What A Horrible Night to Have A Curse: A Last Night of Winter Review

By Manuel

Players: 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, XBox, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC

With the recent release of the new Elden Ring DLC, Souls-like games are once again on everyone's minds, at least Elden Ring itself is. Enter Last Night of Winter, a retro-inspired Souls-like game that seems to be the love child of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Dark Souls. That sounds like quite the mix, but it's exactly what we're going to be looking at today. It released a while back on Steam, but it's set to arrive soon on consoles. We're going to be taking a look at the Nintendo Switch version today, though I imagine it'll be a fine representation of what you can expect on other platforms. It's been a while since we've reviewed a game like this, and this is a genre I've had more than a little trouble with in the past, so let's cut the intros short and dive right in!

An ominous beginning.

Got to break out of jail first thing.

Last Night of Winter puts you into the shoes of The Warden, a skeletal figure who apparently died during a great battle that took place an indeterminate amount of time ago. The site of said battle was a Stronghold that features a tall Tower in its center, and it's in the depths of the Stronghold's dungeons that you wake up. Your first task is to escape from your literal prison cell, but you're then tasked with ending the long night's curse. Putting an end to curses is never easy, and this one requires that The Heir be found within the Stronghold's central Tower. Getting to the top of The Tower isn't as simple as riding an elevator up to the observation deck, or at least it would be if it weren't for the many obstacles that keep you from doing so. The Warden will have to take on guardians, caretakers, vengeful spirits, and even one mean cat before they're able to see what The Heir has to say about all this. I'll leave my discussions on the story right there, not only for the sake of sparing readers from potential spoilers, but also because there are several points that I'm not totally clear on even now. The game features a lot of cutscenes, and lots of dialogue, but many of the central plots points seemed to be delivered in a way that either wasn't clear, or simply flew over my head. I actually considered starting another run of the game to see if I could get more notes on what exactly is going on, but I quickly realized that starting a new game deletes your current one. (Yes, there's only one game save here!) Things do sort themselves out a bit by the end, but the journey there feels like it goes in circles for much of the runtime. Though it's fair to say that I'm not exactly a fan of the game's plot, I did enjoy its humor. Humor is of course very subjective, but the occasional funny aside or joke kept me coming back. As did this review of course, but you know what I mean. I haven't gotten into it yet but being that this is a Souls-like game, Last Night of Winter is quite the challenging experience. Getting through it takes a lot of work, and thankfully there are several laughs to be had among the frequent deaths. On that lovely note, let's turn our discussion to gameplay.

The annoying platforming starts early.

This was my favorite weapon.

I was intrigued when I realized that Last Night of Winter was actually a Souls-like game, because it's easy to miss that if you haven't played it firsthand. Looking at screenshots with no context might give you the impression that it's a standard 2.5D action platformer, or even a Zelda clone. The truth is that it's sort of all three of those things mixed together. Combat is probably where the game most resembles the Souls franchise, as it's somehow simple to grasp, but takes some time to master. The Warden has a series of attacks that are backed up by a dodge and stamina system, and you can heal in limited capacities during the heat of battle too. Every action in combat requires stamina, and you can quickly run out if you attack or dodge too often. Thankfully many attacks can simply be walked away from, but only be able to swing a weapon 3-5 times before having to stop can get annoying fast. There's also concentration to manage, as it's used to perform powerful AOE attacks. I personally found that these attacks rarely hit anything no matter how hard I tried, so I rarely bothered with them. They can be used to take an enemy by surprise, but concentration only comes from using normal attacks, so you'd had to have already had said concentration set-up before you attempted an ambush. Dodging is what you'd expect, but the timing can be very tricky against most enemies. I'll admit that I don't think I ever got the hang of dodging, but you'll have to learn how to use it well if you want to beat the game on anything but the lowest difficulty setting. You can also heal in or out of combat by drinking water, and you can drink twice before you have to refill the bottle. Refilling water sometimes happens after defeating a boss, but is more commonly done at fountains that also act as your save points. We'll circle back to combat in a bit, but that covers quite a big chunk of gameplay.

