Vampire Survivorsis nearly endlessly replayable. The constant flow of dopamine as you anticipate those level-ups, the satisfaction of clearing an entire screen, the jazzy music as you open chests for instant upgrades - everything seems fine-tuned to satisfy. It has you chasing the dragon for bigger, better sensations. While most of the content added to the game is free of charge, we’re now onto our second paid (but still eye-wateringly cheap) DLC pack, Tides of the Foscari.
Like Legacy of the Moonspell before it, Tides the of Foscari adds a huge new map and a host of characters, weapons, and beasties along with it. In a way, it can feel like a reskin of the previous DLC, but Foscari has a strong identity of its own. It hearkens back to the days of traditional fantasy RPGs - the first three characters you unlock invoke the Mage/Fighter/Rogue trifecta of yore, and the setting is a forest situated near a magical school. Vampire Survivors wields nostalgia as a weapon, bashing you over the head with quaint references that have you grinning with delightful recognition.
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The highlight of the DLC is the character roster. Most of the time, your choice of character in Vampire Survivors affects very little - a starting weapon and a unique stat spread do little to stop you from picking up your favourite builds and bruising through the time limit in largely the same way as the previous eight runs. Foscari’s characters are interesting, though. Take Eleanor, the mage character - as she hits certain level milestones, specific magical weapons will spawn around her, mimicking the old-school RPGs where you’d learn new spells as you ground (grinded?) against enemies. When you level them all up, you can unite them into a single, all-powerful spell. You can unlock these spells for other characters, but only Eleanor gets to guarantee all three of them in her runs. This shows that developer Poncle is willing to experiment with its implementation of certain features to keep things interesting, which adds nice variety when you consider how huge the character list already is.
The new map, too, is great at evoking these feelings of ‘80s fantasy nostalgia. It has forest mazes filled with goodies, a small village of toadstool houses, and even a jut of land that practicallyscreams‘fishing minigame’ where only dolphin-like enemies will spawn. It speaks to an understanding of the era it’s trying to stuff into its Vampire Survivors-shaped box.
It’s a pity then that it doesn’t do more interesting things with the setting. Sure, there are lots of secrets to discover throughout the new map, but I still found it to lack interactivity. The moment I stepped into the forest, I was thrown back to a childhood of frustrating magic forest puzzles in Golden Sun and the Zelda games, but this time the forest is a simple maze. There is a static flame power-up next to the toadstool village - I wondered if there would be something to unlock if you burned down the houses, but all my testing (and I tried this every time I played the map) led to naught. There might be more secrets hidden around the level, but either I was too dim to find them, or they’re entirely too esoteric.
Tides of the Foscari is more of the same, and that might be all it needs to be. The new map is pretty, the characters are fun to play with and have great stage tracks, and one of the new enemies is just a Mari Lwyd, so my lil’ Welsh heart is more than satisfied. While some aspects of the DLC feel like missed opportunities to play with the Vampire Survivors formula, the new additions are welcome.
