Effie is easily one of the better 3D platformers that I’ve played in recent memory. A solid mix of platforming, combat, and puzzles make this one a winner in my book.
Type: Single-player
Genre: Action Adventure,
3D Platformer
Developer: Inverge Studios
Publisher: Inverge Studios
Release date: 28 Jan, 2020
Intro
Effie is a somewhat open-world action-adventure game with 3D platforming elements. The game is heavily inspired by classic 3D platformers and I’ll even admit that it made me quite nostalgic for some of my favorites of yore. If you’re a fan of 3D platformers like myself, do read on because this one’s quite fun.
Story and Characters
Amazingly, Effie manages to tell a pretty competent fairytale-like story with only 3 actual characters. The main character that you play as is named Galand who was cursed with old age by the evil witch Melira. In order to restore his youth, he takes on a quest to rid the world of evil by ultimately defeating the witch. Equally amazing is the fact that there are only 2 voice actors in the entire game, One for Galand (Who also acts as narrator to the story) and one for Effie and Melira. Outside of these 3 characters, the world is largely inhabited by Melira’s evil minions and all of the humans have disappeared, or so I assume because there is no-one else. It does raise a lot of questions about what happened to everyone but I mostly just assumed the monsters killed everyone, easiest explanation.
The story can be completed in a little over 4 hours but there are quite a few side areas that you can visit as well. Something I wish I knew because I missed out on because I assumed after the 3 major towns you go to fight Malira. Still, the game can take upwards of around 7-8 hours if you visit every location across the world. The side areas are easy to miss though, which is why I wound up missing them on accident.
Platforming!
Platforming plays a major role in Effie as it’s largely how you progress through each level. One thing I will gladly praise about this game is its excellent level design. It’s incredibly well crafted and each one reminded me of the classics in how everything was setup. The levels start quite simple with rudimentary puzzles to solve and easy platforming but with each one, the difficulty increases with the final boss including literally everything that you learned up to that point. The final boss tests your abilities and I wound up dying a few times myself, but I beat her in the end. Thankfully during the final boss, it autosaves with each phase so you don’t have to start the entire thing over again, which takes some of the brutality away but don’t expect it to be easy for most players.
Combat
Effie also has some combat elements which have Galand utilizing a shield (Or Runestone, as it’s called in the game) much like Captain America. In the early portions of the game, Galand’s attack range is fairly limited but as you progress through the major cities, you’ll unlock new abilities. These abilities include Dash, Earthquake, and Boomerang. Earthquake and Boomerang are AoE (Area of Attack) skills that can defeat multiple enemies in one hit, so they’re very handy. Dash is used in both combat (To avoid enemy attacks) and platforming (to reach faraway platforms) and it’s pretty easy to master its use, just don’t get too trigger happy with it during platforming and you’ll be fine.
There aren’t very many things that I didn’t like about this game, and what I did was incredibly minor. One of them had to do with combat. Your regular attacks could be a bit.. inaccurate when facing multiple enemies and I felt a lock-on ability would help matters. Later in the game, your regular and heavy attacks are made outdated by the AoE attacks but it’s kinda repetitive spamming just 2 attacks so I mixed up the combat with some regular attacks too. Made things more entertaining.
Verdict
Overall, I enjoyed Effie a great deal and felt that it was one of the better 3D platformers that I’ve played in some time. Gameplay-wise it’s perfect with its balance of puzzles and platforming, combat could feel a little clunky at times but it wasn’t awful and wound up being fairly fun, and it’s quite gorgeous to look at to boot. So, as far as 3D platformers go, I’d have to say this one is quite solid, so I’ll be giving it a Save. Very fun game and I enjoyed my time with it a great deal.
