Pascal’s Wager Definitive Edition – Review – Soulslike RPG in Test

With Pascal’s Wager, a souls-like action RPG comes from the mobile market to the PC – and that’s not as bad as it sounds

In this Pascal’s Wager: Definitive Edition review, you’ll get an idea of how the new dark fantasy action RPG looks, performs, and whether the port from mobile (Android & iOS) to PC (Steam) was successful. In the dark role-playing game Pascal’s Wager we play four heroes who try to save their world from dark forces, the game would like to follow in the footsteps of Darksouls, Ghost of Tsushima, Nioh, or Bloodborne.

German Version:

This article is available here as text, but also as a YouTube video (German voice-over, many subtitles). This way you can choose how you would like to enjoy it most.

Pascal’s Wager Review Video

German Voice-Over, many subtitles

Pascal’s Wager: Definitive Edition – Review – Intro

Hi there, this is the Zap. In this Pascal’s Wager review you get a little insight into the new Souls-like RPG with Dark Fantasy action and lots of deaths like the great role model Dark Souls. I’ll tell you how it is played, what’s in it and at the end, I’ll give you a rating. But most of all I want to give you all the info, so you can decide for yourself if the game could be fun for you.

Pascal’s Wager is developed by TipsWorks and published by Giant Global. I received a free trial key, my thanks for that. However, this should have no bearing on my review, as I always test all games with the thought in the back of my mind, how would I feel if I had paid full price.

Background – From Mobile to PC

Pascal’s Wager was and is a relative hit in the mobile gaming sector. It’s not one of the typical Free2Play cash-grab games, but one of the rarer “buy and play” games, without the typical form of item store. There are some DLCs available as additional purchases, but you can buy the base game for just under $7 and play it in its entirety. It currently has nearly 9k reviews in the Google Playstore on Android and stands at a rating of 4.4. It’s probably not quite as well known in the Apple Store yet, for the iPhone there are just 143 reviews and a 4.1 average.

It offers a complete RPG experience, with cutscenes, voice acting, action combat, and everything you’d expect from a Dark Souls-inspired role-playing game. And it does so with acceptable 3D graphics, depending on how well your phone can display it, of course.

There have been a few interesting ports of PC or console games that have been brought to mobile and done well there. But so far, at least, I haven’t seen a game that has successfully gone the other way. So now comes Pascal’s Wager and tries to do just that. So let’s see how well Pascal’s Wager performs at it, and if the game plays equally well with a mouse and keyboard or controller as it does on a touchscreen.

Oh well, important note: In this Pascal’s Wager Definitive Edition, which is out now on Steam, all the DLCs from the mobile version are already included.

Pascal’s Wager Game Type – souls-like RPG

As mentioned in the intro, this is a dark fantasy souls-like action RPG. Saying that, we have a grim atmosphere throughout, a nasty and dark threat that wants to tear our world into an abyss and our heroes have to drive the evil out of the world through hard action battles. The difficulty level is crisp, and we are hardened by many deaths to grow little by little so that we can take down the big bosses in the end. So far, complete check, everything fulfilled what makes a souls-like.

We have an extensive RPG system, where we, on the one hand, by experience in levels and at the same time by donating bones at altars our values grow. On top of that, we have a crafting system where we can make strange artifacts and fill some slots with them.

So, as we make our way through the land of Solas, we’ll be upgrading characters and gradually customizing them to our preferences as well. And then on top of that, there is a medium complex skill tree where we can learn new passive and active skills as we wish.

The battles, depending on the chosen difficulty level, are located between demanding and extremely difficult, so we will die often. But the penalties for death are not too severe. We lose only a part of the bones that we have collected. And if we invest them more often in crafting or leave them as a donation at the altar, the losses are only minor.

We don’t delevel, we don’t lose equipment, and nothing gets broken. In this regard, moving forward is limited only by our patience. If we die often enough and start over again, we gradually become stronger and eventually strong enough to move forward.

To do this, we can craft healing potions and other buffs from the materials collected from the monsters’ loot, which we can save up for the particularly difficult boss fights.

Totally, there are 4 characters to unlock little by little. All have their own skills and can be leveled separately.

Tech, Graphics, Sound

Pascal’s Wager is created in the Unity engine, providing a relatively stable technical foundation. The developers have put some effort into optimizing the game for the PC. For example, the screen resolution can be turned up to 4k, and some effects and the mouse and keyboard controls have been implemented quite usably. It’s not perfect in that respect yet, but they’re doing their best to keep working on it after release.

The graphics are overall very atmospheric, the sinister setting generally feels very well. From the models and animations, the figures are by now not ultra-beautiful, but absolutely acceptable. The monsters are varied, both visually and with their movement patterns.

The cutscenes are very well designed, however, I have the feeling that they are the original Mobile sequences and these were probably very much designed for economy in the use of bandwidths. You can still see this in reduced color palettes and washed-out textures in places.

