Like any soulslike fan, I’m quite accustomed to the process of dying over and over again until I’ve mastered a tough section, but playing through AI Limit was the first time I felt that sense of learned repetition before I’d even died at all. That’s because, aside from its anime-inspired art style and a few minor abilities you unlock throughout the story, this by-the-numbers adventure is without question the most milquetoast and unimaginative game I’ve played in the genre. It pit me against boring and meager enemies, laughably wimpy bosses I was largely able to stomp dead without issue, and a story with almost as little to say as its dull protagonist. In fairness, there’s not much especially awful about what AI Limit is doing (apart from its regular crashes and bugs that send you falling through the floor mid boss fight), but there’s almost nothing worthy of praise across this forgettable journey, either.
AI Limit is set in a vague sci-fi universe where society has collapsed due to mysterious circumstances and is now overrun with a bizarre black mud that is both toxic to all life and a delicious meal you eat to regain your health. As an android called a Blader, you were created for the sole purpose of restoring the world back to balance, which you do by killing almost everything you see. You’ll unquestioningly run around the ruins of a civilization that apparently used a book of genre tropes as a blueprint, complete with a sewer that serves as the tutorial and a poison swamp level that’s mandatorily included per the Miyazaki Accords of 2011 – an actual, legally binding statute that’s so evidently real you don’t even need to bother Googling it. The robotic nature of your Blader also provides a convenient excuse for them to never exhibit even mild character traits as they speak in a monotone voice throughout the 30-hour adventure. Having a hazy setting and a forgettable protagonist isn’t exactly unique to this type of game, but if the non-fantasy setting had you hoping this might be one of the ways in which AI Limit breaks that mold: Nah.
The action is largely an impression of better soulslikes.
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The actual action is largely an impression of better soulslikes. You’ll split your time between exploring dark and dangerous places, fending off smaller enemies as you work your way to the next bonfire-like checkpoint (in this case, branches sprouting out of the ground), and confronting big, menacing bosses with long health bars and deadly attacks. But that familiar structure underwhelms almost immediately here thanks to a lack of enemy variety, samey and empty levels, and combat that’s overly simplistic and unchallenging. You’ll swing melee weapons several times larger than your body, loose spells that shoot fire, lightning, and more at your opponents, and, of course, dodge roll and parry to keep yourself alive. But while there’s not much unique to be found in AI Limit’s combat, the few new things it tries are mostly good ideas that make me wish it took more risks.
The biggest of these mechanics is the Sync Rate bar, which fills up as you do damage and is drained when you use spells or get hurt. The higher your Sync Rate, the more damage you’ll do – but if you take too many hits or use too many spells, you’ll find yourself in a weakened state, unable to use many of your abilities until you land some blows. That rewards cautious play and allows you to cut through boss fights more quickly if you manage to avoid damage while you press the attack. It’s also nice to determine how often you can use your spells by how well you play instead of being limited by a mana meter or something like that. AI Limit even ditches the stamina bar entirely (a genre staple I largely find annoying), letting you attack without fear of running out of steam so long as you are paying attention to your Sync Rate.
There’s also a pretty neat system where you unlock four special powers that you can freely swap between in the middle of combat, like turning one of your arms into a shield or switching on an ability that lets you make short, quick dashes from place to place. Unfortunately, the first of these abilities that you get allows you to parry enemy attacks, and there’s almost no reason to switch to any of the other powers once you have it since almost everything can be pretty reliably parried, utterly devastating the enemy. So while toggling between these to do some interesting stuff in the middle of combat is a great concept, fights rarely play out that way.
Bosses only very rarely have interesting designs.
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You’ll mostly encounter the same handful of aliens that look like leftover costumes from the monsters in Stranger Things and generic robots with identical attack patterns, all of which are easily avoided or parried with little trouble; plus they almost always come at you one at a time. Boss fights are largely straightforward, too, with extremely telegraphed moves that can (once again) be easily parried, stopping those big bads in their tracks as they forget what they were doing for several seconds while you slash away half their health. Bosses also only very rarely have interesting designs, like one that’s just a flying version of the same Stranger Things monsters you’ve already been fighting, and then many are disappointingly recycled, either by almost immediately being reintroduced as common foot soldiers or when they are just straight up reused in another boss fight later on.
TieGuyTravis' Soulslikes Ranked by Difficulty
It’s unfortunate, because there are times where AI Limit clearly shows promise, like later in the story when the generic, slow-moving bosses very occasionally make way for engaging battles against fellow Bladers. Their movesets are more interesting and challenging, and they have their own Sync Rate bars that must be depleted through attacks and parries in order to reduce the amount of damage they do and open them up to devastating finishing moves. There’s also one or two encounters where AI Limit tries new stuff, like a fight against a giant robot that sits at the end of the room trying to blast you with deadly lasers, and the only way to defeat it is by destroying the electrical equipment powering it as you cut through its minions. But these fights are few and far between, leaving you to slap around the much less interesting, big, ugly, slow moving enemies that make up the bulk of the boss fights most of the time.
Another thing that holds AI Limit back pretty significantly is how buggy it is. I had at least a dozen crashes, got stuck in the environment in ways that caused me to twitch bizarrely, fell right through the floor during boss fights, and once even continuously respawned over and over again at a save point that threw me through the map until I went to the PlayStation dashboard and closed the app. Some of these crashes happened when I was quite deep into exploring an area and far away from a checkpoint, forcing me to start over again through no fault of my own and lose materials in the process. In fact, nearly all of my most frustrating deaths came from straight up glitches, rather than fighting bad guys. That’s not exactly the kind of difficulty I was hoping for.
