I can’t run, the character is constantly out of breath, which is why the gameplay is deliberately drawn out.
A very small map where found objects and visited rooms are not marked, although Silent Hill solved this problem back in 1999. If your game has a huge number of doors and floors, then be kind enough to implement in your games the function of marking doors and objects, or at least let the player do it himself.
The only thing I can really praise about this game is the graphics, they work at the limit of the PS 2's capabilities, it's not surprising, the game came out at the end of the era of this console.
A very small map where found objects and visited rooms are not marked, although Silent Hill solved this problem back in 1999. If your game has a huge number of doors and floors, then be kind enough to implement in your games the function of marking doors and objects, or at least let the player do it himself.
The only thing I can really praise about this game is the graphics, they work at the limit of the PS 2's capabilities, it's not surprising, the game came out at the end of the era of this console.
Rule of Rose é um game q já tinha jogado até certa parte tem mt tempo, busquei o nome no google e jurava ser Clock Tower 3 pq eu só lembrava da parte q a protagonista tá no q parece uma fábrica ( descobri q era um zepellin ) e q tinha uns bichos pra enfrentar.
No começo achei q a Jennifer era mt burra em descer do onibus, em entrar na mansão e durante outras ações questionaveis dela mas todo o progresso se passa dentro da cabeça dela ent isso explica mta coisa. Realmente a história é um pouco confusa, tive q procurar pra entender melhor sobre partes do passado dela e dos demais personagens na wikia.
>> Prós
• AMBIENTAÇÃO : A temática e ambientação antiga faz o game ter seu charme.
• SOUNDTRACK : A trilha sonora é um dos pontos fortes do game, a música dos inimigos tbm é mt boa.
• JOGABILIDADE : Não se tem muita dificuldade em jogar o game no geral, é tipo Silent Hill e os Resident Evil clássicos.
• CACHORRO : Basicamente é o Brown q controla o progresso já q ele quem encontra as coisas e os lugares pra ir.
• HISTÓRIA : A narrativa da história é bem legal e sinistra com seus determinados temas incomuns, cada capítulo separado com diferentes objetivos e acontecimentos do passado de Jennifer em ordem não-cronológica deixam o game bem especial. Fora q achei interessante como usaram um narrador no decorrer de todo jogo ditando cada ação das personagens como se fosse um livro.
• PERSONAGENS : Vários personagens são bem interessantes. Gregory e seu passado melancólico, a amizade/amor distorcida de Wendy e Jennifer, além do trio de princesas aristocrátas.
>> Contras
• JOGABILIDADE COMBATE : Geral ta reclamando e eu tbm vou, é fácil mas ruim q pra atacar tem q segurar um botão q faz ela mirar apenas para onde ela tá virada. Fora q o alcance as vezes acaba sendo bem limitado, além da parte irritante q os inimigos pulam no jogador e ficam agarrados.
>> Perso Favorito = Brown, Diana e Wendy.
>> Capítulos
• THE LITTLE PRINCESS = 3/5
• THE UNLUCKY CLOVER FIELD = 3.5/5
• SIR PETER = 2.5/5
• THE BIRD OF HAPPINESS = 2.5/5
• THE GOAT SISTERS = 3.5/5
• MERMAID PRINCESS = 3/5
• THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE = 3.5/5
• RAG PRINCESS = 3.5/5
• THE FUNERAL = 4/5
• THE STRAY DOG AND THE LYING PRINCESS = 3.5/5
• ONCE UPON A TIME = 4/5
No começo achei q a Jennifer era mt burra em descer do onibus, em entrar na mansão e durante outras ações questionaveis dela mas todo o progresso se passa dentro da cabeça dela ent isso explica mta coisa. Realmente a história é um pouco confusa, tive q procurar pra entender melhor sobre partes do passado dela e dos demais personagens na wikia.
>> Prós
• AMBIENTAÇÃO : A temática e ambientação antiga faz o game ter seu charme.
• SOUNDTRACK : A trilha sonora é um dos pontos fortes do game, a música dos inimigos tbm é mt boa.
• JOGABILIDADE : Não se tem muita dificuldade em jogar o game no geral, é tipo Silent Hill e os Resident Evil clássicos.
• CACHORRO : Basicamente é o Brown q controla o progresso já q ele quem encontra as coisas e os lugares pra ir.
• HISTÓRIA : A narrativa da história é bem legal e sinistra com seus determinados temas incomuns, cada capítulo separado com diferentes objetivos e acontecimentos do passado de Jennifer em ordem não-cronológica deixam o game bem especial. Fora q achei interessante como usaram um narrador no decorrer de todo jogo ditando cada ação das personagens como se fosse um livro.
• PERSONAGENS : Vários personagens são bem interessantes. Gregory e seu passado melancólico, a amizade/amor distorcida de Wendy e Jennifer, além do trio de princesas aristocrátas.
