Kinda snuck up on me, that the game is out next week. Anyone else interested in this game? I never did get my horror fix over the summer, and the movies I’ve seen look pretty disturbing. The game looks like a mix of haunting ground with a dog partner, and silent hill with the" what the hell is going on" feel.
I’m debating right now over preordering it to get the soundtrack, as Atlus usually has good soundtracks with their games ( I have the dds, nocturne, and a few other game soundtracks).
Also for the last 2 months I kept confusing the game with ring of red, and yes I told the eb guy I wanted to preorder ring of rose or rule of red at one point.
I’m an Atlus whore! I’ll buy it for sure!
Well, not really, 'cos I haven’t bought Steambot chronicles yet, either. And horror games aren’t really my thing. And I’m supposed to play Planescape first! So I, too, will wait for online reviews.
I’m still waiting for Steambot to go down in price, I seem to be the only one who buys Atlus games from my eb, as they still have their only copy of steambot and Magna Carta .
The game’s website looks pretty creepy, the storybook theme is disturbing and cool at the same time.
Also has anyone played Haunting Ground and is it worth a look ? I’ve heard previews comparing Rule of Rose to it because of the dog mechanic. I only played it for about 20 minutes in the store when it first came out.
I have a feeling this game is going to get unfairly abused. Look at the quotes below from NTSC-UK:
While not the best example of the genre, Silent Hill and Haunting Ground fans would certainly find the story appealing and the gorgeous cut-scenes instil the chilling atmosphere that every horror game needs.
There are plenty of save points scattered liberally around and whilst Jennifer can only hold a number of items, each save point normally has a dustbin where she can stash surplus items and pick them up again later at the next save point.
Much of the story is told via gorgeous pre-rendered sequences, which are a big improvement on many seen in other survival horror games.
Rule of Rose should be a good game but, at the end of the day, it’s simply a matter of checking all the doors until you find the correct route and the villains and boss are not a challenge. On a more positive note, the complexity of some of the locations – particularly the airship – do add to the tension, and the same can be said for the creepy inhabitants of Jennifer’s world.
The final score they gave the game was 50%. WTF? How does that score come from the quotes listed above? No talk of horrific controls, terrible difficulty, poor graphics or even poor save location placement. His main grinding point is that the dog wasn’t as useful as the one seen in Haunting Ground. I have no idea if this game will be a winner or a dud, but don’t tie a score of 50% to an article that makes the game seem like it should be around 70-80%.
His criticisms are, to be fair, close to the mark. A lot of the game as I’ve played it boils down to trying every door until you figure out which door is the right one.
There’s also a rather unpleasant sequence near the end of the second “month” where you’re up to your demure 1930s hemline in twisted little child midget bastards, and the only weapon the game’s given you is a friggin’ dessert fork.
Rule of Rose doesn’t play a damn thing like Haunting Ground, but on the surface, it has a weird number of similarities: a young and blameless woman is thrust into a quasimedieval pseudofantasy horrific scenario for no immediately obvious reason, with a faithful dog as her only ally.
Brown, in Rule of Rose, finds items for you, whereas Hewie in Haunting Ground could tear the shit out of enemies for you if you wanted.
I’m pathologically retarded for survival horror, so I’m biased, but Haunting Ground is a decent time. It does what Clock Tower 3 did right, in that the heroine can’t simply blast the shit out of all the evil, so the horror factor is pervasive instead of being dependent on how many shots are left in your clip, but it gives Fiona more of an offensive arsenal than Ashley had.
To translate from my own geekspeak, Haunting Ground is creepy because you’re a largely defenseless, out-of-shape sixteen-year-old girl in a bizarre situation. It’s worth checking out, but it does start a bit slowly.
Out of curiosity, is Haunting Ground the same as Clock Tower 3 in the sense that every 5-10 seconds the boss suddenly appears and you need to run back to the safe point? The reason I stopped playing Clock Tower 3 was because there was absolutely no sense of building tension and absolutely no time to explore the environments. You knew, without fail, that Boss X would come crashing into whichever room you were attempting to investigate within 10 seconds of entering it. Again, and again, and again.
I prefer my horror games to have some semblence of mounting uneasiness. I find strange sounds, haunting music, and dark rooms that tug at my imagination much more terrifying than being chased repeatedly and continuously.
