Story Of Beyond

The hack & slash genre is very much alive and well even today, but it might be a tad difficult to recognize if you haven’t been around it for a while. In essence, the Diablo formula is still at the core of many games, but the mechanics have evolved a bit in the meantime. Thus, although it’s still about killing as many enemies as possible, the way you do that requires a bit more skill.

Story Of Beyond is an action role-playing game with 3D graphics and very simple gameplay mechanics, sporting a very simple formula when it comes to what you are required to do. In short, the only goal is to walk around the map and kill the enemies in order to acquire items and increase your level, which in turn allows you to get stronger and learn new valuable skills.

The story is so thin it can be ignored entirely without hurting the overall experience, especially since there are barely any cutscenes or characters. In essence, the world you find yourself in is ruled by war and greed, not to mention all the monsters that roam around freely. Thus, your task is to kill these monsters and bring peace to the world once and for all.

As weird as it would seem, the gameplay mechanics can be too repetitive sometimes, even in a hack & slash. This happens to be the case here as well, mainly because every encounter is the same, and because your character’s skills are not as exciting as they need to be in order to keep you excited. Moreover, the animations and the combat moves are very plain and unimpressive, which leads to boredom in record time.

Not much can be said about the graphics either, although the engine itself is not bad, given the fact that it’s the popular Unity. On the other hand, the level design is very disappointing, since everything is empty and plain. It doesn’t feel like a different world when everything you see is just a large expanse of dirt, the occasional tree and the mountains that serve as a wall to circle the map.

All things being considered, Story Of Beyond could have done a lot more with the elements at its disposal, but the result is something you cannot enjoy for more than a few minutes, unfortunately. Thus, the repetitive gameplay and dull environments make for a very short experience.