>> Contras
• JOGABILIDADE COMBATE : Geral ta reclamando e eu tbm vou, é fácil mas ruim q pra atacar tem q segurar um botão q faz ela mirar apenas para onde ela tá virada. Fora q o alcance as vezes acaba sendo bem limitado, além da parte irritante q os inimigos pulam no jogador e ficam agarrados.
>> Perso Favorito = Brown, Diana e Wendy.
>> Capítulos
• THE LITTLE PRINCESS = 3/5
• THE UNLUCKY CLOVER FIELD = 3.5/5
• SIR PETER = 2.5/5
• THE BIRD OF HAPPINESS = 2.5/5
• THE GOAT SISTERS = 3.5/5
• MERMAID PRINCESS = 3/5
• THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE = 3.5/5
• RAG PRINCESS = 3.5/5
• THE FUNERAL = 4/5
• THE STRAY DOG AND THE LYING PRINCESS = 3.5/5
• ONCE UPON A TIME = 4/5
everlasting true love i am yours <3
"Rule of Rose" é uma obra de arte perdida no tempo, pois muitos não compreenderam sua estética e temática.
Ousado e artístico, este jogo conseguiu me prender do início ao fim com sua narrativa construída simulando um conto infantil. Os capítulos divididos por história, misturados com a ambientação, davam ao jogo um aspecto tão único, uma identidade ausente nos jogos de terror atuais, tornando-o um vinho digital. A história é muito boa e confusa, pois demoramos a entender que tudo se passa na cabeça da Jennifer e em seu passado. Logo, a alternância de cenários do dirigível para o orfanato pode causar essa confusão. Inclusive, Jennifer é, sem sombra de dúvidas, uma das melhores personagens femininas de um jogo de terror. A história se desenrolando em torno dos traumas vividos na infância e sua construção me fizeram olhar para a personagem e dizer: ARTE! O capítulo final é simplesmente reconfortante e forte, especialmente por conta da amizade da protagonista com o Brown, seu único e verdadeiro amigo. O laço de amizade dos dois me derrubou, que ódio.
Infelizmente, o jogo realmente possui um sistema de combate muito ruim, sendo a principal queixa contra o jogo, mas a escolha é lógica. Não podemos exigir que uma garota de 19 anos, abalada psicologicamente, tenha o mesmo comportamento que um policial ou militar treinado, mesmo em um jogo. Realmente, às vezes, irritou, mas foram poucas as vezes que exigia confronto (inclusive o boss final é ridículo de fácil), o que não prejudica o jogo, já que é um Survival Horror, então não é para lutar mesmo. O sistema de arquivos do jogo também deixou a desejar, uma vez que muitos dos documentos encontrados não eram registrados, somente os contos. Isso não atrapalha na compreensão da história, mas teria sido uma boa adição para quem gosta de ler. Porém, para compensar, gostei bastante de explorar os cenários e caçar itens utilizando o Brown; achei a interação dele na gameplay bem divertida, servindo também como guia.
A ambientação e a trilha sonora foram incríveis; a estética dos anos 30, os gráficos e os personagens bem construídos, tudo é magnífico e bem feito, ficava surpreso ao lembrar que era um jogo de PS2 e não de PS3.
Por fim, "Rule of Rose" foi incompreendido em sua época e ainda o é atualmente, antes pela sua temática (que foi muito exagerado o drama na época) e agora por sua mecânica, mas isso ainda não impede o jogo de ser uma obra-prima do terror e digno de remasterização ou remake.
Ousado e artístico, este jogo conseguiu me prender do início ao fim com sua narrativa construída simulando um conto infantil. Os capítulos divididos por história, misturados com a ambientação, davam ao jogo um aspecto tão único, uma identidade ausente nos jogos de terror atuais, tornando-o um vinho digital. A história é muito boa e confusa, pois demoramos a entender que tudo se passa na cabeça da Jennifer e em seu passado. Logo, a alternância de cenários do dirigível para o orfanato pode causar essa confusão. Inclusive, Jennifer é, sem sombra de dúvidas, uma das melhores personagens femininas de um jogo de terror. A história se desenrolando em torno dos traumas vividos na infância e sua construção me fizeram olhar para a personagem e dizer: ARTE! O capítulo final é simplesmente reconfortante e forte, especialmente por conta da amizade da protagonista com o Brown, seu único e verdadeiro amigo. O laço de amizade dos dois me derrubou, que ódio.
Infelizmente, o jogo realmente possui um sistema de combate muito ruim, sendo a principal queixa contra o jogo, mas a escolha é lógica. Não podemos exigir que uma garota de 19 anos, abalada psicologicamente, tenha o mesmo comportamento que um policial ou militar treinado, mesmo em um jogo. Realmente, às vezes, irritou, mas foram poucas as vezes que exigia confronto (inclusive o boss final é ridículo de fácil), o que não prejudica o jogo, já que é um Survival Horror, então não é para lutar mesmo. O sistema de arquivos do jogo também deixou a desejar, uma vez que muitos dos documentos encontrados não eram registrados, somente os contos. Isso não atrapalha na compreensão da história, mas teria sido uma boa adição para quem gosta de ler. Porém, para compensar, gostei bastante de explorar os cenários e caçar itens utilizando o Brown; achei a interação dele na gameplay bem divertida, servindo também como guia.
