The Five Covens from rBorn Games and Sony Interactive Entertainment is a new 3D puzzle platformer on PlayStation 4. Learn more in our The Five Covens review!
The Five Covens from rBorn Games and Sony Interactive Entertainment is a new 3D puzzle platforming adventure with a magical twist, out now on PlayStation 4. This release is part of the PlayStation Talents initiative, a program launched by Sony Interactive Entertainment Spain as a way to boost the creativity of the Spanish video game development community, supporting the local industry, while also helping to release these games on PlayStation consoles on all digital storefronts around the world.
You’ll be going out on an adventure in the land of Gaarth, where there are five families of sorcerers. Your journey will start as the member of one of these families, who has the ability to use levitation. As is to be expected, there’s a villain who wants the special abilities of all five families for himself. You’ll take control of Brenda after she’s tricked by Kenot to visit his castle. She finds herself locked in a dungeon, and it’s up to you to help her use her abilities to escape from her predicament before it’s too late! Luckily, she’ll be aided by the crow, her inseparable companion.
You’ll control Brenda with the left analog stick or the D-Pad, moving the camera around with the right analog stick as needed. She can also jump with the X button. You can hold down the L2 button to aim your magic wand. Once you’ve caught something you can throw it with the Square button If you need to interact with something, then do so by pressing the Triangle button. The Circle button will activate a magic shield. Since you’re playing as a witch, that means you’ll also gain access to other magical abilities, such as being able to freeze time with the L1 button, or levitate by pressing the R2 button.
You only have one life, so when all of your health bar is empty, it’s game over, and you’ll restart from the last checkpoint you activated – usually after opening a door into a new area. If a ghost touches you, you will lose some health. If a slime’s spit touches you, you will lose some health. If a goblin strikes you, you will lose some health. Fall from too high of a distance, you will lose some health. Oh, and if you fall into acid, then you die right away in a single hit.
The Five Covens includes a full trophy list with a Platinum for you to unlock, but it’s not going to be an easy one to get! There are trophies for beating each of the game’s stages, as well as for beating the game. There are also trophies for being defeated by ghosts, slimes, and goblins, as well as a trophy for having been defeated by all three of them at least once. And then, things get a big tricky. There’s a trophy for completing the game twice, one for beating the game in 30 minutes or less, another one for completing the game without receiving a single hit, and one for beating the game without dying a single time. While the game is not hard, there are a couple of platforming sections that will certainly get in your way of completing the game without dying, due to how the controls feel a bit stiff when turning or jumping, as if you were playing with old-school tank controls.
The Five Covens showed some promise but it, unfortunately, fails to deliver. The controls feel as if they were closer to the tank controls for 3D games of the 1990s than what you’d expect from a platformer releasing in 2021, and it feels as if it was aimed at younger gamers, yet features platforming sections that will end up frustrating them very early in their run. The Five Covens is out on PlayStation 4 with a $12.99 asking price.
Disclaimer
This The Five Covens review is based on a PlayStation 4 copy provided by Sony Interactive Entertainment.
