Ballad of Antara - 15-Minute Gameplay Footage Breakdown
Nov. 22, 2024Ballad of Antara – 15-Minute Gameplay Footage Breakdown
A recent Ballad of Antara gameplay showcase was recently dropped. The 15-minute gameplay footage showcases the enemies you will be encountering at the start of the game, as well as two of the playable characters you will end up controlling. It focuses heavily on the combat aspect of the game, with bits of cutscenes which I think were just used to show off the game’s visuals.
It starts off with a cutscene of some guy with a mask carrying a little girl on his back. It seems they’re exploring some sort of dilapidated structure before a serpent-like dragon pulls up and tries to devour them. Yikes. So the scene then shifts to actual gameplay. With what looks like a title card at the start of a chapter which means “The Long Journey Home”. I think this is the start of the actual game because it has some tutorials popping up a bit. It seems our objective right now is to go to the bottom of the colossus and we are joined by the same little girl we saw in the first cutscene, who based on the subtitles is named Zhuo, but this time she’s riding a giant cat. After walking a few steps forward, We then get to our first combat segment of the footage where we easily dispatch one enemy.
Combat plays out pretty much like how soulslikes are expected to play. We have our usual health bar and stamina bar. It also seems like we have a bar for guarding. If the bar depletes it’ll probably break our guard. We then get to traverse a bit before we encounter another enemy. And wow our companion just used a fire skill. It seems they’ll be assisting us in combat here. After dispatching another enemy, we get to this open area with an enemy who has a gourd for a head.
There are visual cues when enemies do certain attacks. In this case, there’s a red indicator when an enemy goes for a heavy attack which means you can time your parry right and it’ll stagger the enemy. We also get to see the skills of the character we’re using. It looks like they are flame-based wide-arc attacks. We get grabbed at one point by the gourd-headed enemy and we get an animation where we are sucked using its head which is kinda funny. Combat here can take some time for mini-bosses because they are such damage sponges, though that’s probably because it’s still the early game and our equipment probably sucks. Props to the devs for including a mini-boss that could actually kill you during the tutorial section.
It seems on the right side of the screen there’s a gauge there that builds up as we attack, along with a portrait of our character. I’m not quite sure yet what that gauge is for. Anyway, after the mini-boss fight, we get to walk around a bit, going past what looks like human statues in agonized positions, then triggering a tutorial pop-up asking us to go to the direction these statues are pointing and ring the bell at the end. We then get to walk underneath this one statue where it seems we can press down on the D-pad and ring the bell to reveal a treasure chest. Inside that chest are some coins and a red crystal. After that, we then go up the stairs and there seems to be some glowing thing on the ground. For some reason, our character walks past that and decides to cross the bridge instead. There seems to be another gourd-headed enemy bowing down like he’s worshipping some sort of statue, and we can go past that. I would’ve loved to see our character assassinate that guy from behind but we walk past that guy instead.
Entering the next area immediately triggers a combat sequence against some tiny guy with a straw hat. It seems like we need to rely on skills to really deal significant damage here in the early games because normal attacks do weak damage against these enemies. I also noticed that the AI for our companions is a bit bad because they pretty much just walk past the enemy and run around before deciding to attack. After that, we get to explore again and the scene suddenly shifts. This time we’re inside what looks like an old building with a shrine in the middle. There’s also an unnamed female NPC.
Here, we find out that the main character’s name is Gesar. Helping Zhuo up the shrine will trigger a beautiful cutscene where Zhuo sits in the middle of the hollow tree shrine and lots of blue flowers start blooming all over the place. The shrine then becomes animated as a blue glow envelopes the entire area, slowly giving life to what previously looked like a desolate building. Previously ruined columns get restored and even the landscape outside gets affected with massive tendrils sprouting from the ground as jellyfish-like flying creatures start to show up from out of nowhere. Did I say beautiful? I take it back, it looks creepy now. Some statue turns into a giant blue flower and some creatures that could only be described as mosquito-like unicorns that came from the pits of hell fly by. The scene continues as the glow covers the rest of the landscape and spawns a huge dragon at the end. We’re not going to fight that thing this early on, are we?
