INTRO:
It used to be not so long ago where gaming devs like gameloft would basically bring interesting but watered down versions,or basically their own interpretation of big budget console games to mobile,like modern combat to Activision's call of duty,or nova to Microsoft's halo series.They weren't the only one's but am just using them as an example of how mobile games especially the premium one's used to always try to replicate their big budget counterparts but nowadays things have changed a little. More and more the premium segment of mobile gaming has shifted its focus more on indie titles or straight up ports of console games and the few devs who still try to bring that console experience to mobile in their own titles no longer focus on doing everything a big triple A title does to a seven or ten dollar game where the major reactions to them are usually "yeah,thats a decent cheap knock-off of xyz triple A title", but now focus on the best parts of those big games and flush out all the extra bloat so reactions to them are now something along the lines of "holy molly! How's this even a mobile game", giving a feeling of quality way above the regular 7-10 dollars premium mobile games charge unless u're a big Japanese studio like Square Enix, and that's what Tipswork and giant games have set out to achieve with Pascal's Wager.
So does Pascal's wager hit way above it's mobile tag?
And is it a worthy entry in the now engraved in stone souls-like genre, or does it feel like a cheap mobile knock-off?
Am tide the noob gamer and these are the questions I hope to shed a little light in my review of Pascal's Wager on Android.

