AI Limit is a new Soulslike from Sense Games that may well be asking the same questions Nier Automata asked years ago, but in an even more obtuse way, if such a thing is possible. I rarely play Soulslikes with an ear to the narrative – often the narrative is just a framework for environmental storytelling that lets us form our own theories – but I struggled to find anything that felt truly coherent in AI Limit’s story.
It’s in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world that drips Anime vibes from every pore. The world was destroyed by a machine uprising, leaving enhanced warriors known as Bladers to defend the dregs of humanity as everything circles the drain with a sedentary yet inevitable pace. You play as Arissa, one such Blader who’s a deadly warrior despite having the appearance of a 13-year-old girl. I don’t know why. Because Anime, I guess.
There’s the usual flavour text on equipment, cryptic mumblings from NPCs, and the general sense that someone has a grasp of the story but hasn’t been quite able to convey it clearly. By the tenth hour I’d more or less stopped worrying about it and just coasted along on the rather enjoyable gameplay.
As Soulslikes go it’s pretty formulaic. You defeat enemies to stack currency for levelling up your individual stats at save points here known Branches. The currency is called Mud, which is a kind of meta-substance that powers machinery like it’s magic. When you die, you lose a portion of the currency and respawn at a Branch, which also allow you to teleporter, upgrade your weapons, and modify your Seals.
Seals tie directly into the Stamina system, which is fairly interesting. Building up momentum adds increased damage to Arissa’s attacks, and allows her to use certain abilities like long-range spells, a parry shield, and perfect dodges. If this synchronicity becomes unstable she will hit with less force and speed, and struggle to parry effectively. Different Seals affect your Absorption rate and how much of this energy you hold on to when you’re in combat.
As with most good Souslikes, combat often feels like a dance, and once you begin to nail timings and reactions, learning to read the enemy and react to their actions, AI Limit becomes more and more enjoyable. But the issues I have with it stem not from the difficulty – although it is incredibly punishing at times – but from the level design. It’s all so industrialised and grey, so much so that areas blur together in the mind and remembering where you last saw an NPC or side route you didn’t take becomes increasingly difficult. It doesn’t feel as intuitively laid out as most of the best in the genre, and areas loop round on themselves in sometimes infuriating ways, when you think you’ve found a new route only to wander in a circle and achieve nothing.
And while the difficulty of mob-enemies is mostly manageable, there are times when the mix is just a little off and you’re trying to deal a super fast melee enemy while being hammered from range, with little cover, and Arissa always feeling squishy no matter your choice of gear or stats. Besides a base damage increase I rarely felt I was ever getting much stronger or more durable, and my choice of armour seemed to be more cosmetic than anything. Which kind of makes sense when half the armour is made up of various anime fetish costumes like a maid outfit or a bunny suit.
Melee weapons are interesting though, with a variety of swords, Greatswords, dual daggers, halberds, drills, and clubs. You can equip two at a time and enhance them separately using special items you’ll find all around the game world or cleave from defeated enemies. There’s also a smattering of merchants, vending machines, and NPCs to offer services and items, although the latter are a cryptic bunch even by the standards of the genre. They’ll show up in random places and then vanish, leaving you with nonsensical warnings or exposition that I struggled to parse.
What you end up with is an almost pure combat Soulslike. Arissa is voiced and can converse with NPCs, but the focus here is on the fighting. Bosses present huge difficulty spikes but call on what you’ve learned in ways that make each one satisfying even if you’re dying multiple times. Unlike most games in the genre though, you can’t reclaim lost Mud, and you’ll just lose a portion for every death, which feels markedly more punishing than having a corpse run mechanic. It means that when the environment works against you (this game loves its narrow ledges and jump-scare enemies) you can lose a lot of XP progress just through bad luck. The framerate on PC doesn’t help in some areas either, as it can tank suddenly and make everything feel more difficult. On a 4070 RTX that runs Assassin’s Creed Shadows seamlessly, I would expect a little more.
AI Limit is a fun game when you’re not tangling with the camera, framerate, or iffy level design. The combat is slick and fast and the gear and skill systems work well enough, and it has the usual level of secret hunting that evokes exploration. Some elements don’t quite click the way they should though, and despite some pretty visuals and a large world to explore, it can’t quite stand alongside the best in the genre.