A ambientação e a trilha sonora foram incríveis; a estética dos anos 30, os gráficos e os personagens bem construídos, tudo é magnífico e bem feito, ficava surpreso ao lembrar que era um jogo de PS2 e não de PS3.
Por fim, "Rule of Rose" foi incompreendido em sua época e ainda o é atualmente, antes pela sua temática (que foi muito exagerado o drama na época) e agora por sua mecânica, mas isso ainda não impede o jogo de ser uma obra-prima do terror e digno de remasterização ou remake.
de pensar que nunca vamos receber um remake ou um Remaster desse jogo pois as empresas não têm coragem suficiente
This game is completely unplayable. It is also one of the best experiences you will ever have. Easily one of the most intelligent games out there, with so much complex stuff going on regarding trauma/memory/childhood/sexuality/fluid gender/sexual dynamics/neurodivergence, etc. It is not particularly scary, but it is a deeply rich text that is rewarding to return to.
Honestly though, it should have been a visual novel, a point and click adventure, a walking simulator, or a film. It is simply unplayable as a horror game. Ludic elements often mar what are otherwise incredible experiences.
Honestly though, it should have been a visual novel, a point and click adventure, a walking simulator, or a film. It is simply unplayable as a horror game. Ludic elements often mar what are otherwise incredible experiences.
broke my heart
One of the most interesting games i've ever played. Absolutely fascinating story, maybe only marred by having combat.
pretty disappointing imo. i was expecting something a lot more violent or something considering this game was banned in a lot of countries. in reality it's a slightly weird survival horror with very stiff mechanics and combat. not bad but honestly not that interesting. not sure how it caused so much outrage. might come back to it in the future.
Girl, Interrupted for gay people
atmosfera, história, trilha sonora e estética impecáveis, o storytelling é muito interessante e te deixa curioso pra saber cada vez mais, porém a gameplay é tão frustrante que me tirou muito da imersão enquanto jogava
Interesting!... mostly due to the unconventional setting (1930s England), odd cast of characters (mostly evil little schoolchildren), and exploratory game mechanics (you progress by having your dog companion, Brown, sniff items and follow the scent).
I was pretty damned compelled by it for the 4-5 hours I played, and would've gone further had it not been for the cruel lack of save points when you need them most, and some deplorably cheap bosses. The combat in the game is, at a glance, laughably bad, but the more you play the more it makes narrative and tonal sense that you're just fumbling around with your weapon as opposed to expertly wielding it.
I won't bother to try to explain the story, or what I experienced of it -- all I know is that it is very weird, and that the atmosphere of the game is very oppressive, in ways that I honestly found kind of remarkable.
It's the sort of thing that, if there were a Criterion Collection of video games, I could see being in there -- not because it's the best thing in the world, but because it represents a unique outcropping of a well-worn genre, turns a number of established tropes on their heads, and generally feels artful.
I was pretty damned compelled by it for the 4-5 hours I played, and would've gone further had it not been for the cruel lack of save points when you need them most, and some deplorably cheap bosses. The combat in the game is, at a glance, laughably bad, but the more you play the more it makes narrative and tonal sense that you're just fumbling around with your weapon as opposed to expertly wielding it.
I won't bother to try to explain the story, or what I experienced of it -- all I know is that it is very weird, and that the atmosphere of the game is very oppressive, in ways that I honestly found kind of remarkable.
It's the sort of thing that, if there were a Criterion Collection of video games, I could see being in there -- not because it's the best thing in the world, but because it represents a unique outcropping of a well-worn genre, turns a number of established tropes on their heads, and generally feels artful.
This is a game that is deeply disturbing and requires it's own list of content warnings for those who need it:
CW: (Animal Abuse, Child Abuse, Violence, Gore, Implied Sexual Abuse, Implied Child Sexual Abuse, Kidnapping)
The story starts out where your character is on a coach and passes by an old orphanage and a child attracts her attention and she decides to leave the chase after them and into this creepy and filthy Orphanage before being captured and put into a coffin at the delight of these children.
The gameplay to this is very similar to games in the Silent Hill series as the world around them gets more and more corrupt and all the creatures are reflections of her past or something that happened around her to other children at the place she grew up.
A great mechanic in this is her animal companion Brown, the Labrador Dog. Not only can he help fight off the creatures by distracting them, but, he can sniff out items that are invisible to you until the dog tracks it down. This includes all kinds of hidden items, food, weapons and of course, items for puzzles like keys of missing parts of something needed.
This game courted quite a lot of controversy back in the day with not only the things I mentioned near the top for content warnings, but also how in the trailer and story of the game there's a same-sex relationship between two girls, which is too much for the people of the early 2000s. Of course, the majority of the controversy would've been the animal abuse and implied sexual abuse. Especially around the red-head who acts in a certain way due to her abuse and how Brown is often abused not just by the monstrous enemies, but by the sadistic little children too!