GAMEPLAY:
And the answer is basically yes,in terms of combat Pascal's wager hits above its price tag and is basically a souls-like to the bone,almost. Combat in Pascal's Wager basically plays by the souls rulebook,the main protagonists aren’t superhuman with lightning quick reflexes so you have to be almost methodical with your attacks and know when to defend or just get out of the way of the various enemies and challenges Pascal's Wager throws at you, and every single one of the enemy types in the game can do serious damage to you if you’re not careful, i mean pascal's wager isn’t an open world game but i’ve still spent over 40 hours on just my first playthrough of the main story without even getting to the new game plus mode just because of how tough every single enemy is, and this is even with the fact that my entire time playing pascals wager has been with a mix of both an ipega and ps4 controller. I even spent about 4 hours in exilium, one of the levels in the game just because a single enemy-an infected knight with a cross bow that also did a lot of poison damage kept getting me, and maybe that's because i'm not the best player out there seeing as this is my first experience with a souls like game counting out deadcells which for me is a different experience, but even the best players out there shouldn't be able to beat this game in 15hours. Not only is the variety and difficulty of enemies impressive, but also their animations are also pretty good-Enemies have a decent mix of attack patterns,they also try to defend themselves just like the player, and most of them have special attacks and transformations that surprised me and kind of figuratively and literally blew me away. The only part about the ai that personally i was very ok with but souls players might not really be okay with based on how deep your love for Souls games runs, are the boss fights. Firstly most of the boss are brilliantly realized and battles against them are usually epic especially when you go into lunatic mode which i’ll explain later, but apart from the final boss who am still struggling with after more than 15 attempts, most of the other boss fights felt taken out the hack and slash genre rather than the souls genre with most of them defeated after three to five attempts. Personally i actually enjoyed all the boss fights except the final one, the final boss attacks seemed kind of unfair to me, like draining all your health while they have multiple forms to battle through,so basically like 3 boss fights in one and it kind of came as a shock to me after my battles with all the other bosses.
In order to take on these difficult enemies you play as two of four main protagonists in any level.Terrence is the main protagonist and is permanently selected for every level with the option of selecting one of Viola, Norwood or Benita depending on your preference or the story progress you've made. These four characters i fell are what make Pascal's Wager unique in terms of gameplay, but before i focus on whats different between them i’d like to focus on their similarities. First off,each character has the usual souls stamina bar which you have to manage during combat. Attacks,dodging,blocking and taking hits from enemies will drain their stamina and once its fully consumed you are left exposed and can't also do much damage, enemies also have a kind of stamina bar that only drains when you attack them and fully draining it will stun them for a little bit giving you a minor window to execute them which either completely takes them out or does massive damage to them. The four main characters also share a permanent health potion along with other temporary resources gathered,crafted or purchased, although how much each character carries and its potency is based on individual upgrades. The most important feature shared between each character are trophies. You get trophies either from defeating enemies,crafting at alters or buying from your companions, and what they do is basically increase the stats of all characters like increasing attack,defence,stamina,critical hits,resistance e.t.c acting as perks for character stats, and you can mix and match trophies based on your preference. Trophies come in very handy during gameplay, like for instance you’re fighting an enemy who does a lot of damage with poison,you can switch to trophies that increase poison resistance, or you aren't doing enough damage to enemies, then switch to trophies that increase attacks or critical damage, and there are even more ways to take advantage of trophies with some special ones even granting stat buffs and debuff. And the last thing i can think of that each character shares is sanity which for me in context of the story never really gelled but in the context of gameplay is perfect for pascals wager. You see all four protagonists slowly get insane as you combat enemies and once their insanity gets to the point of being abnormal they get stat debuffs like having only 70percent of health or reducing the effects of health potions but increasing damage all characters can deal to the enemy ai making you feel like a cornered animal.Once sanity is reduced to zero, whatever character you are using becomes a lunatic facing dark mist versions of your companion along with any enemy you are unlucky to have around. Lunacy works differently with boss fights though, instead of battling corrupted versions of your allies the boss goes into a new form or mode adding more special attacks,being more aggressive and causing far more damage.
The difference between all four characters is the way they play and their talents,let me explain. You see, in pascals wager rather than mixing different stances,gears or weapons all four protagonists have different but fixed abilities,fighting styles and weapons. Terrence the one permanent character through the entire game is sort of a balanced mix.his light,heavy and special attacks with his dual wielding of two swords take him up close and personal with enemies but he is also quick and nimble enough to dodge or roll away from unblockable attacks and can use his swords to block and parry attacks, he was arguably the easiest of the characters to use which makes sense considering you can never swap him out in the main story and can only replace him in the dark mist DLC which is like a survival mode. On the other hand the hardest character to use but arguably the coolest looking is Norwood, a one handed tank character or at least as tank as a souls game character is allowed to be who fights with a Freaking Giant Coffin!!. His movement,attacks,especially his heavy attacks,dodging and rolling are the slowest among all four protagonists but he compensates for this by being able to take more hits using his coffin as a shield and having his heavy attacks be almost unblockable and harder to interrupt. Then we have Viola, Terrence's original partner, is way quicker on her feet than even Terrence, but she has no block or parry instead holding down the same button will make her rapid fire her bullets. Her weapon of choice is a sort of bayonet which is basically a gun with a short sword or knife attached to it. Timing is very important with viola as her light attacks which is basically shooting single rounds at enemies doesn't do too much damage except with her special bullets and those have very limited ammo, so you might want to save them up for tougher enemy encounters, her heavy attacks with the knife attached to her gun does do significantly more damage but that means she has to get up close to enemies who's attacks she can't directly block or parry, And finally we have Benita, an old friend of Terrence, who was sort of an enforcer/disciplinarian but is now blind. She's more of a mid-range fighter with her whip but is similar to Viola in terms of how they defend against enemies with the same inability to block or parry attacks, what differentiates her though is that her faith and special Elixirs grants her two special abilities, with one granting an extra shield on top of her total hp and the other helping with health regeneration.
As for talents,these are basically skill trees for all four characters that can be unlocked and upgraded based on the quality of the immundus you have,immundus being the resource used to unlock talents. Talents are divided into 4 sections namely attack, special, sanity and alchemy, and are used to unlock special abilities,combo moves,increase usefulness of potions,decrease the risk of gonig insane and much more. Personally i'd advice focusing a little bit more on Terrence talents especially when you're drawing closer to the end of the game.
One thing i'd like to talk about before moving on from gameplay is the "ALTER".its basically were every character stat upgrade,talent unlocking,crafting,reforging and enhancement of elixirs and trophies take place, plus it serves as a checkpoint too. Important things to note is that when you die and respawn at an alter all health and stamina is reverted to full and same for the permanent health potion, but any other elixir or consumable used won't be returned to you. Another thing to note is every stat point gotten from upgraging your alter stacks up for even characters you've not used so basically say you've not used Norwood for 2 or 3 levels and during that period you've upgraded your alter and gotten four stat points, once you decide to use Norwood again he'll have those four stat points waiting for you to use and increase his stats which is a good thing considering this was one of the things that annoyed me in battle chasers and made me mostly stick to my initial characters rather than grinding anew anytime i decided to switch characters up.