The game offers a reasonably useful options menu. However, some things could be improved here. Not to mention the lack of options to adjust anything about the controls.

The soundtrack is quite okay for the game sounds. But the music is an absolutely positive outlier on the top. Really exciting and emotionally appropriate orchestral music was found or created here, which underlines the Dark Fantasy setting very skillfully.

The game features voice acting in cutscenes, though these are only available in English, and a total of 11 text versions for subtitles and game elements. The English and German texts are translated usable, I noticed only rare errors here.

Pascal’s Wager Gameplay Screenshots Ingame

Click or tap on the image for a larger view.
In the enlarged view, you can scroll right and left on the edges

Pascal’s Wager Test – Opinion and Conclusion

I was very skeptical at first. A mobile title converted to PC, that usually doesn’t go well. But since Pascal’s Wager isn’t your average mobile title, making the jump to the other platform wasn’t that complicated here either. There was no need to edit away an overflowing item store and the game was already very close to the PC standard anyway. Sometimes you can still notice Pascal’s Wager’s origins, but it’s nowhere near as bad as I expected it to be.

The controls are still a bit fiddly, but they are slowly improving with more patches. The graphics are not top-quality now, but I find them very appealing and handsome. It definitely works for getting the gameplay across well.

The Souls-like gameplay works well. There are crunchy battles that can be made easier by doing some grinding and crafting. There are two difficulty levels, so even for non-hardcore Soulslike fans, there can be fun in the game. Whereby it has to be said that even on “Casual” it still doesn’t become a very easy game.

The story is told in a big main story and some small side quests. You can also find all sorts of collectible items and notes that don’t just give you experience. Taking the time to read the notes or the descriptions of the items you find adds a lot to the story. However, it also works quite well without reading these texts.

All in all, I find the implementation quite successful. It is not a top game that can offer direct competition to all From Software games. It hasn’t been implemented perfectly, but it’s very playable and the developers are still working diligently on improvements even after release.

But for a game from a small studio, it’s a perfectly serviceable game that can shorten the wait until the next big Souls title. It was fun, and as you gradually die your way through the game, getting stronger as you go, it offers a sense of progression. And the story is really excitingly staged.

Pascal’s Wager Review – Rating

Taking the aforementioned pros and cons together, I would like to give Pascal’s Wager: Definitive Edition a base rating of 80%. For just under 20 € or $24, fans of Soulslike games get an exciting story, an interesting world, and crisp challenges in the combat here.

A still somewhat choppy control and not top up-to-date graphics, which sometimes looks a bit too washed out, let me subtract 5% from that again. For the really great soundtrack, I give 2% as a bonus. This brings me to a final rating of 77% for Pascal’s Wager Definitive Edition.

With improvements to the controls or a bit more optional features, the game could go up a few more percentages. It won’t become a mega-hit even with patches, but the game offers upper-middle-class fun for fans of the genre.

Pascal’s Wager: Definitive Edition

Zap from Zapzockt.de

With Pascal’s Wager, a souls-like action RPG comes from the mobile market to the PC – and that’s not as bad as it sounds
In this Pascal’s Wager: Definitive Edition review, you’ll get an idea of how the new dark fantasy action RPG looks, performs, and whether the port from mobile (Android & iOS) to PC (Steam) was successful. In the dark role-playing game Pascal’s Wager we play four heroes who try to save their world from dark forces, the game would like to follow in the footsteps of Darksouls, Ghost of Tsushima, Nioh, or Bloodborne.

RPG Systems

Action-Combat

World-Design

Story

Sound & Music

Controls

Price-Fun-Ratio

Rating

Taking the aforementioned pros and cons together, I would like to give Pascal’s Wager: Definitive Edition a base rating of 80%. For just under 20 € or $24, fans of Soulslike games get an exciting story, an interesting world, and crisp challenges in the combat here.
A still somewhat choppy control and not top up-to-date graphics, which sometimes looks a bit too washed out, let me subtract 5% from that again. For the really great soundtrack, I give 2% as a bonus. This brings me to a final rating of 77% for Pascal’s Wager Definitive Edition.
With improvements to the controls or a bit more optional features, the game could go up a few more percentages. It won’t become a mega-hit even with patches, but the game offers upper-middle-class fun for fans of the genre.

3.9

Outro

Do you like challenging battles, gloomy dungeons, and slimy monsters? Or are lots of deaths and grinding to level up not something you enjoy? Feel free to write me your opinion in the comments or in the Community Discord at zapzockt.de/discord

You can find more gaming news, game reviews, and guides on the YouTube channel or at https://zapzockt. de – Thumbs click, subscribe, and share with friends certainly can’t hurt, and then have a great day, ciao ciao, your Zap

Links and Sources

Pascal’s Wager – Steampage

Pascal’s Wager – Dev Website

Pascal’s Wager Twitter

Pascal’s Wager Facebook