It's a good game with solid mechanics and no big issues imo, however, it was censored here and then including major parts at the end that I won't reveal for spoiler reasons. If you can handle the disturbing content, then you may enjoy this game and how it rarely pulls it's punches in regards to the disturbing content in this game.
It's also a VERY rare game so if you find it cheap, that'll be a goldmine. If you just want to play it, I suggest doing what I do and search for a ROM.
Gameplay + Stream
CW: (Animal Abuse, Child Abuse, Violence, Gore, Implied Sexual Abuse, Implied Child Sexual Abuse, Kidnapping)
The story starts out where your character is on a coach and passes by an old orphanage and a child attracts her attention and she decides to leave the chase after them and into this creepy and filthy Orphanage before being captured and put into a coffin at the delight of these children.
The gameplay to this is very similar to games in the Silent Hill series as the world around them gets more and more corrupt and all the creatures are reflections of her past or something that happened around her to other children at the place she grew up.
A great mechanic in this is her animal companion Brown, the Labrador Dog. Not only can he help fight off the creatures by distracting them, but, he can sniff out items that are invisible to you until the dog tracks it down. This includes all kinds of hidden items, food, weapons and of course, items for puzzles like keys of missing parts of something needed.
This game courted quite a lot of controversy back in the day with not only the things I mentioned near the top for content warnings, but also how in the trailer and story of the game there's a same-sex relationship between two girls, which is too much for the people of the early 2000s. Of course, the majority of the controversy would've been the animal abuse and implied sexual abuse. Especially around the red-head who acts in a certain way due to her abuse and how Brown is often abused not just by the monstrous enemies, but by the sadistic little children too!
It's a good game with solid mechanics and no big issues imo, however, it was censored here and then including major parts at the end that I won't reveal for spoiler reasons. If you can handle the disturbing content, then you may enjoy this game and how it rarely pulls it's punches in regards to the disturbing content in this game.
It's also a VERY rare game so if you find it cheap, that'll be a goldmine. If you just want to play it, I suggest doing what I do and search for a ROM.
Gameplay + Stream
tipo, a única coisa q faz esse jogo não ser totalmente esquecível é sua historia, pq de resto ele é bem meh.
Não é um survivol horror q eu esperava q fosse, basicamente a gente fica seguindo o dog e fazendo no máximo 2 puzzles. O combate é outra poha tbm, bosses que demoram demais pra morrer e tem só um movimento de ataque, corredores cheios de inimigos pra te fuder e isso quase me deu softlock, a câmera é uma merda tbm e pra dar porrada é um sacrifício acertar os imps pequenos.
A musica é interessante, mas os loops de quando vc ta explorando é sofrível, fica parecendo jingle de loja.
Como eu disse pro Mario 64: Ainda bem que os jogos evoluem.
Não é um survivol horror q eu esperava q fosse, basicamente a gente fica seguindo o dog e fazendo no máximo 2 puzzles. O combate é outra poha tbm, bosses que demoram demais pra morrer e tem só um movimento de ataque, corredores cheios de inimigos pra te fuder e isso quase me deu softlock, a câmera é uma merda tbm e pra dar porrada é um sacrifício acertar os imps pequenos.
A musica é interessante, mas os loops de quando vc ta explorando é sofrível, fica parecendo jingle de loja.
Como eu disse pro Mario 64: Ainda bem que os jogos evoluem.
Really good game that shouldn't be a game. Even in a gameplay video, you can feel the sluggishness of this game—and it's infinitely worse when the controller is in your hands. With that said, though, Rule of Rose excels at damn near everything else it does. Haunting music, Fantastic presentation, and absolutely jaw dropping storytelling. If you're playing this game, you're doing it for the story, and it does not disappoint. The big 'oh shit' moment near the game's end where everything comes together is just tremendous. I'll be thinking about this one for a while.
I had 'this is a little Utena-esque' in my head from the jump and as time passed the game only proved me more and more right. This is high praise.
I had 'this is a little Utena-esque' in my head from the jump and as time passed the game only proved me more and more right. This is high praise.
RULE OF ROSE IS A VERY UNLUCKY GAME
Fuck. This is going to be the first game I give the star rating to after I've finished typing this review. If you're in the know, Rule of Rose is widely considered a work of video game art that is hampered by abysmal gameplay. Specifically combat.
And yeah, that about sums it up.
Though one of the most common narratives surrounding the game is about its controversial release, it is something of a testament to itself that it has overcome this particular bondage and is now widely beloved and considered by fans of the genre to be one of the best pyschological horror games of the PS2. You know, the console that has the most abundant high quality horror library. So that's saying a lot.
