High fantasy, low fantasy, apocalypse, elves, dwarves, raiders, cannibals, infinity +1 sword, magic boogaloo- Western RPG tropes just being RPG tropes. Even if you get a few trope-bending games like Anachronox, Torment, Arcanum, Jade Empire or Kingdom Come: Deliverance every now and then, the mainstream RPG consensus is to play within the safe zone of generic fantasy/sci-fi settings. Hence it’s refreshing when a game tries to break the mould and present the player with a unique setting and theme previously unexplored. This is how Ashes of Oahu (previously Nightmarchers) came to my attention. An open-world, post-apocalyptic (bear with me) RPG shooter set in the lush islands of Hawaii, something we haven’t seen explored in video games much. But a sui generis setting can hardly keep a game interesting. Let’s dive down into the deep blue waters and see if Ashes of Oahu is worth buying.

Story & Setting

Set in the not-too-distant future, tragedy has befallen Oahu, the second-largest island of the Hawaiian archipelago in the form of an apocalyptic event. An ancient evil is on the rise and wreaks havoc on the once-peaceful island. You play as Kai, a burly Hawaiian native brought back to life after his son was kidnapped and he left for dead. With the help of his newfound Akua powers, the support of ancient deities and conflicting factions, it’s up to Kai to beat the baddy, save his son, decide the fate of the island and everyone in it.

Sounds ‘chosen-one’ enough for an RPG doesn’t it? But where Ashes of Oahu sets itself apart is by blending the sub-standard story with engaging Hawaiian lore and mythology. I’m not a scholar on Hawaiian myths, but from what I’ve seen and read, Ashes of Oahu does a great job of bringing the never-seen-before culture to an RPG. Everything from the lore to Kai’s powers to the central themes of the story to gameplay jargon is deeply rooted in the indigenous cultural beliefs and folklore of the Hawaiian islands. All these are wrapped in a branching, choice-driven storyline featuring an impressive amount of climax permutations that the player can call his own. The setting is easily the biggest draw of Ashes of Oahu.

Gameplay & Mechanics

Ashes of Oahu is an open-world RPG leveraging third-person shooter mechanics. While it may resemble an indie attempt at Far Cry 3 on the surface, Ashes of Oahu is more similar to forgotten open-ended titles like Boiling Point and its sequel Xenus 2: White Gold. Unfortunately, the engaging setting doesn’t get fair justice from the gameplay department. Ashes of Oahu is made by a team of 5 people and it shows. The way I see it, the project was a little bit too ambitious for the team and their budget to handle, as its clearly evident.

But credit where credit’s due. Ashes of Oahu has a lot going for it. On top of the myriad of side quests and locations to discover, the game also features robust ways to customize your playstyle. There are a variety of moddable melee and ranged arsenal, a spirit bow that is the swizz army knife of bows, throwables, stealth and even some badass magic spells ranging from the bog-standard fireball to summoning lava pits on the ground. Taking a cue from Gothic, Kai can change his form to that of a chicken (yes, you read that right), a salamander, a frigging shark and a high-flying hawk fuelling your need for traversal. To top it all off, there’s even a faction system (and the bells and whistles that go along with it) offering players the chance to forge rivalries and friendships with benefits. Despite the usefulness and uselessness of some of these systems, Ashes of Oahu does a great job of implementing them without bombarding the player with info-dumps every 5 minutes. Exploration is key and thus it’s even possible to complete the game without dabbling in half of these mechanics.

The problem here is how unpolished and outright broken most of these systems are. The melee combat is bland and unresponsive, ranged combat is severely unbalanced and does just enough to not feel unsatisfying, the enemy AI and variety are lacklustre, to say the least. Everything, from simple actions like basic movement to aiming your weapon, feels clunky. Look, I’m all up for janky RPGs. In fact, most of my favourite games of all time are Eurojank RPGs that are mechanically flawed and doesn’t have the greatest paint job in the world. But Ashes of Oahu proved to be clunkier than I could handle. Then there are the bugs and glitches. But judging by how frequent the devs have been putting out bug fixes in the last few days, I’m hopeful that they will be the least of Oahu’s problems. There’s also the issue of price. The current price of Ashes of Oahu is US$ 39.99/ INR ₹ 899, which is asking quite a lot for an indie game, especially one that has quite some way to go before feeling like a polished product.

Visuals & Performance  

Ashes of Oahu is powered by Unreal Engine 4 and opts for a comic-book-like art style with vibrant colours and pastel skyboxes. At particular times of the day, it definitely looks good for a game made by just 5 people. But at other times, especially at night, it feels like an overdid ENB mod with oversaturated colours and high contrast with very low natural lighting. There are areas in the game where it’s hard to see anything other than what’s 5 feet in front of you. Aside from that, the animations are very basic, NPC models are of poor quality and there are a lot of areas that look unfinished in the game. It could also use an improvement in the anti-aliasing department as it’s not that effective at anything other than giving you a slightly blurred image.

Performance-wise, Ashes of Oahu is a total mess. Despite meeting the required specifications, fps remains inconsistent. There are times when it runs above 90 fps and times where it drops to low 20s. Lowering the graphics quality doesn’t fix much either. Despite running the game on an SSD, there are also random stutters and micro-freezes every now and then.

Music & Sound 

Other than the main theme that gets played every now and then, there’s nothing special about the music of Ashes of Oahu. The soothing guitar strings do fit the Hawaiian theme but that’s about it.  Ashes of Oahu doesn’t feature voice-acted dialogues and it’s understandable why. The game has a lot of dialogue and voice acting them all isn’t just possible with a low budget. I’d rather have no voice acting than meme-worthy phoned in dialogues all day.

Ashes of Oahu had a lot of missing sounds when I started playing but the devs kept patching them in each day. Still, while exploring the sun-kissed beaches I do feel that something is amiss. Weapon sounds are so generic and underwhelming that you start to think they came with a free sample disc. Yet, as I stated above, with this kind of budget, there is only so much you can do without some sacrifices.

VERDICT

Ashes of Oahu is a clear cut example of high ambition restricted by budget constraints and lack of manpower. Amidst the technical mess, there are moments of brilliance and pure fun but they are too far and few between. I genuinely hope that the developers keep updating the game like they have the past few weeks and may it end up closer to their original vision sooner than later. But for now, Ashes of Oahu is a hard pass.