If you want a third person shooter roguelite with lots of action and good controls you may want to try Risk of Rain 2, way cheaper! (but not as pretty)
Played about an hour, like it a lot so far.
This should be the title of every review of this game.
I generally play most games on Easy because I don’t have time to keep retrying things, so this is very much a concern for me in this game. My first 2 hours or so though, I’ve died twice so far. Already earned some permanent upgrades. Combat has been no big deal so far - it’s kind of cool that combat at range is dodging bullet-hell style projectiles. I’m expecting the difficulty to spike especially after I get to the first boss, but overall I am extremely impressed with this game. I also have played Souls games in the past, so we will see how it ultimately compares to those.
After Metro’s lighting yesterday and Returnal’s particles today, it’ll probably take one more notable title for Alex to ascend to some higher plane of joy.
Yep…my 15 year old destroys me in COD and other fast paced games. I, at 58, am kind of sad I cannot play these games to a high level anymore but at least there is Ratchet!
how does this compare to Risk of Rain 2, which is super hard? RoR2 is also really swingy, a run can end in 5 minutes or 45 minutes.
edit: wow, it’s a full price PS5 game, didn’t expect this for a roguelike…
First boss down and I’m into zone 2 which feels very different from zone 1. Really enjoying it so far. Difficulty wise, it has that thing that roguelikes have where you can have a very good run going that just suddenly goes completely sideways, the classic risk reward of do you go into that optional room that might have some gear or instead might have a super enemy that is going to trounce you.
A helpful tip, in the first zone, you can rest and heal at your ship, I think it works less each time you use it in a single run.
I was jonesing for a new game, and I don’t fear roguelikes so I bought this. I’ve only put in an hour so far, so I can’t speak to the difficulty, but the game feels so good. Movement, dodging, and shooting are just superb.
It makes great use of the haptic triggers on the PS5 controller, too. There’s are two modes on L2: a gentle squeeze and a hard click that change what happens with you fire with R2. If feels exactly the the old Gamecube triggers.
Again, not too far in, but I’m getting some big Metroid Prime vibes. If Metroid Prime, Dark Souls, and Control had a threeway…
I’m into the 3rd zone now and yeah this game is awesome. There’s a lot of Metroid in here, just got a new traversal skill that is a joy to use. Still unlocking cool guns and other stuff too. There’s a lot more weapons than just pistol/smg/shotgun but they don’t start unlocking till certain zones.
Some early game things that might not be obvious
You can sleep in the ship to heal in Biome 1.
To access chests locked behind a gate you just need to shoot a glowing switch somewhere nearby, no special item required.
Dash has iframes, so use it to dodge through laser walls.
Personally I find it best to not use ADS unless dealing with a big enemy that I want to target a weak spot on.
Some sections will only be accessible on subsequent runs with tools you get from later zones.
iframes? ADS? Help me understand your strange language.
I took me a bit to figure out how weapons proficiency works, but it all makes sense now.
I haven’t beaten the first boss yet, but I got really close. I’m enjoying the game a lot.
iFrames = frames of animation where you are invincible. In Returnal, dodging makes you temporarily invincible so you can dodge through enemy shots for example.
ADS= aim down sights.
TY = Thank you.
Just got a new crazy gun the Electropylon Driver, that thing is nuts! It’s like something from an Ratchet & Clank game. I guess they give it to you early with the Deluxe addition, and I have to say that would make early runs a lot easier if you have access to it.
I’d love to try this game but I hope there may be some accessibility & balance changes in the future that would make the game a bit more approachable. A lot of it seems up my alley (Control? Metroid? Souls? Annihilation? Yes please!) except for the roguelike part. I can’t deal with the frustration of not making any forward progress. Other Housemarque I enjoy their concepts and gameplay but I’ve never been a high score type of gamer.
You can sleep in the ship to heal in Biome 1.
To expand upon this, you can ignore the green health pickups when you’re hurt and instead sleep in the ship to heal to full, then come back to the health pickups and they’ll expand your max health instead of healing. It’s tedious but the game is so ball puntingly hard I find it useful to cheese it like this.
Unrelated, but I absolutely despise those flying blocky rocket launching things in Biome 3. They’re killing me so very often.
I spent $70 on this because I guess I’m desperate for something new to play on PS5.
It’s pretty fun, but I’m ashamed to say how many times I died in the first level. I’m in the desert now and I think I have my grove.
What’s the deal with those platforms I can’t activate in the first level? Is there some upgrade that lets me make them extend a bridge or something? And those floating balls that hover over pits. They look like they’re meant to be grappled.
The ship heals you fully every time you sleep at it? I read that it heals with diminishing returns on subsequent visits, but I can’t find the source of that claim. I’ve also not noticed health packs contributing to upgrading max health when I’m already at max health. There are separate items for that. If you’re right, that’s terrible. I hate it when developers don’t do enough to disincentivize loops like this that make optimal play tedious, especially in a game as challenging as Returnal.
There’s plenty of ways to make forward progress: unlocking permanent items that become part of your toolset for all future runs, unlocking additional weapons, items, and mods that become available to randomly spawn on subsequent runs, earning a currency that persists across runs, and filling the journal with some pretty interesting flavor text (you can tell writers from Control contributed by the new jargon they use to redact). But yes, you reset to the beginning of the game every time you die. These kinds of games reward anyone who gets absorbed enough to want to learn enemy and boss behavior and level permutations, and punish anyone who doesn’t. And I hope Housemarque does nothing to decrease the difficulty of Returnal. This game would not work without frequent dying.