yourself further.

hmm… it seems that you didn’t look at the weapon and weight indicators)))) otherwise I don’t understand how you can kill all this crap for a long time)))) in short, I didn’t like the game, but you make it sound like it’s objectively impassable and incredibly clumsy))))

passed. the superficial review from above does not reflect the suitability of the game. stomp game. the main thing you need to understand is to use weapon abilities (mana is replenished from hits, pumping up spirit points will improve this) and jump and hit-roll-kick-roll more often. upgrade crystals – most often in hiding places, plus a meager percentage of enemy drops. 5 of them also give you a treatment. finished the game with 12 heals. all flying enemies either fly towards you at once or shoot and then approach you or make a ramming attack. fighting them is elementary, I didn’t understand the difficulties of the commentator above, you just don’t need to run without looking back and collect the entire pool of enemies. many bosses. upgrade your mastery of one of the 2 types of weapons completely (most often one-handed weapons, two-handed weapons are not often found, shooting and blunt weapons are not worth your attention (a pistol with good damage will be at the end of the game, that is, upgrading ammunition is not worth the return). that is, one-handed blades and two-handed ones. watch your weight. elemental damage – sometimes you need to wear specific gear from enemies or bosses. same with weapons. parries are pathetic. the shield only gives armor points, you don’t need to block it anyway (I think the developer is ours, one person will finish it later, you need to write to him on Steam). that is, rolling and jumping is your everything.

And someone didn’t like the skeleton, but you condemn them here, criticize them. A little strange don’t you think??

You were the first to offer hardcore type here. I just answered you. Ask yourself this question.
Minority? 24 negative out of 86. Let’s look at the big picture – the game appealed to few people. Judging by the reviews.
For example, another metroidvania that I played after has 992 reviews of which only 49 are negative. This is the minority.
Plus, even those who write positive reviews, among them there are those who criticize the game and do not even recommend it.

I tried to play this. I reached the village, killed two bosses, opened several locations, but deleted the game after flying enemies appeared. Because it’s just terrible and arctic fox done. They fly far, attack with a sharp jerk and then fly back. And even if you mate them or at least block them, then, damn them, they simply fall underground. You can suffer for 2 minutes with only one flying small mob, but there are often more of them. And yes, in addition they can fly through platforms. Yes there is a bow, but it only shoots forward. This is just terrible game design. I don’t recommend anyone who loves soulslicks to even touch this with a 9 meter stick.