The only weakness it will never shake is its dreadful gameplay. Look, unless your name is Resident Evil 4, it is pretty much par the course for survival and psychological horror games to have clunky, unintuitive combat. I still consider Silent Hills 2 and 3 to be some of the best video games out there and they play like your character has a blindfold and was just spun around sixteen times and expected to hit the pinata with a rusty pipe. But Rule of Rose is a particularly bad offender. Jennifer has terrible range with her various melee weapons. It takes her almost a full six seconds (I counted) to get up when she's knocked down. Which is constantly. And if the enemy is already winding up, get ready to wait another six seconds because Jennifer is about to go right back to kissing the floor. Not to mention the INSANELY morally reprehensible hitboxes. And the sheer number of enemies they'll pack into a tight corridor will make you want to tear your hairs out as you get stunlocked into eternity with literally nothing to do except accept your inevitable demise and reload after losing progress and having to do it all again.
The level design is also severely lacking. It's marred by tight corridors with absolutely "too many doors" to check and connecting hallways to get severely lost in. I'll be transparent--I nearly put the game down during the first level on the airship because the back and forth through the sizable length of the zeppelin and checking dozens of rooms for...what the hell I was supposed to be doing, was extremely grating. There's a similar level late game in the mansion where I wanted to sigh until my lungs fell out from boredom. At that point, I was at least highly invested in the story that I pushed through. But "Hey Hebi" you might say, "Don't the Silent Hill games also contain a litany of narrow, same-y looking hallways with TOO MANY DOORS? The answer is yes. But there is a cure in Silent Hill: A fucking map that clearly names rooms and shows you not only which ones have stuff in them, but also which ones cannot be accessed. In Rule of Rose, there is a map screen for both levels. But they are not only intimidating to look at due to the sheer number of rooms and hallways...they are also nearly illegible and contain no vividly colored markers to show you things like...doors you can't open.
BUT. Those two levels I mentioned above? Well, it's no coincidence that those are the only levels in which you lack you're super duper best friend, Brown the dog boy. And let me tell you honestly...I'm not a big dog person (bad history). But Brown is one of the best video game companions. He's integral to the gamplay experience as you give him clues to sniff, wherein that good pupper will just kind of take you to the place you need to get to. And god damnit it's so cute when he starts pawing at the door he wants you to go through. The inclusion of Brown is a godsend and is not only integral to the gameplay of navigating the map, but also to the story.
And now we arrive at the elements that make players laud the game for its artistry. To begin: the vibes. Rule of Rose has an exceptional score. One of my favorites in recent history. It serves as a perfect, reflective brush stroke on the canvas of navigation. I actually prolonged some sections of the game by letting Brown help me find hidden items just so that I could continue listening to the BGM. It's perfectly melancholic at times with complex chord voicings and meditative modal structures.
Its classical and jazz inspirations also lend themselves to the overall aesthetic design choices. The enemy design in the game may be lacking inspiration, but everything else oozes style that reflects both the psychological horror and 1930s modern Victorian English aesthetics.
As far as the story goes, I genuinely find the execution of the psychological text to be up there with the likes of Silent Hill 2. Seriously, this game pulls no punches in its themes of abusive relationships, power dynamics, rape, etc. It is completely unique in its willingness to engage with the cruel acts children can commit. And it does two things that I "extremely respect" that set it apart from most media that attempts to engage with these themes. And get ready for some ranting because I have very strong and correct opinions on some of these matters.
For one, it is incredibly considerate in its presentation. I am often disgusted by media like 13 Reasons Why and this absolutely tasteless desire to "just kind of show" rape and suicide with grotesque realism. You may think portraying acts like this is "impactful" or "bold". You would be stupid. Visually presenting something like rape with high fidelity to make it as realistic as possible is actually the work of COWARDS. The artistically challenged. The cruel. The lazy. Let's call a spade a spade. Media, at the end of the day, is entertainment. It can be challenging and upsetting. Mulholland Drive comes to mind. Showing rape and suicide in excruciating detail isn't more effective than alluding to it in deft, subtextual, creative metaphorical ways. It's just fucking grotesque shock value shlock. Rule of Rose could tell me everything I needed to know with body language. A teenage girl unable to look Jennifer in the eyes as she calls herself "filthy" while located in a sick room bed next to a grown man. We later see said man escorting the girl out of said sick room as she trails weakly behind him, holding her abdomen in clear physical pain.
It's just as evocative without needing to both traumatize me, and retraumatize victims of this kind of horrific abuse. And it requires actual consideration and creative thinking. I mean, just imagine the difference between the kind of person who writes these implied moments in Rule of Rose. Now imagine the kind of person who sits down and types out a brutal scene of abuse and all of the horrific details. There is nary a single moment in Rule of Rose that shows any form of abuse in grave detail. It challenges the audience to put the pieces together. Sometimes it's a little on the nose. But it nonetheless asks us to confront these themes and contextualize them within the greater message of the story.
