You play as Pseudo, a master of martial arts who lives as a recluse in the strange land of Zenozoik. When you cross paths with the Boy, a small creature whose mysterious powers have attracted the attention of Gemini, the Mistress of the Artifacts, you decide to protect him, unaware that much greater forces are involved.
Before fighting, you can challenge your opponent to a game of dice, with the winner defining the rules of the encounter – often to their advantage. Summoning a monster as an ally, covering the area in fog, having shackles limit movement… far from determining the outcome of the combat, the Ritual represents an opportunity to exploit if you win it or a challenge to cleverly overcome if you lose.
Like the previous titles of the series, the gameplay of Clash: Artifacts of Chaos is centered on unarmed melee combat. While its two predecessors used exclusively a first-person perspective during gameplay sequences, the third installment plays mostly in third-person perspective. First person is limited to brief sequences which can lead to the execution of finisher attacks. Combat against intelligent beings can be preceded by a round of the Ritual, a dice game that grants a tactical advantage to the winner from a range of options, such as an extra ally or a fog cloud opaque only to the adversary. For the first time in the series, the game features a character customization system including attributes to increase when leveling up and combat stances to unlock, such as the Spear stance which grants long reach attacks.