Lucah: Born of a Dream Reviews
Sterling hack-and-slash combat meets raw, fractured prose in one of gaming's most essential nightmares.
We're aware that screenshots of Lucah: Born of a Dream really don't do the game justice. That aesthetic is going to put off some potential new players, but look past the purposefully jagged looks and there's something far more palatable beneath. With its slick and deep combat system and the unashamedly bleak nature of its allegorical story, Lucah uses its visuals to help bolster its unique identity and stand apart amid considerable RPG company on Nintendo Switch. Sure, it can be a little frustrating to navigate in places, but it's a small price to pay for the elements that shine bright elsewhere in the darkness.
“Lucah: Born of a Dream” takes a unique animation style and tells a deeper story. However, if you suffer from any type of photo-sensitivity, this game should be avoided.
A breathtaking adventure that takes a grim and depressing story with highly engaging combat to create a hidden gem well worth experiencing.
Lucah: Born of a Dream is a neon crash of allusive storytelling, deliberate top-down combat, and distressed, manic ambience. Its indirect means of expression risks losing the player in its internal contradictions—it's hysterical and tender, it's demanding and soothing—but tenacious pandemonium is also its objective. Lucah: Born of a Dream seeks an audience that can relate to its world without needing to make explicit sense of its features.
A very fun 2D brawler with a striking art style, marred with an interesting story told very badly. Between the custom combos, the scoring system, and the hard optional dungeon there is a lot here for $15.
Lucah: Born of a Dream is the type of game that starts off great, but the more someone plays, the more they realize it isn't really so. Combat ultimately is repetitive, the graphics are bad enough that important scenes are lost, and the largest problem is that the 'deep' story is so vague that this becomes an annoyance every time some dark concept is dropped on the player only to never be seen again. To allow a player to finish a sizable play-through and have zero idea on the story is unforgivable.
Lucah: Born of a Dream manages to accomplish what few indie games do by being both action-packed and mysteriously engaging.
Is this real life…? We explore the dreamscape with one of the most experimental combat systems in the genre. Will this game bring you sweet dreams, or beautiful nightmares?
Video games about violence so often fail because they do not actually understand what they are doing. They can copy others, depict violence in shocking fidelity, and endlessly trawl the waters of individuals doing individually bad things, but they are culpable of so much violence themselves the shots will always miss. Lucah understands form is the message, that violence is messy and contradictory, and that games cannot simply adopt the language of film and literature and achieve the same ends. It is a game of relentless despair, and yet underneath it all its tenderness cannot but shine through.
Lucah: Born of a Dream is one of those games you don't see that often. The game takes the formula of the souls games and turns it on its head with a weird art style, Definitely is a joy to see the game working the way it does even if sometimes the exploration isn't as deep as other games.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
My time with Lucah: Born of a Dream was one of the best times I’ve had with any title on my Nintendo Switch. The ambiguity of the story always gave me the feeling of wanting to press on and discover more about the strange world, I was wandering in. I felt the combat system was an excellent blend of multiple elements that came together and created what to me is one of the most satisfying combat systems of any recent title. Those who prefer straightforward stories may not find Lucah: Born of a Dream as thrilling, but I believe that this is a title worth trying for almost anyone.
This won’t be a game for everybody, but even those who lack the requisite experiences to make a personal connection to the underlying themes and internal character dialogue will be able to respect Lucah: Born of a Dream given an adjustment period.
If, like myself, you prefer story-driven titles to present the game world and characters in a way that’s possible to connect with them, then Lucah: Born of a Dream is nothing short of disappointing (unless you’re only interested in the combat). But if you can relate to the proposed themes and the way they’re presented, then this can be a special experience which warrants multiple playthroughs, especially as NG+ offers additional content.