Anyways, after the cutscene, we regain control of Gesar and we get to talk to the female NPC before being allowed to climb some ramps. Based on the pop-up that appears after talking to her, It seems we are now able to switch between Gesar and that lady. A tutorial pop-up says that switching characters will trigger an attack from the character you are switching to, and I think this is where the gauge on the right of the screen I mentioned earlier plays a role. When all the gauges are full and the character wheel is blinking, we can trigger a combination attack. After closing the tutorial pop-up, we get to walk past some ghost stumbling around and go outside. As we go outside, we get to see the glowing thing on the ground we saw earlier. We can now interact with it and it’ll allow us to save. This functions very similarly to the bonfire system in the Dark Souls series. Using the bonfire thing allows us to do the following options: Talk to companions, Prepare Potions, an option called Soul Resonance. I guess this is where we can allocate attribute points, rest, and then quit.
After that, we resume walking and we get to switch to the lady character from earlier. Based on the subtitles, her name is Yunji. I noticed that if you go near certain flowers, you’ll be able to pick them up. Probably crafting materials. After a bit of dialogue and walking around, we will trigger a scene where Zhuo clears out the rubble blocking the way allowing us to proceed. Instead of proceeding however, we decide to snipe that freaky mosquito unicorn flying around using Yunji’s bow. This obviously triggers a fight sequence where we immediately switch to Gesar and get impaled. I noticed during the fight that while Gesar has fire-based slash attacks, Yunji has ice-based ranged attacks. I guess elemental weakness will be in play here because using ice attacks dealt a really huge chunk of damage against the mosquito unicorn. While walking around and admiring the landscape since it does look a bit beautiful despite being creepy, we unwittingly trigger another combat sequence, this time with some knight-like enemy with a sword and shield. Its shield is a pain to deal with but at least we get to see what happens when we fully deplete its shield gauge. It kneels down to the ground, vulnerable to attacks, and we can perform a special attack that deals some damage to it.
After dealing with that monster, we finally get to the area where the resurrected dragon is at. A health bar suddenly shows up and an enemy, some gigantic guy with a huge cudgel, comes hurtling from above and crashes right before you. Talk about a dynamic entry. It’s painfully obvious that this is a boss fight since the intense music starts playing as soon as the health bar showed up. It seems this boss is weak against fire damage because Gesar is doing a huge chunk of damage with his fire-based attacks. This boss has two stages, one with the cudgel and the other with his fists. I really don’t know why bosses get more aggressive after they lose their weapons. I mean, why would they carry one in the first place if they’re stronger without it? Anyways, the boss usually deals attacks that cover a significant amount of area. The good thing though, is that this boss is slow, so once you understand its attack patterns, this boss fight will be a cinch.
The boss also does this move after it recovers from being staggered where it’ll lunge at you, grab you, and slam you to the ground before smacking the love out of you so we need to be careful with that. After the boss fight, which we don’t get to finish because the screen turns black before the final blow hits, we get to see a montage of different landscapes we will be exploring in the video, as well as a showcase of the many enemies we will come across which include a two-headed vulture, more gourd heads, a dual-wielding guy with a pointy cap, some plant-like giant, a spear-wielding specter, and a cart with blades attached. It also showcases some characters who I guess will become playable as the story progresses. These include a burly guy who uses a shield and flail and some girl that has a staff that functions like a shotgun. The footage ends with some bird landing on some white-haired guy who looks really chill. This guy is probably going to be really important to the story.
That’s it for our gameplay footage breakdown. So what are your thoughts on this one? DoesBallad of Antaraseem like just another title on the soulslike pile, or do you think it’s bringing enough new elements to the table to stand out? Please let us know in the comments.
Castielle
Senior Editor at Fextralife. I enjoy gaming, playing and watching sports, cooking yummy food, watching a good movie and hanging out with Fex.
