Playing AI LIMIT to the End: The "Evolutionary Experiment" Driven by AI and Parry-Centric Combat Design

The protagonist is Arrisa, a girl found collapsed in the sewers. Arrisa is one of the Bladers, artificial life-forms, and has been entrusted by her creator with the mission of repairing things called "Branches." To do so, she travels through the ruins of the old civilization while interacting with the people who have survived.

According to the speaker's explanation, at some point this world became filled with a mysterious mud. Living things were gradually corrupted by that mud, and eventually even monsters called "Necro" began to appear.

The first boss is "Roa, the Lost Spearman." According to the speaker, parrying is important against almost every attack in this game, so enemy attacks are basically deflected with parries. A dodge action is also available, and attacks that can't be parried, such as grabs, are avoided by dodging. Roa goes berserk when its health drops, but the speaker timed parries to its big wind-up attacks, landed two sets of heavy attacks, and defeated it.

The second boss, fought after reaching the surface, is the "Necro Reaper." The speaker switched to a weapon picked up along the way and repeated a cycle of building the gauge with fairly strong attacks and then spending that gauge to unleash special attacks. The speaker says that once you learn this, simply repeating it is enough.

Next, Arrisa visits the church's cathedral. In an age rife with famine and death, the church appears to welcome all people. In reality, however, it was deceiving people with false doctrines, stealing their minds, and using them as experimental material. The speaker reacts to this with, "This planet is done for."

The church's weapon, the "Choir Keeper," specializes in ranged attacks using spells. Even when you get close, it warps away, so there are few chances to land hits. Here the speaker used the "Scrap Iron Spear," which the first boss had wielded. It has long reach, and its special attack, a charging move, is also excellent.

The speaker cites as one of the game's strengths that you can respec your stats as many times as you like. There's fun in trying out various weapons, and they feel the balance across weapons is tuned just right. In the second half of the fight, the speaker first waited on the outer edge for a while to avoid the shockwaves. Then, when the boss slumped in the center, they approached, attacked, and defeated it.

The next stage is a facility where people's minds are said to be stored. The speaker describes it as "basically a data center–like facility." The speaker devoted the fight against "Persephone, the Mournful Queen of the Abyss," who lurks there, to explaining the world's lore.

The people of the old civilization pushed technological innovation forward and developed advanced AI, and many things were replaced by AI. At the same time, however, this brought about a loss of humanity. Despairing of reality, people designed the virtual world "Elysion." Elysion became a gathering place for people's consciousnesses, as well as a computational domain with infinite possibilities.

The autonomous AIs are still running even now, continuing to conduct experiments while searching for the direction of their future evolution. In the speaker's summary, the AIs are currently split into three factions. It seems that different powers—the Necro, the church, and the Bladers—are vying for supremacy. The speaker ended the fight by weathering the final big attack and finishing off the enemy's remaining core.

"Ursula, the Blader Hunter," was originally friendly toward people and Bladers. She was tampered with by the old man from earlier, turned into his pawn, and now attacks.

According to the speaker, while Bladers have high physical capabilities, their flaw is that they lack cooperativeness and emotion. So the AI that created the Bladers adopted a strategy of having them interact with humans during their journeys to learn these things. From this, the speaker speculates that the fact that Bladers are all beautiful-girl types may also be a kind of strategy to get people to like them.

In her second phase, Ursula has had Necro injected into her body, so she attacks with Necro-fied arms. Bladers and Necro are both made of the same material. The speaker explains that how cleverly each AI faction can make use of that material seems to be where they get to show off their skill.

In the battles against the church's leaders, the "Bishops," "Eunomia, Archbishop of Light" appears. It is a fight in which an older sister and a younger sister take turns attacking.

The speaker offers a guess as to why the opponent doesn't put up much of a fight. Perhaps, having spent so much material on that bizarre building, they have no resources left to devote to combat. After defeating both sisters once, the fight enters a second phase where they attack again, but their attacks were very easy to read, making parries easy to land.

Here the speaker explains the game's parry system. The parry window opens a short while after you press the button. The speaker says they like the common just-guard style of defense, but this system also has its own tension and is fun. Because recovery after attacking can make you too late to parry, reckless attacks aren't allowed, resulting in combat built on fine-grained back-and-forth. The speaker counts this as a positive.

Along the way, Arrisa meets Vikas, a human acquaintance. Vikas apparently stood up to a high-ranking figure in the church but was treated like an insect. The speaker comments, "Humans are basically in the position of being ruled now." Arrisa entrusts the surviving humans to Vikas and heads for Elysion, the domain where the AIs reside.

Standing in her way is the Blader "Roskid, Child of God." He swings a spear around, but the speaker says you can handle him by deflecting with parries. Roskid apparently has an especially strong attachment to life, and is a Blader who abandoned his mission partway through his journey and defected to the church's faction.

Coinciding with the second phase, the speaker explains the lore about Bladers' bodies. A Blader's body is filled with a mud-like material, and as long as there is a Branch to serve as a foothold, they can revive from it infinitely. As a result, the concept of life and death becomes blurred for many Bladers, and there is no end to Bladers whose minds collapse. The speaker interprets that Roskid, who excels at close combat, must have seen many such Bladers, and that is precisely why he came to fear the side effects of death and cling to life.

Upon entering the virtual space Elysion, the battle against "Ether, the Holy Father" begins. Ether is the foundation of the church's power, exploiting people's despair to spread a false faith. He provides food to believers suffering from famine, but the speaker notes there are also rumors that the church itself caused that famine.

The first half is a phase of minor enemies. It ends once you defeat a total of eight enemies while watching out for projectiles flying in from the front of the stage. After a break, the main body rises, and in the second half the boss's head pops off and a naked humanoid figure appears. Critical attacks can't be landed, but parries can create big openings. During its ranged attacks, your hands are free, so the speaker used spells to boost their attack power.

During this fight, the speaker explains a resource called "Sync." Special actions such as parries and spells consume Sync, and Sync builds up through normal attacks. The speaker feels that this design keeps you from relying solely on special attacks and creates a well-balanced combat experience. They say that with the common MP or limited-use systems, you tend to end up hoarding them and not using them. The speaker remarks that they feel recent trends are gradually shifting toward this kind of system.

The final boss is "Charon, Nurturer of the Tree." Just before the fight, the AIs all start talking at once, a scene the speaker describes as "Suddenly the AIs started a class meeting," and they summarize its content. Everything that has happened on this planet was a grand experiment for evolution, and its final product was the Blader Arrisa.

Bladers had the serious flaw of lacking cooperativeness and emotion. Through her journey, however, Arrisa learned to help and be helped by other Bladers and humans. In doing so, she also succeeded in demonstrating the infinite possibility that Bladers and humans can join hands. The AIs are thoroughly satisfied with this result and declare that this planet's role is over. Then the choice is left to the protagonist: whether to venture into space and become the leader of the AIs, or to become the guardian of the remaining humanity.

In the ending after defeating Charon, Arrisa powerfully affirms the potential of humanity. The video closes this with "GG."

The speaker evaluates the game as an honor-student kind of work that tackles the complex theme of a survival struggle among AIs yet wraps it up neatly. They also cite its careful storytelling as one of its charms, including the detailed backgrounds of the Bladers and the portrayal of humans living in the post-collapse world.

As for combat and exploration, the speaker says there are many elements that feel somehow nostalgic. At the same time, they say they also sensed an approach that thoroughly studied earlier titles while trying to bring out its own originality. Making a soulslike that would be accepted in today's era must have been a project expected to involve tremendous hardship, and the speaker says that they personally want to praise the fact that a small studio pulled it off with its debut title.