GRAPHICS,LEVEL DESIGN,PERFORMANCE:
The world of Pascal's wager is dark,grey and depressing which is almost definitely what the devs where going for, i mean this is a world quite literally covered in darkness and infected with sendrils that are turning everything "cucoo"-pardon the scientific phrase (don't Google that) and basically everyone and thing that aren't our heroes are getting reshaped and deformed into monsters.The enemy designs are good and their animations are pretty good too, but apart from the final bosses in each level, only some enemies in the second level of adamina really stood out in the disturbing looks category, for instance the uncut umblical cord still sticking out of the mothers while you do battle, and it absolutely fit in with what was going on in that particular level. Animations for the main characters are again way above expectation for a mobile game, and there's also a lot of attention paid to their overall design, there's a uniqueness to each character appearance, there are dents and scratches all over their armor, you can see Benita's elixir's drain from their casing as she uses her powers,its all very impressive. But hairwork is a weakness for some characters looking almost glued on, all you have to do is look at the mane on the horses of Glenn's carriage at the beginning, DAMN those these will hunt you . The environments in Pascal's wager are also for the most part very good often times giving a sense of scope and scale to the whole game, view distance is explained away by the darkness covering the world but what can't be explained away is the constant popping in and out of objects, textures and enemies that sometimes happen too close to the action.
As for level design this is one area were you guys are going to be pleasently surprised especially those that like to explore every nook and crany in their games. I like to refer to the levels in Pascal's wager as linearity done right! Because despite the fact that Pascal's wager isn't an open world game, levels aren't just- go from point a to point b. There are multiple paths sometimes leading to the same path from different angles meaning you might end up facing enemies head on or you find a path that puts you behind enemies so you can backstab them, other times these paths lead to chests,Siflers, who are basically vendors in Pascal's wager or you'll find heggies, little creatures who give you resources in exchange for an acceptable sacrifice, you'll find side quests, shortcuts and maybe even special enemies in hidden lost valleys. Exploring the world of Pascal's wager is arguably one of the best part of the game and performance wise the game is also pretty solid even on my helio g90t at a smooth 30fps on the highest setting and am very sure higher end devices will be able to hit 60 frames per second easily.Also the game does something i've noticed most console games doing in the naming of the different parameters of graphics in settings were they rename medium as high and high as epic or something like that, and Pascal's wager does the same naming low as medium settings, medium as high and so on, it's not a con and the game is well optimized, i just found the naming for the graphic settings off.

MUSIC,SOUND,VOICE AND STORY:
You know music is good when the devs are making documentaries about it and putting the complete soundtrack on music streaming platforms everywhere. I say it over and over again that am not the best at describing these things but what i can tell you is the soundtrack in Pascal's wager is epic, almost giving that kind of Game of Thrones opening soundtrack vibe but just a little bit slower,it also knows when to be low key and brooding and ramps up once things are getting intense, although it sometimes overshadowed the voice acting not that it really mattered .The environmental sounds are also decent, you can tell an heggie or enemy is around just by sound though this isn't some kind of groundbreaking directional audio like in senua sacrifice, not that you'd expect that for the price charged here, the sound of attacks from both your attacks and enemy attacks carry a lot of weight with them.
Considering how much Pascal's wager does right i guess the limitations of its budget had to show up somewhere and sadly those limitations show up in its voice acting and storytelling. The voice acting from almost all characters to npcs to enemies were just stiff and bad, no redeeming quality anywhere and even the subtitles seemed pretty bad with the things being said and written often not matching each other. The story for me has just been a confusing mess, i couldn't keep up with what was going on and why. The story seems to try to be purposely vague but most of the journals found in the game didn't seem to shine much light on it, at least not for me .


Overall, Pascal's wager is a Premium mobile game that punches well! well! above it's weight and gameplay for me has been so good it hooked a non-souls player like me in, and it was also in keeping with the creed of Souls game where every enemy encounter requires your full attention and getting mobbed by more than one enemy almost means certain death which is why full gamepad support is extremely important and will help draw in console gamers who probably wouldn't want to play with touchscreen controls.i was however more suprised by how good animations are especially for the enemy ai. Sound and music is also another passmark for Pascal's wager especially the music which shines throughout the entire game. The way the level is structured is also an highlight with the devs going for small but branching paths with different rewards and threats rather than trying to force a big open world that would have blown their budget, leading to a worse game, and the overall graphics of Pascal's wager is very good with detailed characters, enemies and environments with the pop-in issue being the only minor con. What wasn't minor though was the bad overall voice acting and story and if a sequel is ever planned these are the two things that will need deep fixing.
But overall Pascal's wager is a very good soul's like game and arguably one of the best premium mobile games of the year and considering how many dlc's have the game has gotten from the dark mist and a new game plus plus more incoming, it's fair to say the game will only get better.

Summary for those that want to skip the long read. Pascal's Wager is a Premium souls-like game for mobile, and these are the pros and cons
Pros:
Gameplay and animations
Level design
Gamepad support
Music
Graphics,for the most part

Cons:
Enemies and environments popping-in and out sometimes
Voice acting isn't great
Story is confusing
Requires internet to start up(but not to play)

If you're interested in my video review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08aCW28vlwA