On very rare occasions, every half-decade or so, when the planets and stars align, there comes a game that is so excellently done in its every aspect that it’s near-impossible to criticize. These games are usually ones with fancy current-generation graphics by huge companies with the best voice actors and motion capture money can buy, such as the case with the recently-released Psychonauts 2, Bayonetta 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles. Imagine how bizarre it is that this new game in the pantheon is a $20 2D indie game made by one man. Call me an elitist, but I generally look over indie games because they run out of game too fast and don’t have the big expansive worlds or the Crispin Freeman like the big boys, yet here we are with Iconoclasts, a game that manages to reach the heights of its strongest peers.
Iconoclasts' brilliance hits you front and center starting with its story. It takes place on a planet held together by Ivory, a multi-purpose fuel source that makes up pretty much everything, so much so that sucking ivory out of anything creates detritus dust. A world regime called The One Concern controls the planet’s ivory usage and implements a caste system in which everyone is assigned a job and it’s taboo to do one you weren’t assigned. Players take control of Robin, who secretly repairs machinery when she is not an assigned engineer, which gets her family in trouble and kickstarts a plot full of twists, turns, new friends, new enemies, exciting action sequences and explorations of complacency, belief and the unknown, culminating in one of the most well-told stories I’ve ever experienced in a game.
Robin is a silent protagonist, something I feel many games don’t do right. Gordon Freeman always seems like he’s being roped into situations even if he doesn’t want to be involved and Samus has cursory character moments at best until Other M, but Robin is very much her own character. She’s expressive, showing compassion, bravery and character development through pantomiming and the occasional Guitar Hero 3-style picture speech bubbles. Her implicit dialogue is gotten across with the dialogue of other characters talking to her in the same charming way as the Mario RPGs.
The plot is complimented by the world it takes place in. Iconoclasts is a master class in seamless world building, as every plot point and character coincides with previously-established plot points and characters. Many details are both told and shown to the player through the environments, NPCs in the game world and the narrative itself. A perfect example early on is when Robin meets the people of the Isilugar, a colony in an underwater base hiding from the One Concern, who call them pirates. The people of Isilugar use ivory without authorization to grow otherworldly plants with round leaves while everything native to the actual planet is square in its geometry. Their culture puts a high value on having kids and they have their own save point marker depicting their religious figurehead different from the one on the surface portraying the One Concern’s figurehead. This kind of attention to detail is consistent throughout the game.
The super powered agents the One Concern has on their side are an intimidating force for the narrative, but rather than just being a group of elite soldiers to fight for the sake of an exciting story, their body composition, treatment by the One Concern and vulnerability are all well-established. At no point in the story does something seem thrown in to be there. Everything has a purpose and detail.
Iconoclasts keeps its themes consistent as well. True to the title, Robin is an iconoclast in her society, but she's not the only one, as that theme of rebellion is all over the game. Her companion Mina is almost certainly a lesbian in her society that values procreation, a group of kids raised under orders not to travel outside of a certain place eventually do and even the One Concern gets their own Starscream and deserters as the story goes on. Robin’s other ally Royal, meanwhile, keeps trying to use his privilege in the One Concern as the figurehead’s son to help Robin, but keeps making matters worse by complying with them when push comes to shove, not helped by him being clueless to the fact that the One Concern doesn’t hold him in high regard. Iconoclasts makes its messages clear with real world parallels, hammering home that faith shouldn’t be blind and that not everything should be taken at face value, culminating in one of the wildest, yet absolutely brilliant, thematically appropriate end-game twists I've ever seen and I've played every Danganronpa and Zero Escape game.
This is all helped by the brilliant ways the game tells the story. Comparing Robin’s means of communication to Mario RPGs wasn’t the only similarity with those games. Text is punctuated and spelled out in different fonts combined with subtle character animations for maximum effect that evokes emotion so well that voice acting would be to its detriment, something I almost never say about any game. There are no sequences of talking heads and the cutscenes are always dynamic. The game paces itself so that you get all the story you need, but since it has visual storytelling down pat to work alongside the dialogue, it never gets long-winded.
