An imitator with all its flaws and strengths
These types of games are born when someone looks at what is popular and they decide to make a twist on it to benefit from a market segment. However, this game falls short and as an imitator, it fails to achieve strengths of Risk of Rain 2 and it amplifies its failing.
🕹️A Ray of Hope🕹️
Before I go too hard on this game, I must say that game has some redeeming qualities. It is competently put up. It made some improvements in Risk of Rain formula like time freeze and choice during power up pick ups. Game has a solid foundation to work on. However, it is kind of game which just screams that it needs a sequel which would rework everything to be better. 💻Something which AI could spit out💻
…And I do not mean in a good way. It feels so formulaic, so generic and lacking in creativity. There is nothing interesting in this game. There are very few improvements. Where is ambition to have your own game? It feels like developers looked at what is popular, what games are missing in the market and they just tried to fill a niche. This level of passion shows up in this game.No End Game
Calicifer’s Reviews
- The biggest fault of this prologue (demo) is that it has no way to win this game. It just loops over and over, carrying the worst aspect of Risk of Rain 2. In that game there are several ways to win the game. That is the point for most runs. Runs which just fail to end, while entertaining at first, become tiresome very quickly. This game wants to do looping levels of RoR, but it fails at its most important aspect. It is that of having variety within runs. Doing secrets. Doing meta objectives. Getting tired of a game and choosing in what way you want to end game. This game however has none of it. It is just endless looping over the same level again and again.
Poor Scaling - Another issue which this game is that scaling in this game is terrible. It is way too easy to scale out until enemies pose no danger to you. Then the only scaling option becomes multiplying damage you deal and take. Do you know that risky gear in Risk of Rain 2? Yes, it is here too of course, but it is common. You will get several of them in every run. Enemies will still do no damage to you. You will still melt everything. It gets so bad that I do not even need to destroy bosses, they kill themselves off screen. Then you end up completely randomly to some pillar AoE effect out of nowhere, because you touched edge of it. It is this kind of bad, broken, boring balancing.
Uninteresting Items - This game carries nonsensical items from Risk of Rain. The area where they could had improved is actually even worse. They are even more nonsensical and difficult to read on the battlefield than in Risk of Rain 2. They took a bad system and made it worse. That is the perils of imitation. Most dangerous items from Risk of Rain here are just rare. You get them a lot and they are the only thing which can kill you in this game.
You will get legendaries from Risk of Rain 2 pretty often. Here they however serve as main method of balancing. Since enemies do no damage to you, you keep stacking it on yourself. Enemies still don’t do any damage to you, but now you at least can die randomly and completely unexpected from tip toying into AoE. That is always fun, isn’t? To die out of the blue.
Amateur enemy models - Enemy models are just bad. They are minimalistic, but are not iconic like in Risk of Rain 2. This is due to them having little power in their abilities and being far less detailed in game. It is far worse in this game, because basic enemies you meet are the same for the whole game while RoR have different enemies for each map. Each of those enemies have unique strengths and weaknesses which were a challenge to figure out when we played that game. Here however nothing has any strengths or weaknesses. You all just Pew Pew Pew away as if players wanted even more simplified game.
This model exemplifies well to just how much love this game received. What I’m fighting here exactly? This is supposed to be big enemy boss. However, it is just a generic golem with generic attacks. I can’t even pin point its form. Even out of place models in Risk of Rain 2 are better simply because they try to be unique. Giant fire breathing lizards? Yeah, that is memorable. This? This is just generic mass of polygons which I never remember, because I do not know what this is even supposed to be!To make it worse, even developers themselves have no clue what it is. In game objective is to kill a Siren when actually you need to kill a Prince which is not prince at all, but giant mech. Just an utterly confused mess.
Generic Setting - Setting is nonsensical. It does little to establish what you are doing. Why you are here. It talks in vague terms like some Dark Souls game. It is bad story telling in that game and it is bad story telling here. It gives me no context. This is complete opposite of RoR. Your ship crashed down, survivors fell into a strange new planet. You all are trying to escape the planet. Here, strong and simple context to what we are doing there. In this game however I had no clue what I was trying to achieve. I went for 2,5 hours trying to die and failing at that and I was none the wiser why I was doing all of it.
Here is a good example. What I’m doing here precisely? I’m supposedly being under attack and I defend my realm. Why I need to charge portals? Why attention level is increasing? What are those weirdly named effects? There is no context to what you are doing. You are doing this, because Risk of Rain did it. You are here just doing the same thing, but worse.Uninspired level design. What I’m doing here? Why? What are Lucid Ethel’s Expansions? Are developer just gave up giving a ♥♥♥♥ and are just making stuff as they go?
📋At the End of Time📋
The core problem of this game is that it tries to be too much as Risk of Rain without grasping or having capabilities to do things which made that game so great. Thus it fell short on things which make that game so good while exacerbating its shortcomings. The core foundation is here. Developers could make something interesting out of it, but I also see a risk of it being just a mediocre clone about which I could say just this: it is like Risk of Rain, but from isometric perspective and worse.Calicifer’s Reviews
If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I do not allow endless discussions under my reviews, because it rarely ends well.