33 Immortals couldn’t be further from Spiritfarer if it tried. Developer Thunder Lotus made an impression with its cozy and, at times, tear-jerking management and platforming mash-up, but is trading its glistening seas and carefree exploration for a far more dangerous expedition. 33 Immortals is all about action, thrusting you and over 30 others other players into chaotic PvE skirmishes and even greater challenges as you attempt to ascend through the different floors of the underworld and wage a rebellion against the forces that keep you there.
33 Immortals attempts to distill the rush of an MMO raid into smaller, run-based encounters that you can participate in with up to 32 other players. Each run starts on a relatively large map that revolves around PvE encounters. You’re encouraged to quickly link up with other players in order to survive, while also empowering yourself by killing enemies and collecting resources for upgrades. Dotted around the map are 12 Torture Chambers, which are your initial objectives to tackle. These combat arenas only allow six players in at a time but through two intense waves of enemies at you in a confined space. Clearing these rooms offer rewards, but also work towards the greater goal of unlocking an ascension challenge. The stakes shift here, with a more involved combat encounter waiting for a larger group of 11 players. Those remaining outside can use the time to continue getting stronger before attempting the challenge too, with the final, climatic boss fight waiting once everyone still alive manages to succeed.
The structure that each run follows offers an easy to understand process that you need to follow to ultimately succeed, stripping out a lot of the guesswork usually associated with raid-like activities in games like Destiny and World of Warcraft. This not only allows runs to be significantly shorter, but also means you can easily hop in and out of sessions without having to commit potentially a few hours at a time to make progress. This streamlining is exactly what 33 Immortals is aiming to achieve, but right now it comes with the caveat of reducing your focus solely down to its combat, which doesn’t yet exude a level of depth that suggests it’ll be enough to carry run after run.
It’s easy to feel weak when setting out on your first few runs in 33 Immortals, but this feels by design. Cooperative play isn’t optional: It’s required. Attempting to traverse the PvE areas alone won’t get you far, as even small groups of enemies present significant challenges to your survivability. Your combat abilities also rely on synergizing without other player classes, each of which is determined by the weapon you select before each run. At this stage, there are four weapons available: a greatsword that can deal and block a lot of damage, a bow that lets you fire and recall projectiles through enemies, a magical staff that prioritizes slowing enemies down, and a pair of daggers that let you quickly cut down foes. Each weapon also has an associated ultimate ability that requires two other players to trigger when cast, further establishing teamwork as the only means of utilizing your full skill set.
No singular weapon makes you feel like you can tackle every enemy you encounter, but the ways in which they determine loose class-based play is lost in the chaos of the frantic and fast action. It’s difficult to parse what other players are doing at times, especially in Torture Chambers where space is extremely limited. This diminishes the ability to effectively work off the strengths and weapon choices of other characters, which might only become more of an issue as additional aspects of each weapon are unlocked. That’s coupled with movement that can feel sluggish at times, and a dash with a range that is too limited and a cooldown that is far too long to make use of when you really need it.
There’s a roguelite element to each run, too, in that various buffs and gear will disappear once you return to your camp after death. Altars around the world let you trade in resources you collect from killing enemies for boosts to health, damage, and more. You can also collect gear of various rarities, each with their own abilities, that you similarly lose at the end of a run. Permanent upgrades are acquired through completing feats: challenges that are collected into groups assigned to different weapon types, specific world interactions, and basic actions that you’ll likely complete without giving much thought. The list of feats is extensive, with each category featuring a subset of six other categories, each with three or more challenges to complete. 33 Immortals makes it clear that progress is intrinsically tied to completing feats, which unlock permanent buffs to your health, damage, and weapon abilities. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of them, however, and it’s slightly disheartening that a weapon’s feats only unlock after you’ve completed a run with it, negating any progress you might have initially made.
It is, however, difficult to make a firm judgment on an experience that is clearly designed to keep you engaged for a long time, as you slowly improve your abilities and weapons in order to more easily make your way through each level and its associated bosses. The content on offer is also limited, with the first two of three stages unlocked, and most tutorials missing still. There’s a strong sense that Thunder Lotus has established this base experience to really test its approach to condensing a raid experience, and will hopefully be making bold and sweeping changes to the elements that don’t work. The limited time ahead of the game’s early-access launch just gave me a sense of the ideas 33 Immortals is attempting, and it left me wanting to explore it more. But it also made clear that there’s already work to be done to make each run a more engaging experience.