Clash: Artifacts of Chaos Critic Reviews

Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is an interesting mix of ideas, most of them familiar, with some unique twists. The hand-to-hand combat focus is good, although it takes a lot of experimentation to do everything right. The world is intriguing and surprising, especially when it comes to character and enemy design. This is a hard game and any sentient enemy can become a big problem fast. But the biggest issue with the game is how confusing it can be to move through the world, especially when doubling back through already known areas. Clash: Artifacts of Chaos rewards patience and quick reflexes and shows how being extra weird can make a game memorable.

Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is the classic game from ACE Team: stylistically splendid, it requires the player to accept its peculiar dynamics in order to truly appreciate it.

The return to Zenozoik will please gamers looking for something different from the ordinary in terms of atmosphere, visuals, and overall vibe. The gameplay, however, has issues that, on occasion, can prove to be frustrating.

Clash: Artifacts of Chaos offers a beautiful new rendition of Zenozoik with suitable fisticuffs against whacky creatures, offset by awfully circuitous traversal and repetitive gameplay.

Beautifully different action game. It's not perfect and there are some things that could be improved, but you will find original elements and interesting moments that are worth it. It's a shame that the various distractions make the game less enjoyable and can be frustrating. However, if you want an unusual combat and action experience, you will definitely get it here.

A spiritual successor to the Zeno Clash franchise, Clash: Artifacts of Chaos preserves and extends those games’ trademark weirdness. Clash: Artifacts of Chaos takes some chances and adds some interesting mechanics to the action game formula. Not everything works, unfortunately, and the game can be striking, engrossing, and frustrating in equal measure. I loved the game’s singular art direction, day/night mechanic, and more, but the combat is a mixed bag. Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is almost, but not quite, worth playing for its art alone.

Clash’s brilliantly surreal world is hampered by uncompromising combat and level design.

As funny as setting enemies against each other is, however, it doesn’t make Clash: Artifacts of Chaos’ combat any more enjoyable – which makes it pretty similar to the rest of the game. It’s awkward, it’s clunky, it never fully explains itself, and I strongly suspect that that’s the case whether you’ve played older Zeno Clash games or not.

Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is a somewhat unique game. Especially thanks to its visual style, which gives it its own identity. The voice-acting is also very strong and the combat can be called interesting, but it stops there. Indeed, the elaboration of this is not good and the interface is a disaster. Then you have the poorly mixed-up music and the artefact based combat gameplay leans a little too much on luck, which starts to annoy pretty quickly. Bottom line: the concept is cool, the execution leaves much to be desired.