Story

The story of Ritual: Sorcerer Angel follows a resurrected angel named…Angel…on his quest to reach Hell. Angel is an anti-hero who seems to be an enemy to the gods and on a quest to destroy the world, but the ones that stand in your way don’t seem to be very good themselves. The very people that resurrected and then tried to sacrifice you refer to themselves as Cultists and don creepy plague masks. In Ritual: Sorcerer Angel, evil and good are not black and white. While the story runs a little slow and then fast at times, its running theme of trying to figure out if you really are the bad guy in all of this held my attention throughout my playthrough.

Gameplay

The gameplay can best be described as addictive chaotic spell-casting pinball. Moving your finger around the left side of the screen changes Angel’s running direction, while pressing buttons on the right side casts your preset spells. Once the level starts, massive amounts of enemies start to fill up the screen and you must avoid, stab, and cast spells to defeat them. It’s all about strategic crowd control. As you progress from level to level, you attain new skills and spells. Customizing them to fit each level’s enemies is really fun and becomes crucial when you get stuck. Learning how to adapt to each level’s environment also becomes a gameplay factor because some have enemy-killing fire traps and others have spikes coming from the ground to avoid. Rather than getting annoyed or overwhelmed when there was an influx of enemies on the screen, I really enjoyed it because that meant more explosions and chances to strategize how I could use the environment with my spells. Another interesting mechanic is that you start at an experience level of 1 at the start of each new level. In order to level-up your experience and defeat the higher-level enemies, you must quickly find and defeat lower-level enemies. If you die, it’s back to experience level 1. However, if you are able to make it back to the spot where you died, you can get your lost experience levels back.

Graphics

The sprites and environments are high-res and run beautifully during gameplay. I was surprised that I never experienced any lag, even when the screen was filled with enemies and I was running around shooting fireballs 360°. While the characters and environments are cute, the overall art direction is dark and muted. I love games with that juxtaposition. The brief cutscenes and character portraits that display during dialogue are just as enjoyable to look at. *mwuah*

Soundtrack

I can best describe the soundtrack as an afterthought. It mainly consisted of low and slow beats, with angelic singing cues here and there. Even when I messed with the game’s settings and turned the music volume up, I never really noticed it. That’s not to say that I couldn’t hear it, it just never really stood out to me or rose high enough over the surplus amount of combat sounds. Not bad, just didn’t stand out.

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Overall Freeze Score