Dustborn

The Good
The art direction of Dustborn is a solid one. Drawing strong inspirations from comic books, it doesn't fall into the trap of looking like yet another Borderlands-wannabe. The menus, world, characters, and visual effects combine into a cohesive mix of "cool".

A diverse cast of characters are lined up for you to get to know, some more intimately than others. If you are interested in a diverse cast, this might offer new characters for you to love.

The setting is interesting, leaning on an alternate timeline of the United States that diverges at JFK's assassination. It's ultimately a setting of "people with paranormal vocal powers" against the regime, which is easy to get into.

The music featured in the game is also generally on-point. As it moonlights as a Guitar Hero-esque rhythm game, the songs that your "band" performs are catchy.

The Bad
The story brushes past some pretty important moments or issues, some where the characters may behave uncharacteristically.

While the cast is diverse, there are some moments I wouldn't necessarily include, contradicting their religion or gender identity. This is nit-picky, however, but it felt weird to have such an inclusive cast with these few contradictions.

This might be a user error, but in the rhythm game, I felt like the beats were delayed. While I felt I were pressing the buttons on beat with the rhythm, I would only get "perfect" if I delayed a short moment. Prior to the initial rhythm portion, I was tasked to synchronize my input, so it could be a user error.

While the voice acting is pretty good, there are some segments where the audio levels renders the dialogue very quiet. Thankfully, there are subtitles.

The Bottom Line
The writing has some serious themes, but is mostly a somewhat whimisical and humorous story. It features themes surrounding language, misinformation, manipulation, and growing as an individual.

It feels like the characters and their powers weren't utilized fully. Especially during combat encounters, I tended to gravitate toward the same options over and over again, as there were little reason not to. I think it could also be interesting to have more agency over which characters you brought to a fight, as there were some combo moves between the lead character, Pax, and her companions.

In terms of complexity, the game is of an entry-level difficulty. You spend a majority walking around and talking to various characters and yourself. There are combat and rhythm segments with low intensity, and various combat encounters can be entirely skipped.

In the end, I wanted to explore a game from a Norwegian studio that featured a diverse cast. I am aware of certain critique of the game, but wanted to form my own opinion. If you're not interested in queer themes or other "woke" ideas, I would look for other games. As for me, I found the gameplay engaging enough, the art style and sound delightful, and the story mostly entertaining. I think it's a "just fine" kind of game. Nothing groundbreaking, but I found it fun. (I would give it a 3,5 score if I could.)