The second thing I adore is its commitment to empathy. Every character in this game has done something terrible whether actively or passively. And yet, aside from one character (the pedophile and rapist), the game does not outwardly severely judge a single one of them. At one point or another, each and every character has a moment where they are shown to be a victim themselves. The game's story may be tragic. It may not even ask you to forgive the acts. But I find it beautiful that it examines the pain and circumstances that led to them. I can't bring myself to outright hate (minus the one absolutely irredeemable character) any of the girls, despite how horrific some of the actions they take are. And I find it extra bold to examine this through the lens of children. What's more, the text offers us a tragic but very true understanding that the cruelty of children is just another form of innocence to some degree. Especially when said children are living within the confined mansion-ed walls run by a predator.
Rule of Rose may have frustratingly unpolished combat. It may lack any semblance of challenging puzzles. It may not be very scary and be devoid of tension when it comes to the monsters. But it is clear the developers intended the narrative to be the dominant centerpiece. They've stated in interviews that they wanted it to be, essentially, an interactive film. And in that way, they knocked it out of the park. I was deeply affected by the story and its characters. I cried a lot at the end. I feel emotions just thinking about certain moments and scenes.
Video games may have still been in their childhood development stages in 2006. But I think games like Rule of Rose exist as true testaments that video games can contain the narrative complexity and thematic consideration of even some of the best novels and films.
I mean...I have one clear, definitive example. Lord of the Flies is considered a classic and is required reading in most schools. Rule of Rose is Lord of the Flies, but about girls and twice as good.
Fuck. This is going to be the first game I give the star rating to after I've finished typing this review. If you're in the know, Rule of Rose is widely considered a work of video game art that is hampered by abysmal gameplay. Specifically combat.
And yeah, that about sums it up.
Though one of the most common narratives surrounding the game is about its controversial release, it is something of a testament to itself that it has overcome this particular bondage and is now widely beloved and considered by fans of the genre to be one of the best pyschological horror games of the PS2. You know, the console that has the most abundant high quality horror library. So that's saying a lot.
The only weakness it will never shake is its dreadful gameplay. Look, unless your name is Resident Evil 4, it is pretty much par the course for survival and psychological horror games to have clunky, unintuitive combat. I still consider Silent Hills 2 and 3 to be some of the best video games out there and they play like your character has a blindfold and was just spun around sixteen times and expected to hit the pinata with a rusty pipe. But Rule of Rose is a particularly bad offender. Jennifer has terrible range with her various melee weapons. It takes her almost a full six seconds (I counted) to get up when she's knocked down. Which is constantly. And if the enemy is already winding up, get ready to wait another six seconds because Jennifer is about to go right back to kissing the floor. Not to mention the INSANELY morally reprehensible hitboxes. And the sheer number of enemies they'll pack into a tight corridor will make you want to tear your hairs out as you get stunlocked into eternity with literally nothing to do except accept your inevitable demise and reload after losing progress and having to do it all again.
The level design is also severely lacking. It's marred by tight corridors with absolutely "too many doors" to check and connecting hallways to get severely lost in. I'll be transparent--I nearly put the game down during the first level on the airship because the back and forth through the sizable length of the zeppelin and checking dozens of rooms for...what the hell I was supposed to be doing, was extremely grating. There's a similar level late game in the mansion where I wanted to sigh until my lungs fell out from boredom. At that point, I was at least highly invested in the story that I pushed through. But "Hey Hebi" you might say, "Don't the Silent Hill games also contain a litany of narrow, same-y looking hallways with TOO MANY DOORS? The answer is yes. But there is a cure in Silent Hill: A fucking map that clearly names rooms and shows you not only which ones have stuff in them, but also which ones cannot be accessed. In Rule of Rose, there is a map screen for both levels. But they are not only intimidating to look at due to the sheer number of rooms and hallways...they are also nearly illegible and contain no vividly colored markers to show you things like...doors you can't open.
BUT. Those two levels I mentioned above? Well, it's no coincidence that those are the only levels in which you lack you're super duper best friend, Brown the dog boy. And let me tell you honestly...I'm not a big dog person (bad history). But Brown is one of the best video game companions. He's integral to the gamplay experience as you give him clues to sniff, wherein that good pupper will just kind of take you to the place you need to get to. And god damnit it's so cute when he starts pawing at the door he wants you to go through. The inclusion of Brown is a godsend and is not only integral to the gameplay of navigating the map, but also to the story.
And now we arrive at the elements that make players laud the game for its artistry. To begin: the vibes. Rule of Rose has an exceptional score. One of my favorites in recent history. It serves as a perfect, reflective brush stroke on the canvas of navigation. I actually prolonged some sections of the game by letting Brown help me find hidden items just so that I could continue listening to the BGM. It's perfectly melancholic at times with complex chord voicings and meditative modal structures.
Its classical and jazz inspirations also lend themselves to the overall aesthetic design choices. The enemy design in the game may be lacking inspiration, but everything else oozes style that reflects both the psychological horror and 1930s modern Victorian English aesthetics.
