Rain World Review (Netriosilver)
Fantastic game without equal in it's space. Extremely well-thought-out deeper lore, and AI systems to the point they would be worthy of an early college-level game design class to study, culminating in a perfectly living world in relation to the player. Problems with movement can be solved by mods to the point it becomes a tight and well-polished but natural-feeling platformer that feels very satisfying just to to move around in.
There is simply nothing like it.
BUT... it is underrated for good reason, beginning utterly directionless and devoid of motivation or clear cause, and with points that go beyond the intended sense of unfairness into utter monotony retrying the same things over and over. For example, one of my favorite segments involved avoiding the particularly *clanky* creature by running through pipes between waves, but after failing just near the end a few times, it suddenly wasn't worth running through the part I knew I could now easily complete (albeit quite slowly), and to save the extended hassle i downloaded a mod to delete my very favorite creature from the game, and another that allowed increased game speed.
One of my favorite levels became a simple waste of time.
I have a hobby of editing videos for Youtube, and as I get better I see more and more clearly the points where these things would lose people—where disengagement would spike—and the entire first half (or more if you try to go left for any reason before meeting a few friends ) is the biggest killer of interest I can imagine, to the point I have no idea how it was left this way by release. Upon replaying the first half, the editor in me screams CUT CUT CUT at every possible interval because the pacing is just... Bad. The little yellow doodle that tells you where to go barely ever... actually tells you... where to go? There are many areas that are either pointless or near-impassible without knowledge you can only really gain by... passing through those areas? I truly believe this game would've soared to popularity if the main difficulty of the game was the gameplay, and not finding the will to keep boggling around every little nook and cranny you haven't gone down just trying to find the way to the story. In my opinion, all they had to do was make that yellow noodle just a little less like a buffoon, and a little more like The Stanley Parable Adventure Line™.
I am among only 8% of people that ever beat the game after buying it.
My advice? Buy the game without a second thought, but unless you like mind-numbing suffering, get someone with a corporeal form to give you those subtle hints on where to go next. That is, until you get to the fantastic second half, where every way you go is different way forward, before, finally, someone who isn't stupid tells you the *real* way out.
Downpour edit:
I wish they'd implemented easier story development before just flat out letting everyone cheat