Torinto
Developed by DVL Games/Leaf Team Games
Published by Eastasiasoft Limited
Released for Xbox One (5/23/2023)
Optimized for Series X|S
Also on PC/PS4/PS5/Switch
Review Intro
Torinto was originally developed by DVL Games and released for PC back in 2019. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here, but as far as I can tell this was ported by Leaf Team Games and published by Eastasiasoft Limited and Ratalaika Games. It's all a bit confusing figuring out who does the porting and the publishing when both of these companies are involved.
Torinto caught my interest because it looked like an interesting take on the run & gun genre. The game sports a medieval fantasy theme and features some nice hand-drawn artwork. Hoping for some good mindless run & gun fun, I didn't hesitate to pick this one up and give it a shot. Let's get into it and see if you should do the same...
Graphics/Presentation
Torinto makes a solid first impression, with some vibrant, brightly-colored artwork that has a pleasant hand-painted look to it. The character designs have a bit of a cartoon-like/cute appearance, which I'm guessing was an attempt to mimic the legendary sprite artwork of the arcade classic Metal Slug games. While it looks good in still shots, in-game the characters and animation lacks the personality of the titles that inspired it. The game takes itself too seriously and some humor mixed in would have helped liven things up.
The title screen in Torinto is simple, offering only two choices: play and options. The options are as bare-bones as can be, only allowing you to toggle the sound or music. When it comes to the music, it's well-composed and fits the theme of the game but at the same time doesn't really stand out in any way that you'll remember it. The audio effects sound as stock as can be, with no remarkable sound design and even some annoying noises that you'll hear numerous times as you endure the gameplay. The sound and music volume is very loud compared to other games in general, so be prepared to turn the volume down before booting this one up. Torinto looks good visually and has some decent music, but overall the presentation is very basic to the point that it feels uninspired.
Controls/Gameplay
While the game looks decent, the gameplay is where everything really falls flat in Torinto. As a run & gun, everything feels too slow and the character movement too janky to really work that well. There were so many cheap deaths during my playthrough, mostly because of my characters large hit-box and awkward movement. The level and enemy design are 2 of the games biggest issues. There are only a handful of enemies and you'll quickly grow tired of fighting the same waves of them throughout the game. The level design is just as uninspired as the enemy variety, featuring boring levels that feel like they drag on forever with little to tell one apart from the last except for the background art. Each level does have a stage boss and while none of them were memorable I will give the developer credit for at least giving each stage a unique boss enemy. There are some weapons you can pick up but these hardly make much difference from your standard projectile. There are also grenades which you'll want to reserve for the bullet-sponge type enemies that you'll frequently encounter.
Upon death you have the option to continue, but it will cost 2000 points to do so. This system works alright on the earlier stages where you can rack up points easily, but the later levels will really test your patience and force you to restart the stage from the beginning since you'll only get enough points for a single continue. If you don't have enough points to continue it's game over, but there is a stage select option at the start screen so you can at least pick up from the level you died at (trust me, you won't want to have to replay the whole game again). The game would have more tolerable if they either gave you a life bar instead dying in one hit or just grant the player infinite continues.
Closing Thoughts
I really wanted to like Torinto with its unique medieval spin on the run & gun genre and nice-looking art, but the gameplay really leaves much to be desired. Uninspired stage and enemy design make the game a chore to play. There's a relatively easy 1000 gamerscore to be earned if you're into that whole achievement hunting thing, but other than that I find this one hard to recommend to anybody when there are so many other awesome run 'n guns on the Xbox One and Series that you should be playing instead.
Final Verdict: Torinto has a great concept in putting a medieval spin on the run & gun genre and the pixel art looks good for the most part. The game is dragged down by uninspired stage/enemy design and lack of interesting power-ups. This one could have been a good time, but it needs some work before it's anything more than mediocre. There are several excellent run & guns on the marketplace more worthy of your time!
Purchase Links:
Buy Torinto - Xbox Store
Buy Torinto - Xbox Store
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