As far as the story goes, I genuinely find the execution of the psychological text to be up there with the likes of Silent Hill 2. Seriously, this game pulls no punches in its themes of abusive relationships, power dynamics, rape, etc. It is completely unique in its willingness to engage with the cruel acts children can commit. And it does two things that I "extremely respect" that set it apart from most media that attempts to engage with these themes. And get ready for some ranting because I have very strong and correct opinions on some of these matters.
For one, it is incredibly considerate in its presentation. I am often disgusted by media like 13 Reasons Why and this absolutely tasteless desire to "just kind of show" rape and suicide with grotesque realism. You may think portraying acts like this is "impactful" or "bold". You would be stupid. Visually presenting something like rape with high fidelity to make it as realistic as possible is actually the work of COWARDS. The artistically challenged. The cruel. The lazy. Let's call a spade a spade. Media, at the end of the day, is entertainment. It can be challenging and upsetting. Mulholland Drive comes to mind. Showing rape and suicide in excruciating detail isn't more effective than alluding to it in deft, subtextual, creative metaphorical ways. It's just fucking grotesque shock value shlock. Rule of Rose could tell me everything I needed to know with body language. A teenage girl unable to look Jennifer in the eyes as she calls herself "filthy" while located in a sick room bed next to a grown man. We later see said man escorting the girl out of said sick room as she trails weakly behind him, holding her abdomen in clear physical pain.
It's just as evocative without needing to both traumatize me, and retraumatize victims of this kind of horrific abuse. And it requires actual consideration and creative thinking. I mean, just imagine the difference between the kind of person who writes these implied moments in Rule of Rose. Now imagine the kind of person who sits down and types out a brutal scene of abuse and all of the horrific details. There is nary a single moment in Rule of Rose that shows any form of abuse in grave detail. It challenges the audience to put the pieces together. Sometimes it's a little on the nose. But it nonetheless asks us to confront these themes and contextualize them within the greater message of the story.
The second thing I adore is its commitment to empathy. Every character in this game has done something terrible whether actively or passively. And yet, aside from one character (the pedophile and rapist), the game does not outwardly severely judge a single one of them. At one point or another, each and every character has a moment where they are shown to be a victim themselves. The game's story may be tragic. It may not even ask you to forgive the acts. But I find it beautiful that it examines the pain and circumstances that led to them. I can't bring myself to outright hate (minus the one absolutely irredeemable character) any of the girls, despite how horrific some of the actions they take are. And I find it extra bold to examine this through the lens of children. What's more, the text offers us a tragic but very true understanding that the cruelty of children is just another form of innocence to some degree. Especially when said children are living within the confined mansion-ed walls run by a predator.
Rule of Rose may have frustratingly unpolished combat. It may lack any semblance of challenging puzzles. It may not be very scary and be devoid of tension when it comes to the monsters. But it is clear the developers intended the narrative to be the dominant centerpiece. They've stated in interviews that they wanted it to be, essentially, an interactive film. And in that way, they knocked it out of the park. I was deeply affected by the story and its characters. I cried a lot at the end. I feel emotions just thinking about certain moments and scenes.
Video games may have still been in their childhood development stages in 2006. But I think games like Rule of Rose exist as true testaments that video games can contain the narrative complexity and thematic consideration of even some of the best novels and films.
I mean...I have one clear, definitive example. Lord of the Flies is considered a classic and is required reading in most schools. Rule of Rose is Lord of the Flies, but about girls and twice as good.
achei decepcionante, a gameplay é maneira de caçar coisa com o cachorro, e eu gosto da estética antiga e dos design dos personagens/inimigos, a historia estava interessante mas os plot twists me decepcionou.
o combate desse jogo é um lixo, e a personagem erra não consegue acertar quase nenhum golpe, morri varias vezes por causa daquela bosta de passaro gigante que fica te dando cabeçada
eu esperava mais desse jogo, já que além do visual ele tem um estilo que me agrada ( silent hills like)
o jogo não é ruim, mas poderia ser melhor
o combate desse jogo é um lixo, e a personagem erra não consegue acertar quase nenhum golpe, morri varias vezes por causa daquela bosta de passaro gigante que fica te dando cabeçada
eu esperava mais desse jogo, já que além do visual ele tem um estilo que me agrada ( silent hills like)
o jogo não é ruim, mas poderia ser melhor
El gameplay fue un poco pesado de llevar pero y aunque la historia sea un poco confusa el inicio es necesario decir que es todo un viaje de descubrimiento en un mar de traumáticos recuerdos donde nuestra protagonista no parece haber estado antes. Una premisa muy parecida a Silent Hill 2, pero sin duda con un alma propia.
Recomendable para cualquier fan del terror psicológico puro. Lo recordaré durante mucho tiempo.
Recomendable para cualquier fan del terror psicológico puro. Lo recordaré durante mucho tiempo.
erm, well that just happened
Kind of an annoying game.
