Perennial Order Review

Developed by Gardenfiend Games and published by SOEDESCO, Perennial Order is a one-hit-kill boss rush title where you'll traverse a land infected by plants. As a Perennial Knight, your job is to rid the world of these infested creatures and, hopefully, return the world to its former version.

As a one-hit-kill title inspired by soulslikes of the past, Perennial Order's narrative follows the tale of a character who doesn't remember their name, doing the bidding of a god-like creature that tells you who you'll be fighting next. Scattered throughout the world are over a dozen bosses provided to you in bulk, and it'll be your job to dispatch them so you can advance and restore order to the land.

It's worth mentioning at this point that you can play the game either alone or in co-op, allowing you to face the plague alone or with someone else. Unlike other titles in the genre, where you're expected to play solo, Perennial Order was built with co-op in mind.

To balance the one-hit-kill mechanic without having one of the players contribute nothing should they die early on, the ally instead will be able to use one of five vestiges (acquired throughout the journey) to help the surviving player fight against the boss. These abilities have different mechanics and uses per battle, though my favourite part about them was the fact that they are all based on teamwork — time your ability alongside your teammate’s strike, and you'll do a lot of damage, giving you something else to contribute.

This is a great system that ensures the player who dies first can remain engaged in the fight. Furthermore, the way these vestiges are built helps you learn more about the fight, even after death, which feels like an exciting mixture of participating post-death but still learning how to fight the bosses while alive.

The problem I did face, however, was the inflated health bars of the bosses. Of course, Gardenfiend Games can't predict player skills, but the lack of difficulty options made some encounters particularly arduous. While in single-player, Perennial Order felt perfectly balanced — perhaps a tad skewed towards "easy" in some encounters — multiplayer felt punishing. The lack of consistent damage from a second Perennial Knight meant that some of the small windows of damage you have for some bosses felt ever smaller, and their inflated life accounting for two hits rather than one meant that encounters became long-winded and difficult to complete.

Whenever my wife died, I was left to fight with reduced damage and the same cycles but what felt (seemingly) double the health bar. Meanwhile, my endurance in the battle meant that my wife was unable to get in tune with the rhythm of the fight, and she lost practice to perfect the timing of her hit (you're urged to time your hits perfectly to deal more damage).

There are a lot of well-thought-out features for the co-op, but I felt the lack of accessibility in terms of difficulty meant that I was often the final knight standing. The long battles required perfect hits from both of us, lest the boss' life wouldn't budge and the fight prolong until eventually she'd die. Though that is the nature of the experience, it would be great to have the opportunity to adjust the difficulty to keep the second player engaged and ensure they can more often live through the fights, especially the later ones.

In single-player, the fights felt brilliantly balanced and quite fun in some cases. The back-and-forth doesn't feel overly long, with most encounters taking one to four minutes to complete, and the enemy patterns are simple enough that you can discern from their small pool of attacks quick enough to react. There were some fights that truly elevated the experience — in both single-player and multiplayer — but there were others that felt a bit too full of theatrics for my liking.

Some of the bosses — I'd argue about a third of them — have small to no windows of weakness until you've passed a long-winded dodging session. While it's usually understandable to have to wait until an opponent does something to get a window of attack, several of the bosses felt boring after a few tries. Waiting around until a boss finished a predetermined string of attacks, which often became predictable and mind-numbingly easy to learn, made some of the boss fights a slogfest. One wrong movement in the second (or oftentimes even third) stage of the fight led to having to start from the beginning and pass through the pattern three more times to learn to dodge one new attack that might be the difference between victory and defeat.

Some of the bosses felt far more comprehensive and reaction-based than others, and the disparity made it difficult to look forward to the next fight. Humanoid battles were often a back-and-forth of attacks, with several openings that felt tight to achieve but not impossible, and these were the most exciting fights by far. The others, often involving behemoth bosses where you're playing "prey", were dull and long-winded, and not knowing what came next made it difficult to look forward to the subsequent encounter.

Aside from defeating bosses, you'll have to traverse from point A to point B, with sections that sometimes felt a bit long for my taste. I appreciated how exploration elements were added past the tutorial section, where you are encouraged to look for items to complete side quests or buff your weapon, but the way back after defeating a boss was a bit of an adrenaline killer at times. Going from the excitement of defeating a boss to walking back to the beginning area felt like a juxtaposition gameplay-wise.

As you explore and find more Instincts (sort of passive skills you can slot to add a new mechanic to help you with the fights), you’ll unlock more ways to engage in combat. Whether that’s more dodge rolls for bosses with quick hits or more damage in exchange for some of your mobility, these give you the opportunity to customise your combat to your preferred style. While there are many that I thought were interesting (and others that were bait and terrible), what this system highlighted more was the way the game feels perfectly balanced.

You don’t need Instincts or weapon upgrades to get through it all, as Perennial Order’s first focus is skill and expertise. Though fights may be difficult to overcome at times, there was no encounter that felt outright unfair, which is a feat for a one-hit-kill title; the more you learn the fight, and the more you try it, the closer you get to victory. The unique gimmicks never felt demanding, and Gardenfiend Games really showed off in many of their most creative battles, making several memorable fights I wouldn’t mind repeating, retrying, and mastering.

There are a fair few things I wish had been done differently, but make no mistake — Perennial Order is still an enjoyable experience after all of that is said and done. Standing as one of the few one-hit-kill and soulslike titles that you can play co-op without interruption, it's an enjoyable title to jump into with someone else. For a debut title, I look forward to seeing what Gardenfiend Games comes up with, learns, and improves upon with upcoming games.