There's some upgrades to be had.

I could use a drink.

If Last Night of Winter focused solely on combat, I probably would've appreciated it a lot more, but there are a lot of extended platforming sequences that really tested my patience. You may have noticed that I never mentioned The Warden having the ability to jump, and that's because he doesn't. All platforming challenges are done by using the dodge action, and this makes for some of the wonkiest movement you'll ever see in a modern release. It reminded me a lot of the old Castlevania games because it's very hard to adjust and account for jumps when you're already in the air. You can adjust yourself a bit, but since this is a dodge and not a jump, you'll land far more quickly than you might realize at first. Chances are that you'll miss your landing more often than not simply because you took off from anything but the one spot that guarantees success. While not strictly platforming, there's also things like skating on ice, spinning from poles over large gaps, and crossing over platforms that not only fall, but also have enemies on them. I died far more times form these sections than to any other part of the game, and it tried my patience more than any other part of the game. It actually reminded me a lot of the platforming found in Ultima VIII: Pagan, as in that it feels like it exists just because the developers for some reason thought it would be a good idea, but don't seem to know how to actually implement it into gameplay. These sections probably wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that the game's world is one big looping circle. The term "non-linear" is thrown around in the marketing, but it's more like you explore a new area only to suddenly realize that you've looped back around to where you started. I probably would've thought this was cool once or twice, but it's literally the entire game. I can't begin to explain how frustrating it is to go through several long platforming sections, and a tough-as-nails boss fight, only to come exit the area and only be a screen or two over from where you entered. It's literally one of the strangest design decisions I've ever seen.

Death? Is that you?

Look at this...

Frustrations aside, there are a lot of things I liked about the gameplay loop. Even though I wished that there were more save points scattered about the world, I did like the sense of urgency I had going through the game until I found the next one. The fact that there often wasn't a "next one", but simply the one I used before because of the map looping stuff I just mentioned is something else entirely of course. I also mentioned it a bit here and there already, but I liked that you're able to change the game's difficulty at any time. Simply going into the options menu allows you to make the game easier or harder on the fly, and this helped me out more than once. I tried to play the game on Normal difficulty, but there were difficulty spikes where I just had to change it to Easy for my own sanity. It really was a lifesaver, and I suggest that all other players of Last Night of Winter take advantage of the feature. Another favorite of mine would have to be the equipment system. I first off need to mention that the game does allow for stat-boosting equipment and healing items, but neither of which seem to affect the game all that much. Inventory space is also extremely limited, so you probably won't be bothering with it much throughout the game anyway. Those are only the smallest of negatives to me, as what I really liked was the variety found in weapons available to The Warden. Defeating a boss usually grants you an item that seems rather innocuous until you equip it. Equipping these items usually means a new weapon, and a new series of attacks. These really change up the how the game is played, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that there's something here for every style of play. You have weapons that are weak but fast, ones that attack in a slow wide arc, others that have a stronger special attack, and so on. The only real downside has to be that it takes a while to get have all the options available, but I guess that's understandable in the grand scheme of things. You also eventually unlock what is a summoned helper in the form of a Golem. This allows for extra attacks and more puzzle solving options. I say "puzzle solving", but it usually just means moving or destroying boxes you couldn't before. None of this is ground-breaking of course, but it does add enough to the game that makes it stand out from the whole Souls-like comparison thing.

Have to save the homie.

You can upgrade your stats permanently.

