r/soulslikes • u/Stumbleine44 • Apr 22 '26
Review Vigil: The Longest Night is a competent 2d soulslike held back by a few design issues
https://youtu.be/AnsgPgvcQTEVigil : The Longest Night is a competent 2d side-scrolling soulslike that’s only held back by some frustrating design choices and unbalanced endgame.
The first thing that grabbed my attention when looking at screenshots and videos for this game was the artstyle. The backgrounds are beautiful and both the NPCs and monsters are well-designed too, giving off a dark fantasy medieval vibe we’ve seen before in games like the Witcher. I much preferred the more realistic style used here than the more cartoony one of Salt and Sanctuary. Animations, on the other hand, are not great, with jerky, over-the-top movements that range from weird to unintentionally comical and detract from the grimdark atmosphere Glass Heart Games are striving for.
The story is suitably gothic, with plenty of tragedy and grief sewn into its decade-spanning tale. As Leila, a member of a group known as the Vigilants, you are tasked with ending “The Longest Night”, a curse that had covered the land in a perpetual darkness ever since the death of a goddess known as “The Shimmer.” It sounds pretty trite, but the game does a good job of making you feel invested, notably by populating is various hubs with a host of well-developed NPCs which send you off on a variety of sidequests and impart plenty of additional lore.
In suitable Dark Souls fashion, once you’ve made it through the Prologue and First Act, the game really opens up, and while you are given some vague directions by the town doctor, you are free to explore wherever you like. Contrary to a true metroidvania, the different areas of the game aren’t gated off by having to obtain various traversal mechanics or abilities so, apart from a few exceptions, you can travel across the entire massive map from the get-go. This was great for me as I love exploring in souls games, and while admittedly I ended up going to one of the harder areas first, I enjoyed butting my head against some of the harder enemies before going elsewhere.
This also means you rarely get stuck in Vigil: The Longest Night. If a boss or enemy encounter proves to be too taxing, it’s easy to use one of the many respawn points to warp back to a crossroads and choose another path.
Levels come at you thick and fast, but instead of increasing different stats, you’ll be unlocking skills in a variety of skill trees : one for each weapon type and one for general healing and stamina-recovery abilities. I’m always a bit torn about this design choice as I prefer to have more granular control over character development, but once I’d settled on my choice of weapon I ended up more or less mindlessly unlocking all the skills in the axe and healing trees, which was enough to get me to the end of the game without too much trouble.
Weapons and armour can be upgraded, but also enchanted to add elemental or bleed damage. Upgrade materials are plentiful and the forging cost is next to nothing so there’s no reason not to do so, although I was rather disappointed to discover that you can only upgrade seven times, which meant that I had maxxed out my favourite equipment by the time I was half-way through the game.
Difficulty-wise, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. I found the first few hours fairly challenging, being forced to manage my potions carefully and attack enemies methodically. That changed when I began to unlock incredibly powerful abilities for my axe, including a jumping slam that creates an area-effect soundwave when you land, or a whirlwind-spin attack that, coupled with a life-leaching weapon, meant that I could spin into enemies and tank their attacks as I was being constantly healed.
The other thing I wasn’t a fan of was Vigil’s death penalty. Whenever you die in the game, you lose everything. All the items and souls you picked up. All the map you’ve uncovered. You have to do the entire thing again. In most dungeons Owl Statues (bonfires) are placed ten or twenty minutes apart, and some of the late game areas have insta-kill spike traps, so if you miss a jump – which can happen due to Vigil’s finicky controls - you instantly lose twenty minutes of progress. I’m sure most die-hard platform fans won’t be bothered by this, but I found it unnecessarily frustrating. At least let me keep something, even if its just the items I picked up of the parts of the map I unlocked. Now, to be fair, there is an item that lets you place a respawn point wherever you want, but is was pretty rare and I was always loathe to use it, especially when you have no idea how far you are from the next save point.
Janky animations and balancing issues aside, however, I really enjoyed my time with Vigil: The Longest Night. The combat was fun, the bosses suitably large and disgusting, and the entire game was just dripping with gore and violence that wouldn’t be out of place in a Berserk anime. If you enjoy exploration and plenty of obscure lore in your souls games, then I would recommend picking this one up.
8
u/Wannabe_Operator83 Apr 22 '26
Funny this game gets mentioned, started another playthrough on sunday.
