The Relic: First Guardian Review — Ambitious Korean Souls-Like Falls Short Despite Promising Combat

When a review code for The Relic: First Guardian arrived, there was genuine excitement about what this indie action RPG might offer. Developed by the small Korean studio Project Cloud Games, a team of just twelve developers, the game promised innovative takes on action RPG combat mechanics combined with a dark interpretation of Korean folklore, all wrapped in the increasingly popular Souls-like formula. The indie gaming scene has produced some remarkable gems in recent years, with small teams punching well above their weight class. Unfortunately, despite admirable ambition and some genuinely impressive boss encounters, The Relic: First Guardian ultimately delivers an experience that frustrates far more than it entertains, plagued by technical issues, repetitive design, and questionable quality control that makes it difficult to recommend to even the most dedicated fans of the genre.

A World Shrouded in Mystery and Frustration

The narrative foundation of The Relic: First Guardian is set in Arsiltus, a medieval fantasy realm once protected from monstrous threats by a powerful artifact known as the Great Relic. When this protective device is destroyed, the world becomes consumed by a malevolent force called the Void, which transforms ordinary humans into terrifying creatures known as “Brutals” — these corrupted beings serve as the game’s primary boss encounters. Players assume the role of an amnesiac guardian, awakened by a mysterious dark maiden who hints at a shared history. This enigmatic woman serves as a guide throughout the journey across the continent, directing players to collect scattered fragments of the Great Relic in hopes of restoring the world to its former state.

The open-world structure presents significant navigation challenges that detract from the overall experience. The game fails to clearly distinguish between main story quests and optional side content, leaving players perpetually uncertain whether the boss they’ve been attempting to defeat for the past hour will advance the narrative or merely reward them with a pittance of gold and a narrative dead-end. Shimmering fog gates frequently block progression until players meet undisclosed requirements, forcing extensive exploration through every corner of the map. This design philosophy might work in games with more engaging exploration, but here it feels like artificial padding that disrespects the player’s time. The lack of clear guidance stands in stark contrast to how FromSoftware’s titles, despite their reputation for obscurity, generally provide enough environmental and contextual clues to guide players forward.

Combat That Shows Promise Amid Deeper Flaws

The Relic: First Guardian proudly advertises nearly 80 boss encounters, and these confrontations represent the game’s most compelling content. The combat system draws heavy inspiration from titles like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Lies of P, centering gameplay around parrying with a relatively generous timing window. Standard attacks deal minimal damage, requiring players to fill invisible stagger meters through repeated parries — sometimes dozens per encounter — before enemies become vulnerable to powerful special attacks mapped to the controller’s face buttons. This creates a rhythmic combat flow that, when functioning properly, delivers satisfying moment-to-moment gameplay.

The weapon variety offers expected options: two-handed longswords for aggressive players, sword and shield combinations for defensive approaches, magical battle staves for those preferring ranged combat, and several other archetypes. Each weapon type features unlockable skill trees that can be swapped through the maiden character for a nominal in-game cost, encouraging experimentation. Standout encounters include a cursed knight reminiscent of the beloved Artorias of the Abyss from the original Dark Souls, a thunder-wielding warlock battled in an atmospheric graveyard setting, and a series of noble knights and priests encountered during the game’s final act. These highlights demonstrate what Project Cloud Games could achieve with proper polish and resources.

However, the combat system’s promise is undermined by frustrating design decisions and technical failures. While most bosses can be defeated on the first attempt through aggressive parrying and skill usage, certain encounters rely on cheap one-hit-kill mechanics that create artificial difficulty spikes. One particularly egregious example involves a witch controlling crows who can inflict an instant curse through unavoidable attack flurries — once cursed, a simple finger snap ends the player’s run regardless of remaining health. Another curse-wielding Brutal forces players to fight while standing in burning crops, managing constant parrying while simultaneously dealing with fire damage and curse effects that prevent healing. Environmental hazards frequently send the camera into chaotic spins, and the final boss encounter was reportedly so bugged that controller inputs failed to register properly, with healing items becoming completely non-functional.

An Open World That Breeds Contempt

The open-world design represents The Relic: First Guardian’s most significant failure. The environment consists of endlessly repeated assets, creating an almost surreal sense of déjà vu as players encounter what appears to be the fiftieth identical farm village or defeat the same three enemy types for the thousandth time. The silver lining that enemies don’t respawn becomes a double-edged sword, as it highlights how little variety exists in the first place. Environmental objects like trees and barrels appear randomly placed with seemingly no quality assurance oversight — one checkpoint near a major boss was partially blocked by a boulder, rendering it inaccessible. Such oversights suggest either rushed development or, more concerningly, possible reliance on procedural generation without adequate human curation.

The reward structure compounds these issues dramatically. Pickups throughout the entire game yield consistently underwhelming returns: 30 to 40 gold for small items, 600 gold for larger chests, and 600 magical relic points per discovered glowing rock. Weapon upgrades require purchasing stones and gems from town merchants since enemies don’t drop these materials and they rarely appear in the wild. By the game’s third and final zone, the repetitive grind had rendered both enemy encounters and upgrade systems meaningless — twenty hours of identical gameplay loops produced no perceptible improvement in character effectiveness. This fundamental breakdown in the progression loop represents a critical failure in game design that no amount of patching can fully address without substantial restructuring.

Lost in Translation: Writing and Technical Woes

Beyond combat, The Relic: First Guardian claims rich storytelling that imbues each enemy with backstory and emotional weight. In practice, the English localization fails spectacularly. Weapon, skill, and item descriptions consist of meandering pseudo-poetic text that neither entertains nor provides useful gameplay information. Quests typically involve following ghostly mirages that trigger text boxes, awkwardly narrated by what appears to be AI-generated voiceover work. The robotic delivery strips any potential emotional resonance from the narrative, making silence preferable to the uncanny valley experience of listening to these performances.

Quest design follows a predictable, unsatisfying pattern: NPCs or text fragments mention characters by name — incongruously Western names like “Taylor” or “Gus” for a game supposedly drawing from Korean folklore — and players follow a breadcrumb trail of text boxes, defeat some zombie soldiers or looters, only to discover that the named character has inevitably transformed into a man-eating Brutal. The revelation carries no weight after the third or fourth occurrence. FromSoftware’s environmental storytelling works precisely because it trusts players to piece together narratives from subtle clues; The Relic: First Guardian misunderstands this approach entirely, replacing elegant restraint with excessive exposition that still fails to create meaningful connections.

Technical performance represents perhaps the most damning indictment. The game regularly operates at sub-10 frames per second, transforming combat requiring precise timing into frustrating guesswork. Frequent crashes necessitate reloading, which randomly erases chunks of progress. Input registration fails unpredictably, fog walls sometimes refuse to lower after boss defeats, trapping players and forcing repeat encounters. One boss became stuck outside its own arena, creating an absurd standoff requiring a full restart. Voice acting and subtitles match only about half the time, and the overall experience feels fundamentally unfinished despite being marketed as a complete product ready for consumer purchase.