I first heard about Omen of Sorrow by playing it at a kiosk in a local Gamestop. This was probably six months ago, but the game just released this month. While I have never spent enough time in any fighting game to get really good at it, fighting games have always held a special attraction for me, and I tend to seek out the obscure to at least try them. Games like Ultra Vortek for the Jaguar, Battle Monsters on Saturn, Shadow Fighter for the Amiga CD32, Way of the Warrior on 3DO, these are all titles that have found their way into my collection over the years. So when there is a new fighting game, especially one that isn’t part of a mainstream franchise, I tend to take an interest.
Omen of Sorrow brings together a variety of characters from folklore — characters like Dracula, Frankenstein, Quasimoto, Dr. Hyde, and a few others that I was not as familiar with. One character, Imhotep, was unique in that his torso could stretch across most of the stage while his lower half stayed stationary. Kind of like Dhalsim from Street Fighter, but Imhotep, a mummy, is able to sustain that reach, kinda cool, Anyhow, a Story Mode, which is split up into three distinct parts, introduces you to all of these characters, given you a chance to play as them and fight against them. The stories within these three separate story modes do have some overlap, and it’s related to the rising of a dangerous entity known as Thalessa, the Invisible Queen of a Dead God, and a book known as the Chronicle of Tears. The story is poorly told, though, including a few voiceovers with a lot of foolishness spoken in an old English dialect. In between fights, the characters also talk a lot to each other, requiring the player to press X to advance the conversation. As with the voiced storytelling, it’s a lot of silliness that I just could not become invested in. On the default difficulty of Medium, the fights were quick and simple, thankfully, speeding up the process of playing through the stories. As an introduction to the characters and the gameplay, the story mode serves its purpose. Plus, at the end of each story mode, players unlock a piece of artwork and a Trophy. Seeing as it only takes a couple of hours to roll through, it’s worthwhile, but it’s not likely to get any replay.
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There is a nicely done Arcade mode for players to check out as well that puts you up against the rest of the roster. In between fights, a map is shown and your player is represented by an icon as they travel to the next fight. Oh, when you first select your character, a written biography of the character is shown, with some vital stats and history, a nice touch. The point system seems a little extreme, with a variety of categories shown at the end of matches that yield points; it’s not uncommon to score a few million points after a single battle. As you play through Arcade mode, more items are unlocked like titles and avatars, which are used on your profile in multiplayer. All told, there are over two hundred things to unlock in Omen of Sorrow, including ninety-six pieces of character art, twenty-four environmental art, and nine miscellaneous art (three of which you get from beating the three story modes). There is also a survival mode that puts you up against waves of enemies, and a local versus mode, too. A detailed practice/training mode is offered, as well as online play complete with avatars and titles and rankings, but in my few attempts to find someone to play with, I was unsuccessful.
So, all this, but what about the fighting gameplay? Well, for the casual fighter, you can be successful against the CPU with just aggressive button-mashing. By that I mean not having to hit the buttons furiously, but instead just by foregoing defense and constantly mixing up your attacks, which include light/heavy punches and light/heavy kicks, along with a throw button. There is also a EX button, R2, used for doing some special moves and extra-special ones call Decimation attacks. A lot of these require half circles on the analog stick or otherwise controller input that I’m not adept at doing reliably, so, I wasn’t executing these moves very often (and sometimes when I did, it was by surprise). The deeper part of the fighting system comes in the form of cancels and working with the Fortune and Fate system. It’s too bad these are not explained up front, or during the Story mode, but the idea is that heavy offensive players give you more Fortune while playing too defensively can lead to a Fate that involves being surrounded by a purple color and being “Doomed,” while also not being able to perform some attacks. Meanwhile, if you’re Blessed, a blue hue surrounds your player and you’re able to pull off Bold Cancels against your foe for several seconds. With the lack of clear instruction in these, and having a hard time becoming invested in playing, I didn’t explore this fighting system much.
Presentation quality isn’t great, but it’s serviceable. The backgrounds are inspired by the 1600-1700s era Europe that many of these characters are known from. My favorite was a large wooden windmill that was engulfed in flames, but there are also other backgrounds like graveyards and the inside of a bell tower (Quasimoto‘s stage). The backgrounds all have some form of animation or motion in them that makes them more interesting than had they not had those. Character animations aren’t bad, but the characters themselves feel somehow separate from the stage, like they’re just dropped into the stage and not really a part of it. Similarly, the audio is more functional than memorable, but it gets the job done.
Omen of Sorrow offers a lot of modes, unlocks, characters, and some decent fighting elements, but it doesn’t quite have the polish or draw to keep me invested. For genre fans, though, it’s worth checking into.
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