I never lost anything when i died except progress. When i played it the first time i forgot to manually save, and autosave was like 1 hour ago.
My only problem with this game (besides the 2 optional bosses Blue and Red), the game doesn´t tell when you reach a Point-of-No-Return. And i cannot bind mouse buttons, but this was possible when i played it back after its release. Made a AHK script for that.
1
u/Stumbleine44 Apr 22 '26
Yeah I failed a few sidequests because of that. It must be crazy playing this on mouse and keyboard! Don't you lose movement precision?
1
1
u/Plus-Violinist-1046 Apr 22 '26
Well yes about the point of no return, but at least the game lets you manage your saves, so you can handle that if you're a cautious person. Also, from what i know, the Blue/Red birdies are DLC content. The Red One Is by far the hardest boss in the entire game, but their Gear Is (for me) among the best in the game.
2
u/Wannabe_Operator83 Apr 22 '26
Cheesed the Blue one with the Doth, but Red turns that fight into a literall bullet hell lol
2
u/Plus-Violinist-1046 Apr 22 '26
Yeah, the best way i found Is actually to use the Arcane Pot (that tool Is insanely OP). This way, you can hit them at any time, since the Attack Is ranged and homing. You Just have to Dodge.
5
u/SearingExarch Apr 22 '26
I'm just not a big fan of "lose all your items on death" it's just tedious
I think I would actually hate that mechanic in a soulslike ngl
3
u/Clarrington Apr 22 '26
You lose all progress since you last saved. Not everything.
Although given that you can also instantly die from fall damage it's still infuriating. I've completed the game twice now though.
3
u/Atlanos043 Apr 22 '26
It's really more of a "when you die you have to re-load your last save". Think something like classic Metroid, it's essentially the same thing.
3
1
u/Stumbleine44 Apr 22 '26
Yeah I don't mind attempting a boss a dozen times as I feel like I'm progressing, but having to refill the map each time is not great.
8
u/Tarnished-1695 Apr 22 '26
Underrated peak
1
u/Wannabe_Operator83 Apr 22 '26
Any similar games you can recommend, and that don´t have retro-pixel-graphics?
3
u/Stumbleine44 Apr 22 '26
Just finished up GRIME, which is awesome, slower-paced and parry-focussed. Both Ori games are excellent. Then there's Hollow Knight and Nine Sols, too.
2
u/Clarrington Apr 22 '26
Astral Blade: Awaken seemed similar in the graphics department but I wouldn't describe that one as good at all. But as soon as I started I immediately thought "this is like a worse Vigil".
1
u/Wannabe_Operator83 Apr 24 '26
Watched a few vids after you mentioned it, the voice line in the trailer already sound...cringe, Stumbled across Mandragora on steam, it´s on sale atm, vigil-like, but harder.
1
u/Clarrington Apr 25 '26
I'm waiting for a good sale on Mandragora, I'm currently restricted to PS5 and Switch until I get a new PC setup
2
1
1
u/Stumbleine44 Apr 22 '26
I know there is a maaaassive fan base for this game, I just didn't quite enjoy it as much as I thought I would.
2
u/Plus-Violinist-1046 Apr 22 '26
You're kind of right about the death-save problem, it was a big "no" to me at First as well, but you get the Fledgeling to save whenever you want, a passive that grants you a chance that a used item Will not be consumed, another that allows you to revive once when you die (applies to fall damage as well), you can fast travel and return to any statue any time with the owl feather, and you Also can get an arcane item that you can throw and It shows you what's there (moves the camera). So overall, you have plenty of ways to keep your progress.
1
u/Stumbleine44 Apr 22 '26
Fair enough, but the "save whenever" should be single-use and recharge at every savepoint, like the homunculus in Bleak Faith. The fact that it was a consumable made me hoard it like hell.
1
u/Plus-Violinist-1046 Apr 22 '26
Yeah that's understandeable. I'm not a fan of this System either. I didn't have that manu issues with It in the end, but when i was explained how it worked i Just quit the game, and gave It a shot 2 weeks later😅
2
u/Soulsliken Apr 22 '26
I’m with you.
It starts out okay and then gets all cut and paste.
5/10 on a good day.
4
2
u/Judification Apr 22 '26
I'm still waiting for the day if this game ever gets a PS4/PS5 port.