I have to say that I have somewhat mixed feeling when it comes to Last Night of Winter's visuals, and it's a rather complicated reason as to why. It goes without saying that Last Night of Winter has a retro 16-bit inspired look and feel to it, and I have to say that they got captured that spirit perfectly. I love the way the world looks, I love the character and enemy designs, the animations are all silky smooth, and there are even some parts of the game that look downright impressive. The problem I found is the visual variety on display, or lack thereof. By the very nature of the premise, every area you visit will either be a dark dungeon-like indoor space, or a (possibly rainy) dark night. It made the world feel a lot more "same-y" than it might've been otherwise, and it's probably the single biggest contributing factor to me not caring too much for that non-linear world thing I mentioned earlier. It's hard for a world to feel big and expansive when you're stuck in what is essentially one giant fort. I still want to reiterate that I think the game looks great in spite of this, but the sometimes bland world sometimes poisoned my views on the game as a whole after a while. I should take a second to point out that Last Night of Winter ran perfectly on my Nintendo Switch, as it is a console getting rather long in the tooth. Asking for lots of visual variety in a game with a design-bound limited scope may be asking for a bit much, but I can't help but feel that it would've done wonders for this game in particular.

Though I've spent much of this review mentioning things about Last Night of Winter that I felt fell short of greatness, one aspect of the game where I think they did hit the mark perfectly would be in sound. Not only is the soundtrack to the game amazing, it weaves itself in and out of the story in a way you rarely see in games of this type. "Cinematic" would probably be the word I'd use if it didn't sound so overused, but that's the vibe you get from it. Going through a quiet area, with music barely above a calm whisper, only to have that calmness shattered by an intense battle theme is something that has to be experienced to be fully understood and appreciated. The tracks themselves are memorable too. Many of the themes live comfortably in my head, and there are some that I think will be stuck there for quite a while. The music treads a fine line of being atmospheric, while also just being generally good music that one can listen to outside of the game. I guess my only big gripe would be that I'd have appreciated a bit in the way of voice acting, or something bigger in terms of sound effects to add to the soundscape laid out by the music, but the game doesn't give us that. I'll stand by what I said at the start of this section though and defend Last Night of Winter's sound as being excellent without any big drawbacks of note.

Oops.

Is this a reference?

Even though I feel that Last Night of Winter's gameplay loop does't offer much in the way of variety, I'll admit that there was something about it that kept drawing me back. Maybe it was the fact that I could easily change the difficulty on the fly, maybe it was the silly humor, or maybe it was just a certain hard to define charm. Whatever it was, it really kept me invested in seeing what lied around the next corner. It is a rather short game though, easily beaten in a single night, but I don't see that as a negative at all. It doesn't overstay its welcome, and it offers up a full experience that seems to go well beyond its current $9.99 asking price. There aren't many post-game options, and there's only one save file here, but this was a journey I don't regret having gone on. However brief it may have been.

Why is an angler fish here?!?!

Time for The Tower.

My many small gripes with the game aside, I give Last Night of Winter a full recommendation for gamers of all types. It might not be for those who absolutely loathe Souls-like games, but there's a lot to enjoy here for the causal and the hardcore. It's tough but fair, it has some great graphics and music, and it moves very quickly if you're able to deal with the many challenges that it offers. Pick up now on whatever console you can, and get to the top of that tower! I'll see all of you in the morning, as this night is finally coming to an end.

Check Out Last Night of Winter on Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/last-night-of-winter-switch/

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Story: B
Gameplay: B
Graphics: B
Music/Sound: A
Value: A

Overall: B+

Pros:
+ An interesting take on the Souls-like formula.
+ Even though I personally found the story itself to be lacking, the humor within was more than enough to make up for that.
+ Awesome visuals and music keep this one easy on the eyes and ears.
+ The ability to change the difficulty on the fly erases much of the frustration I'd probably have with the game's many difficulty spikes.
+ The weapon system offers a lot of gameplay variety.
+ Can be quite a challenging experience for those who desire such a thing.
+ Feels like a steal at just $9.99.

Cons:
- The long platforming sections quickly overstay their welcome.
- Combat can feel a little clunky thanks to the reliance on dodging, and the spotty powered-up attacks.
- Progression through game's non-linear world can feel pointless once you realize you're just going in constant circles.
- Since the game takes place over a single endless night, there's a sameness to everything that's hard to shake.
- Only one save file, and the lack of post-game content, lowers this one's replay value.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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Oh yeah! You can pet the dog!

#LNOW