Soaring above Fela: A Tribe Divided, I spotted a huge, icy behemoth roaming the swamps below. It didn’t look that big from here, but I soon discovered it was just far away.
I dashed towards the clearing and struck the beast hard, but it was only wounded and dangerous to remain on the ground.
Monsters in this world control the elements, and cold-blooded creatures begin to stir up a roaring blizzard. But as diamond dust flew through the air, I followed suit, hooking onto a nearby crumbling ruin, clawing back over our battlefield, then somersaulting forward with my ax raised—a swirling whirlwind that stopped the blizzard with one shot .
Everyone wants to hunt monsters, but Monster Hunter isn’t for everyone. There’s a very specific rhythm to it as you meditatively trudge around the fairly limited map, before your character unhurriedly unsheathes their gear and launches their way towards quickly charging creatures (usually flaming chowders). An ant beast or an evil monkey or something) sighed solemnly as he raised his weapon.
And then a lot of games like Monster Hunter – I’m looking at Wild Hearts and Dauntless – comprehensively upped Capcom’s loop, with the same slow stalking stages, huge, heavy weapons, and chunkiness battle.
Yet Fela: A Tribe Divided takes things in a different, fast-paced and free-wheeling direction: taking to the skies.
Set around an open world filled with cloudy rock formations, ruin-strewn deserts, and lush forests, Fela anchors swing points that you can grab with a mysterious rope hook, which then lets you launch yourself into the air or unleash it on enemies. Slingshot attack, or open your wingsuit glider.
Gliders are all lumped in with Breath of the Wild and Kingdom Tears these days, but in Fela it’s actually more like Batman: Arkham Knight in that you can tilt the wings down to gain altitude , then slow down to a regular descent to chart your flight path.
Grapple points are attached to ancient structures scattered throughout Fira, and it can be a bit clunky to get a feel for exactly where you can grapple – especially if you go into the game expecting to start casting your web like Spider-Man. but once you get into its swing You’ll find it’s more like Nematode from Monster Hunter Rise than a superpower (which really makes sense), and it makes for a fun take on the genre.
The alpha version I played at Gamescom 2024 had a really good sense of scale for its world, with different kinds of monsters – each with their own quirks, attacks, and elemental abilities – roaming different biomes.
In the full version of Fela, you’ll be able to hunt three types of monsters: adult monsters, elder monsters, and ancient monsters – but I only had to fight the first two.
Adult creatures are definitely on easy mode. Maybe I’ve been buffed by powerful gear, but just a few well-placed piledrivers sent me over the edge. The elder, who also happened to be a flying monster, was a different story entirely.
Apparently, during development, the Massive Damage team discovered that fighting ground-based enemies was too easy when your tether hook and glider had such a huge movement advantage. This led them to design huge, AoE-centric moves for the monsters, especially the aerial baddies whose attack pattern feels more like a bullet hell shooter than an action RPG.
But once you actually defeat the monsters, carving their flesh into crafting parts also becomes more complicated. Different weapons let you chop off different gruesome parts, which you can then use to power Fela’s survival and town-building mechanics, in which you unite and lead a tribe of people, building and upgrading them. of homes and facilities.
I’ve only seen the beginning of this one, but it seems like another interesting twist on the monster hunting and survival genre, combining a more complex and satisfying combat system than most survival games with a more interactive and Attractive city simulation system found in most role playing games.
I think the key factor for Fela is how smoothly it can weave the different parts together – like finding the crunchy cog between the grapple point and takeoff, or whether city building brings everything to a screeching halt – —But there’s not much time to wait.
“Fera: The Sundered Tribes” will be available on Steam Early Access on September 17th.