Children of Morta Review
Children of Morta is an action/RPG game where every time you die, the dungeon resets and changes and you have to start anew each run. While it seems like there has been an influx of similar feeling games into the indie gaming market, Children of Morta stands out due to the variety in characters that you can play.
Slight Spoilers ahead in the article.
The premise of Children of Morta is that you are playing as the Bergsons. They are a family who is duty bound to protect the world from the corruption that’s slowly infecting everything. As the game opens, the father, John, is sent by his mother into the forest to see if he can locate the source of the corruption. After fighting his way through a few waves of enemies, John realizes that the problem is more dangerous than the family previous thought. John returns to the family to try to plan out what they will do next in order to protect the world.
After a short conversation with the family, the Bergsons understand that they must free three spirits from where they’ve been trapped to receive their assistance in defeating the Mountain God, the source of the corruption. So the story begins.
The interesting thing, and what sets Children of Morta apart is that you unlock family members to play as while you progress through the story. The cool thing about it is that each character is given a different personality and reason for wanting to fight. Kevin, the youngest, is trying to fill his older brother’s shoes and help protect his family while his brother is gone. Admittedly, each character is not as fleshed out, for instance, Lucy seems to just want to fight things and set them on fire. But each of them wants to do their part to save the world. By the end of the game, there are only a couple characters who are left to protect the household as the rest of the family delves deeper into the caverns in order to free the three spirits.
While I enjoyed the story, this is where Children of Morta begins to suffer.
Spoilers Ahead
The main premise of the story is that the Mountain God, Ou, is the source of the corruption. He despises the people of the world and the price to keep him from ending the world is the Bergson’s newborn baby. This has been happening for generations. Generations.
As the Bergsons rescue the spirits more of the story is revealed as to why Ou has decided upon this course of action. I wont do into too many details so that yall can experience the story for yourself, but the bottom line is that his corruption stems from jealousy. So he enacts a toll on the descendants of Rea Dana in the form of one of their kids. This is all because of jealousy.
The current Bergson family decides that their newborn is too high a price to pay to appease Ou, and so they refuse to place the baby on the sacrificial alter. They decide to bring Ou’s wrath upon themselves so that their family can remain whole. The open a portal to where Ou is, and they realize the only option is to fight. So they do.
The final fight consists of three phases, the first being the most difficult. Ou has a variety of attacks, but is fairly easy to hit depending on the character you’ve chosen. I completed the final fight with Lucy as my chosen hero.
Why it’s important to finish well — MAJOR SPOILERS
The entire story of Children of Morta builds up to an end that I don’t think I received. After all we learned of Ou and his story, there didn’t seem to be an option other than to take him out at the end of the game. The Bergsons had received the blessings of the spirits they had freed, the world was slowly falling to the corruption, and Rae-Dana was still nowhere to be found. There weren’t a lot of options. And yet, after completing the final fight, the story ends with Ou being forgiven. He gets a happy ending.
This felt wildly unsatisfying to me as a player who learned about everything that Ou had done out of jealousy. Every couple generations, his corruption threatened the world and he demanded a blood sacrifice in the form of a newborn in order to not destroy everything. The Bergsons paid a steep price just to keep the Mountain God appeased. Then, at the end of it all, Ou doesnt face any consequences at all. I’m usually for redemption arcs, I really am. Zuko’s story in Avatar the Last Airbender is one of my favorites. However, Ou doesn’t get that. There is nothing in the final moments of the game that leads me to believe that he even regretted his decisions. He just gets to float off into the sunset with Rea-Dana and get a happy ending.
What bothered me is that Ou was lowkey abusive to Rea-Dana just because she had a kid. He then proceeded to punish the rest of her descendants simply for existing. Yet, at the end of the game, Rea-Dana shows up and accepts him back like nothing happened. Ou didn’t do anything but lose a fight at the end of the game. That’s it. There’s no indication at all, that I remember that he has changed. Which puts the future world in danger of this happening again.
I appreciate good storytelling and world building. Up until the end of the game, I was fascinated by the world that Dead Mage created. They layered in new elements as you progressed instead of throwing large segments of new information at you all at once. By adding in side conversations and little asides when players are running through the dungeon, you got to learn more about and care more about the family and their relationships. But the ending kind of threw me for this game. It didn’t feel like it matched with the vibe of the rest of the game at all. Particularly given that none of the other bosses had the opportunity to receive the same kind of redemption arc.
I really enjoyed 98% of Children of Morta. It was really fun to try out all the different play styles and learn more about the world. It was also entertaining to see my community on Twitch react to the game. But the ending is what I remember most, and it was a bit of a disappointing ending. The last two fights in the game also felt much easier than some of the earlier bosses, but that may be due to me being more used to how to play as certain characters.
Overall Children of Morta gets a 8.5/10.
Endings are important at stories. Spider-Man on the PS4 struggled with it’s ending as well. Leaving people with a story that they remember fondly is how you get people to keep coming back and I hope that more games pay as much attention to their ending as they do to everything that leads up to it.