It’s a story that made me smile entire way through. It hit every note and emotional beat, with enjoyable, well-developed characters that quite frankly should be getting the crossovers and merchandise instead of Shovel Knight. Just put Robin in Super Smash Brothers and distinguish her from the dual-gendered one with the name “Cool Robin.”
With how much I’ve rambled about the story you’d be forgiven for thinking that I was leading up to some kind of big “but” with regards to the gameplay not living up to its hype, but the gameplay is just as good.
Iconoclasts also succeeds in Metroidvania run-and-gun action platforming with flying colors. Throughout the game Robin gets her hands on 3 different weapons with different properties that play into navigating environments and their puzzles.
The shooting action is so good that I put it on the level of Metal Slug. Every weapon has its own satisfying impact as it blasts enemies and bosses (usually non-lethally, according to the game). Moving through the environments is a breeze and getting from point A to point B always requires a bit of navigation on the mini-map, but never ridiculous detours. Enemies are an obstacle, but once you know how to deal with them they're defeated fast enough for it be a smooth trek that makes it all the more gratifying, just as explorative platforming should be.
While Robin’s big wrench is a melee weapon to spice things up in the combat, it gets more functions, as the game goes on, to spice up travel as well, particularly once it gets the power to hold an electric charge and travel along wires that lead into whole other environment puzzles on their own. Exploration is mostly in service to the story, but on the side, Robin can collect special materials out of chests that can be used at workbenches set up by an insurgency to craft “tweaks” such as longer breathing underwater, twirling the wrench for longer or nullifying damage once. Tweaks are less game changers and more lifelines. You can only equip 3 and they are disabled one by one when you are hit until you can collect enough fragments off of breaking objects and enemies. They’re something you don’t need to beat the game, but can adjust things a little to help with something you might be struggling with, but since getting hit nullifies them, the game still expects you to play well.
There’s never a dull moment with Iconoclasts. When you’re not shooting at enemies with weapons that are fun to use you’re figuring out environment puzzles, collecting crafting materials and navigating where to go next. When you’re not doing any of that, you’re fighting one of the game's many bosses, which are a highlight of a game that’s nothing but highlights.
Every boss is an intense treat and each requires a different strategy, oftentimes involving a gimmick not seen with any other boss. They range from gigantic digging machines to a duel with one of the Concern’s major agents to a previously-fought boss being mind controlled as an attack puppet for another boss with previously-established story elements. Each one is wholly unique from each other, often multi-phased and combines the run-and-gun action with perfect music selection to make for some of the best bosses I’ve ever gone up against in a 2D game and I’ve played a great many Metroid and Castlevania games. To boot, almost all of them add to the story or world building in some way or are at the very least foreshadowed. Much like with the narrative, almost no boss feels thrown in for the sake of having one, something I can’t quite say about many bosses in other games, in which they’re defeated and never or barely mentioned before or after fighting them.
As insinuated in the opening to this review, I am hard-pressed to find a single thing to not like about Iconoclasts. I guess there was one dialogue exchange in the story that was a little too on-the-nose, but that’s one in a several-hour-long story. I guess the tower level was a little bit annoying with having to navigate which of the handful of elevators go where, but it's not so bad if you really buckle down and look at the map. I guess the bonus bosses are vague in how you find them, but Iconoclasts does a better job at hinting at what to do than most of its peers in that regard and the bonus bosses have their own story nuggets so that’s not big demerit. I guess it could’ve had more post-game content, but with bonus bosses and different boss rushes plus materials to find for 100% completion, you already get more out of it than the 20 dollars or less you pay for it. Any negativity I have for the game is mild and passes quickly.
It might be the second best purely 2D action game I’ve ever played and the single best one of the last decade. That is a lofty statement, but while most of such games I’ve played excel in a few areas, Iconoclasts excels in all. From the story to the music to the gameplay to the environments to the style to the little touches all over, Iconoclasts is a masterpiece. I’ve played it on both the PC and Vita and it was just as great the second time, running flawlessly on both. I give Iconoclasts a 10 out of 10, the first such score on the Shonen Otaku Corner.
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