Rebuild someone else’s empire as you search for your beloved after the Fall! Was Smelter worth it?
Table of Contents
Background
Smelter is a combination city-builder and sidescrolling 2D platformer with a fourth-wall breaking narrative. Your player character, Eve, starts off at the fall of humanity. Along the way, she meets the titular Smelter, who becomes her armor and co-opts her into helping him restore his empire.
The game takes place on two battlefields: an overworld map where you gradually build outward, and the platforming sections. Combat takes place in both sections; you’ll hack and slash in the platforming and shoot enemies with the joystick on the world map while maintaining and constructing buildings.
The platforming gimmick in this one is that you can use Smelter’s spooky green hand to interact with the environment and occasionally enemies. There are also three different armors: Megaman X, the quick electric armor, and the slow earth armor.
What does Smelter do well?
The obvious analogue to Smelter is Actraiser, and while this is an obvious homage, credit for tackling such an ambitious concept. The aesthetic is cute and the game looks good. The music is particular great; very evocative of classic SNES titles. There’s a good amount of enemy diversity and the various biomes are clearly different.
What could Smelter do better?
Initially, I disliked the platforming sections. I would also grow to dislike the overworld sections as well.
I play a lot of sidescrollers, and none of them seem as slow as Smelter. Movement feels glacial in this game. What’s worse is that mobility upgrades are locked to specific armors. You want to spin dash? It’s on the electric armor. You’d rather double jump? Sorry, that’s only on the earth armor.
You’ll traverse the stages and instantly puzzle out how to get from here to there the fastest way, but that’s not always possible because of the way the different armors work. The stages are never impossible, but are often tedious.
Unfortunately, you’d better learn to like the platforming if you’re going to make any meaningful upgrades, because you need macguffins from trials. Some of these trials are relatively easy (sneak past enemies), while others are just aggravating (don’t take a single hit against rooms of ranged enemies). Don’t get it twisted though, none of the trials are fun, and stopping to try and clear one is the game flow equivalent of suddenly slamming on the brakes. The platforming sections are all-or-nothing; despite the presence of checkpoints you can’t quit to come back later.
World map woes
The overworld straddles a rare line between overly simple and obtuse. At one point I kept failing a mission because I didn’t realize that I needed to actually drag balls of energy to my towers. The AI is slow when it comes to responding to fights and I frequently found myself needing to babysit. I found myself going back into dungeons just to avoid the consistent trickle of overworld fights that my pathetic army was half-heatedly fending off. On that subject, why can’t Smelter, a literal flying object, move over water?
Humor (or lack thereof)
Smelter (both the game and the character) thinks it’s an absolute riot on the story front, but I consistently found the humor annoying, in a Borderlands way. Perhaps if I’d been having a better time I would have been more receptive, but the story beats are non-negotiable pop ups in the middle of gameplay on a regular basis. Just grin and button mash through more of Smelter’s “jokes.”
Was Smelter fun?
I dropped this game a few hours in. I definitely remember the point where I had hardened my resolve to keep playing so I could write an accurate review.
Is Smelter good value?
Physical copies may be hard to come by for a decent price. This goes for $20 normally, and has gone for half price before. The sheer novelty of the title does go a long way towards assigning value to this title, but it’s pretty short and I can’t see anyone actually wanting to replay it.
Who is this game for?
Actraiser fans may want to check this out to scratch that itch.
Was Smelter worth it?
Smelter is fundamentally based on another game that did everything first and better. Actraiser pretty much exists at a table by itself, and Smelter doesn’t have the chops to sit with it. You might be drawn in by the novelty, but this game’s design philosophy feels as though it was stuck in the 16-bit era. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to try it just out of sheer curiosity. However, I didn’t enjoy Smelter and don’t recommend it.
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