Rain World Review (Dodged)
I have majorly updated this review to be even better:
This is a 8.5/10, and my third favorite game of all time, BUT:
I'm going to actually tell you if you'll like this game or not, BECAUSE IT IS NOT FOR EVERYONE
(no seriously), these are VERY important, and though the trailers and description make it somewhat clear I want to expand on it:
To enjoy this game you must be fine with these things:
- Dying A LOT, this is the major one. This game will kill you after 20 minutes of progression out of nowhere right next to a checkpoint and send you all the way back before you did it. This game is a type of difficulty you don't see a lot. I always play games on the hardest difficulties, and (at least in my opinion) very good at games, especially ones like Rain World at first glance. Rain World throws all the classic difficulty systems out the window though. Rain World's difficulty comes from addapting to new enviroments, learning enemy patterns, randomness, it's unforgiving nature, and survival (I.E. Finding food and not failing a janky parkour section).
- RNG, lots of RNG, ties in with last point.
- Getting lost and a ton of exploration, which is just as much of a con as much as it's a pro, it's just a preference. If you don't particularly like getting lost and exploring and all that jazz, go into the game for a bit, get past the first few areas, and if you dont like that aspect, use the Wiki maps, and you'll have a great time still.
(Added) - Purposefully jank mechanics. Rain World has one of the most jank and weird movement systems on purpose, and that can justifiably be frustrating to people. Even the combat is weird. You're mostly one shot to almost everything, and the combat involves finding spears, finding rocks, and throwing things at your enemies' weakpoints until they die. You don't get your spears back, you have to either find a new one or pull it back out of enemies, this is a type of combat I hadn't really seen before.
You have to be VERY patient and be willing to die A LOT if you want to beat this game, here are my recommendations:
(Scratch everything I put here previously): Play Survivor. The story makes more sense, and even though it may be frustrating at times, it's worth it. It's the type of game that makes the journey so hard that when you finally finish it, it's extremely liberating.
Don't play Hunter (hard mode) until you beat the game, it is not what you'd expect.
Other than that, this is my third or fourth favorite game of all time still deciding if it's better than Hollow Knight in my eyes (Update: It is after Downpour, though I have faith that Silksong will be better than Rain World), it's absolutely beautiful, the AI is jawdropping, the environments are fantastic, and even though I had no idea what was happening, the ending almost brought me to tears (mainly because of how god damn difficult it was getting there, and because the art was so damn good).
Absolutely fantastic game.
(play Outer Wilds too by the way)