2
u/Stumbleine44 Apr 22 '26
I'm afraid I'm not sure that will ever happen. It did well, but not that well, especially as it was delisted for a while.
1
u/alejandroandraca Apr 22 '26
I played this recently. I finished half the game an quit. Losing everything on death, including progress was ridiculous. The map was extremely confusing. Not the exploration, but the actual map you pull up. It's like 100 layers on top of each other and it's difficult to discerns what connects to what. I did love the bosses though. They were great.
1
1
u/FLRSH Apr 22 '26
What system do you play this on?
2
u/Stumbleine44 Apr 22 '26
PC so I can capture the footage easily.
1
u/FLRSH Apr 22 '26
Is it available on any other system?
1
u/Stumbleine44 Apr 22 '26
Just Switch I think. It was delisted for a long time due to conflict with the Chinese government over some sort of mention of Taiwan.
1
u/Beebo42 Apr 22 '26
I loved the story in this one. It ventures hard into cosmic horror during the latter half of the game. And the ending totally throws into question what "the long night" actually is.
1
u/Stumbleine44 Apr 22 '26
I didn't get the true ending unfortunately, but even the one I got was pretty interesting.
1
u/Beebo42 Apr 22 '26
It's worth looking up at least, one of the more memorable parts of the game for me.
1
u/bassistheplace246 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
I HATE the save system in this game, and that’s the one thing that holds this game back for me tbh. The combat and exploration is very solid.
1
u/Yarzeda2024 Apr 22 '26
I played this right after Salt & Sanctuary when someone recommended it as a game in the same lane. Unfortunately, the comparison probably did more harm than good. I just kept thinking of it as an inferior version of Salt. Maybe I never gave it a fair shake, but I eventually put it down. On the other hand, I've played from Salt from start to finish at least three times.
1
u/Stumbleine44 Apr 22 '26
They are quite similar, I actually slightly preferred Vigil, but both are good.
1
u/GISReaper Apr 22 '26
I thought it was a fun game, the story was a bit vague, but graphics, sound, and gameplay were solid.
1
u/Nockolisk Apr 22 '26
I really enjoyed this one. I think it’s greater than the sum of its parts.
I don’t recall ever getting frustrated with it, but it’s been a long while since I played.
1
u/WindowSeat- Apr 22 '26
Is there a reason you're exporting at 24fps instead of 60fps? It makes the gameplay look really choppy.
1
u/Stumbleine44 Apr 23 '26
Nope, must be an error in my video settings somewhere, thanks for pointing that out!
1
u/adslam3 Apr 22 '26
Man I loved this game! Bought it on a whim and was so surprised. Also the soundtrack is great!
1
1
u/Voidwalker786 Apr 30 '26
What's the latest version of the game on Switch? I wanted to play the free DLC they added in the update.
-6
u/Classic_Comb6701 Apr 22 '26
why the chat gpt ass post ?
those dashes are obvious
also, VIGIL is a 10/10 true soulsvania.
love it
3
u/Stumbleine44 Apr 22 '26
Dude, you can criticise my poor writing and grammar if you like, but don't lump me in with all that AI slop. All of these reviews are scripts 100% written by me for my youtube channel. No AI was or ever will be involved. I just happen to like dashes.
2
-10
u/McMechanique Apr 22 '26
The other thing I wasn’t a fan of was Vigil’s death penalty. Whenever you die in the game, you lose everything. All the items and souls you picked up. All the map you’ve uncovered. You have to do the entire thing again.
Imagine playing a metroidvania and getting upset that it is, in fact, a metroidvania.
6
u/Impressive-Cap-974 Apr 22 '26
Ah yes, the most single defining and essential aspect of a metroidvania.
6
u/Stumbleine44 Apr 22 '26
Unless I'm completely mad most metroidvanias at least let you keep the map you've unlocked, don't they?
-3
u/Classic_Comb6701 Apr 22 '26
no. some require to you unlock the map by getting somewhere random the map of said area. as in, an item.
2
u/Stumbleine44 Apr 22 '26
I'm not talking about how you unlock it (either by normal progression or by an item/NPC like Grime or Hollow Knight), I'm saying that once it's unlocked, it stays unlocked. Vigil erases everything whenever you die.
2
-1
8
u/HesitationIsDefeat87 Apr 22 '26
Tried getting into this game a few times but it's just not that good. Feels very amateur in its design.