A Hollow Promise: Why ‘The Relic: First Guardian’ Fails to Deliver on Its Ambitions

When a review code for The Relic: First Guardian arrived, there was an undeniable sense of optimism. In an era where the “Souls-like” subgenre has become oversaturated with imitators, the promise of a fresh, gritty take on Korean folklore—developed by the ambitious, twelve-person team at Project Cloud Games—offered a glimmer of hope. It was a project that seemed primed to punch above its weight class.

However, after spending dozens of hours navigating the world of Arsiltus, that initial hope has curdled into profound disappointment. Despite the team’s indie hustle, The Relic: First Guardian is a title that struggles to justify its existence, let alone its asking price. What follows is a comprehensive look at why this title, despite its lofty marketing, falls short of even the most modest expectations.

The World of Arsiltus: A Beautifully Sterile Void

The narrative premise of The Relic: First Guardian is standard high-fantasy fare. The world of Arsiltus, once protected by a monolithic artifact known as the Great Relic, has fallen into ruin. Following the destruction of the relic, the world is consumed by a shadowy “Void,” a corruption that mutates innocent inhabitants into “Brutals”—the game’s primary antagonists. Players awaken as an amnesiac guardian, guided by a mysterious “Dark Maiden” who hints at a forgotten, intimate past.

While the lore is steeped in Korean folklore, the execution is remarkably hollow. The game tasks players with traversing the continent to collect shards of the Great Relic, but the journey is devoid of genuine pathos or narrative stakes. The world-building suffers from a fundamental lack of cohesion; it is a collection of disparate environments that feel less like a living, breathing kingdom and more like a series of asset-heavy rooms linked by invisible, frustrating barriers.

The Illusion of Choice and the Reality of Clutter

The open-world structure is perhaps the game’s most glaring design flaw. There is no clear distinction between main-story progression and side-quest filler. Players are frequently forced to navigate through endless thickets and identical landscapes, only to be stopped by arbitrary “fog gates” that demand unstated criteria for entry. You may spend hours challenging a boss, believing it to be a gatekeeper of the main narrative, only to be rewarded with a pittance of gold and the realization that you have hit a dead end. This lack of direction turns the exploratory element of the game into an exercise in pure tedium.

Combat Dynamics: A Parrying Game Without the Polish

Project Cloud Games leaned heavily into the combat philosophy of titles like Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Lies of P. The game centers on a parry-heavy loop where the protagonist’s base damage is negligible, forcing players to build up hidden “stagger bars” before they can land critical strikes.

The Boss Roster: Quantity Over Quality

The developers have touted a staggering roster of nearly 80 bosses. On paper, this sounds like a dream for action-RPG enthusiasts. In practice, it is a masterclass in repetition. While a small handful of encounters—such as the Artorias-inspired cursed knight or the thunder-wielding warlock—provide moments of genuine excitement, the vast majority of these 80 bosses are forgettable. Most feature single-phase designs with limited move sets that, once learned, become trivial to exploit.

Moreover, the game suffers from “artificial difficulty.” Instead of creating complex, multi-layered boss fights, the developers have resorted to one-hit-kill mechanics that feel fundamentally unfair. Encountering a witch who can curse the player in a single flurry, or a boss fight set in a field of burning crops that disables healing, turns the experience into a struggle against bad design rather than a test of skill.

Technical Performance and Quality Control

The most damning aspect of The Relic: First Guardian is its technical instability. The game is, by any standard, an unfinished product.

A Masterclass in Glitches

During the testing period, the frame rate frequently dipped into the single digits, creating a slideshow effect that rendered the parry-heavy combat impossible. When the game isn’t struggling to maintain a playable frame rate, it is breaking in other ways:

• Input Failure: Frequently, controller inputs simply stop registering. This is particularly catastrophic during boss encounters, where a missed parry is the difference between life and death.
• Geometry Issues: It is not uncommon to find bosses clipped outside of their arenas, staring blankly at the player while the game fails to recognize that the combat state has ended.
• Progression Blockers: In one instance, a checkpoint was rendered inaccessible because a boulder—likely placed via a randomized, non-human asset placement system—obstructed the path.

The lack of quality assurance is apparent in every corner of the map. From the haphazard placement of barrels and trees to the way the English translation drifts into “pseudo-poetic drivel,” the game feels as though it was pushed out of development long before it was ready for the public.

The "Humanity" Problem: Narrative and Localization

The game attempts to convey emotion through its writing, yet the result is consistently lifeless. Much of this can be attributed to a poor English translation that fails to capture the intended weight of the story. The environmental storytelling, which in better games is shown rather than told, is here replaced by robotic AI-generated voiceovers.

When you encounter a questline involving a character like “Gus,” you are subjected to a series of text boxes and synthesized audio that drain any potential for tragedy. Even when a character transforms into a “Brutal,” the impact is minimized by the robotic, unconvincing delivery of the dialogue. It is a stark reminder that technology, no matter how advanced, cannot replace the nuance of human performance.

Implications and The "Day-One" Problem

As we approach the game’s release, an important caveat must be addressed. Hours before this publication, we were informed that a major patch is scheduled for release. However, this patch will render current save files incompatible, forcing players to restart the entire 20-to-30-hour experience.

This highlights a troubling trend in the modern gaming industry: the release of “early access” quality titles as full-priced, finished products, with the hope that post-launch updates will retroactively fix the experience. For the consumer, this is a dangerous gamble. A game should be judged on what it provides to the player at the moment of purchase, not on the theoretical promise of a fix that may or may not address the core systemic issues of the game.

Final Verdict: A Warning to the Reader

For those who pride themselves on being “Souls-like” completionists, it is tempting to see the 80-boss count and the gritty aesthetic and feel the pull of curiosity. Resist that urge. The Relic: First Guardian is an experience that does not respect the player’s time or effort. It is a bloated, repetitive, and technically broken product that fails to honor the genres it seeks to emulate.

If you are looking for an action RPG, there are dozens of alternatives—from FromSoftware’s masterful catalogue to the polished, challenging combat of Lies of P—that offer the depth, satisfaction, and technical competence that The Relic: First Guardian so desperately lacks. Save your time and your money; this is one relic better left buried in the Void.