Would you categorize Rule of Rose as something more akin to Resident Evil, Silent Hill, or Haunting Ground? Or is perhaps similar to some other horror game? (Kuon, Eternal Darkness, etc…)
I’d put Rule of Rose closer to Silent Hill. While both games (Haunting Ground/Clock Tower-types and Silent Hill-types) often put you in the role of an average protagonist who isn’t a combat specialist, Rule of Rose is closer to the rather frustrating hacking, struggling, go-away, will-you-just-get-off-me, arrg style of Silent Hill. It also is close in the classy horror style of using different ways than to freak you out. I hadn’t been this unsettled since that scene in Silent Hill 2. (You know what scene I’m talking about, everyone knows what scene you’re talking about if you refer to “that scene” in SH2.)
Want some weird trivia? The creators of Rule of Rose and Chibi Robo are related and have similar goals; they both once worked on the same projects together.
As for Haunting Ground, you do have to get used to lots of interruptions, but I don’t think it’s as often as the Clock Tower games, though I’ve only played a little bit 2 and the SFC version of 1. Beside, the dynamic for avoiding trouble is pretty different and better than Clock Tower anyway. Haunting Ground is just an all-around cool, solid title. It didn’t make me wants to write sonnets to it, but I liked it nonetheless.
I love Silent Hill 2, greatly enjoy all the REs and pretty much never want to play another Clock Tower game again. But my favorite horror game is The Dark Eye.
I liked it. It is one of those games that is helped out immensely by having a gripping aesthetic that seems at once reminding you of life as its most vivid and like a fever dream, as well as having one very intriguing story with extremely well-integrated themes and imagery. Certainly if the gameplay had been married to something less compelling, a storyline and threading that is exciting in how professionally its presented, then I would be less enthusiastic.
As it is, it’s hard to separate the two. It reminds me of the Soul of Chaos dungeons from Dawn of Souls, in that there’s these cool items you can get, and really remarkably creative floors that bring a big smile to your face, but then, there’s these other areas that are just you hammering the A-button to get on with it as you demolish enemies like snapping toothpicks and go out of your way in random battle tedium to get treasure chests with a potin or an antidote in them.
I guess you could say that sandwiched between the stronger gameplay ideas and implementations, the marvelous ideas and story was enough to overcome the icky parts. Kind of like how you read a book and the first 80 pages might be really boring, but by the time you get to the end, you’re like, “Wow, I’m glad I’ll have those memories to look back on now!” Except that Rule of Rose doesn’t start off slow at all.
It’s a very sublime game.
Does that answer your question?
Oh and BTW, if it was a 28 in Famitsu, it’s a 28 out 40, that would mean it converts to a seven out of ten in average, not 28%. :P
Haunting Ground doesn’t have the same mission-based structure as Clock Tower 3; it’s more like the original Resident Evil, where the entire environment is a continuous area that you explore as you go.
I’m not that far in it, but Haunting Ground doesn’t spend as much time getting you chased as Clock Tower 3 did. There’s a lot more puzzle-solving, and at the same time, the people doing the pursuing aren’t as relentless or dangerous. In other words, the focus of the game is not running away; it’s more like running away is part of your available options, along with using items and having Hewie take the fucker’s bollocks off.
Personally, I stopped playing Clock Tower 3 when it started throwing instant-kill axe traps at me in the castle level.
Ergh. Tough one.
I’d put it tentatively closer to Silent Hill than anything else. The music’s a big part of its atmosphere, there’s almost no percentage in ever fighting anything, your main character’s a 19-year-old British orphan, and the game’s so relentlessly surreal that you can get caught up in it and overlook some of the glaring gameplay deficiencies. Rule of Rose’s biggest problem, in my book, is that it’s very much the kind of game you’d like if you like games like it; it’s a survival-horror title for people who’re already into the genre.
Along those same lines, Tokobot and Fatal Frame (Rei/Project Zero) are produced by the same guy.
Clock Tower 3 was the first one in the series I played, it was disturbing enough, but the boss fight stuff was abit out of place. The last good horror game I played would probably be the Fatal Frame series.
I’m still not 100% sure which scene Kitsune is talking about in Silent Hill 2, there are so many good ones to pick.
Is the camera fixed in place or a little less restrictive like in SH2? I’m taking that Rule of Rose is like eariler horror games, excellent story and narrative, average gameplay. One more question, without spoiling anything if you can, is it true that the game has multiple endings?
That castle level in Clock Tower was a pain in the ass, the final boss and the mining level were the 2 that got on my nerves the most.
The only thing I’m now concern with Rule of Rose are the controls. I just tried playing Silent Hill 2 again, and I forgot how annoying the controls are. I played up to “that moment” and I might have jumped once in my seat. Having to constantly fumble with the combat mechanics took the scare factor down a bit. I’m wondering that with Rule of Rose, that I’ll be more concern about trying to control the main character rather then getting scared to death by the game.