Progression is heavily influenced by stumbling upon triggers at the start. There's not a lot of puzzle-solving, and exploration is completely arbitrary. After a dumb start, you get to the game proper, which is the opposite extreme. You mostly just follow your dog around, and don't have to think about almost anything. Combat is probably the most confusing part. Every weapon seems to have the same attack-speed, so every weapon is pretty much a straight upgrade over whatever you just had. The fork at the start is no faster than the axe you get toward the end. The game also has more combat than you'd think. It's just sometimes forced on you, but not integrated into the game very well. You don't explore and fight at once, and don't really have to worry about danger while puzzle-solving. Combat is boss-fights (yes, really) and sometimes just waves of spawning enemies (deadly serious). The stragglers you see otherwise don't really matter.
The game is by no means terrible, but it's way short of its contemporaries around the time. Resident Evil 2002 and Silent Hill 3 from 2003 completely smoke this game across the board when it comes to polished gameplay mechanics.
So, what's going on with its enduring legacy then? The story is legitimately interesting, and I usually don't care about that stuff at all. I don't factor aesthetics into game reviews, but I do want to mention that aspect for anyone that cares.
As a game though, it's perfectly mediocre. 2/5
Progression is heavily influenced by stumbling upon triggers at the start. There's not a lot of puzzle-solving, and exploration is completely arbitrary. After a dumb start, you get to the game proper, which is the opposite extreme. You mostly just follow your dog around, and don't have to think about almost anything. Combat is probably the most confusing part. Every weapon seems to have the same attack-speed, so every weapon is pretty much a straight upgrade over whatever you just had. The fork at the start is no faster than the axe you get toward the end. The game also has more combat than you'd think. It's just sometimes forced on you, but not integrated into the game very well. You don't explore and fight at once, and don't really have to worry about danger while puzzle-solving. Combat is boss-fights (yes, really) and sometimes just waves of spawning enemies (deadly serious). The stragglers you see otherwise don't really matter.
The game is by no means terrible, but it's way short of its contemporaries around the time. Resident Evil 2002 and Silent Hill 3 from 2003 completely smoke this game across the board when it comes to polished gameplay mechanics.
So, what's going on with its enduring legacy then? The story is legitimately interesting, and I usually don't care about that stuff at all. I don't factor aesthetics into game reviews, but I do want to mention that aspect for anyone that cares.
As a game though, it's perfectly mediocre. 2/5
Awful gameplay, torture to go through. Story is interesting but is hampered by the gameplay which I can't stress enough is AWFUL. You can have a game with a good story not have fantastic gameplay, but this gameplay is awful.
Really loved the game but the combat stinks
This review contains spoilers
The Unlucky Girl
While other survival horror games feature zombies, ghosts, and red pyramid thingies, Rule of Rose makes the player face the most terrifying thing of all--being an adolescent girl.
And I'm only half-joking here.
Back when I was in college I took a class where I had to read this awful, boring book called Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood. As best I remember it, the plot of it was something like "young girl gets bullied by her friends in middle school, then grows up and uses this as a reason to leave her boyfriend or something." It made no impression on me--it was an absolute slog. And every woman in the class loved the book, because they all related to that adolescent experience.
Teenage boys [1] are mean and terrible, but they are usually mean and terrible in a straightforward way. The other boys might bully you, but at least you kind of always know where you stand. Adolescent girls, on the other hand, seem to play this 5-dimensional chess game of pettiness and backstabbing. Guys, at least in the genteel settings that I frequent, tend to age out of the chest-thumping machismo if they don't want to go to prison, women can, if they want, continue larping Mean Girls for the rest of their lives (not to say that all of them do). And girl's bullying just doesn't make sense to me, as a dude. A teenage boy would bully another boy by pointing out that he has a small pp--cruel, but I can see the logic behind it. But a teenage girl will not only bully another teenage girl by pointing out that she has small boobs, but will just as easily bully her by pointing out that she has big boobs, which does not really make sense to a guy.
All of this is not to say that women are bad or that all women continue to carry on their worst behavior from their teenage years or anything of that nature. What it is to say is that there's a distinctive and very negative sort of adolescent female experience that women can really relate to and men find kind of alien. And it's this sort of experience that Rule of Rose is capturing.
Rule of Rose is about the horrors of being a young teenage or preadolescent girl trapped in a hierarchy of other petty and vindictive teenage girls. And its quite literally a hierarchy--there's a poster in the game of a crudely drawn chart showing where every girl stands, from the "Princesses" and "Duchesses" up at the top to the main character, Jennifer, being classified as a "Beggar" at the bottom. The main character's goal near the beginning is to get into the room of the "Aristocrats" (all the other girls--this is clearly a metaphor for joining a clique). Once she gets there, at the end of chapter 2, she gets tormented by the other girls--and then at the beginning of chapter 3, we're back to trying to get into the Aristocrats' room to join the cool kids table. Definitely not the way a teenage boy would handle things. [2]
All of this is to say that, in a way, Rule of Rose is the only feminist game I've ever played. Other games may have female action heroes doing the same things that male action heroes do, but this one seems designed around specifically female experience, of the kinds that I mentioned above. Like Cat's Eye, it's not really for me, but I can appreciate the artistic boldness and creativity in making a video game about women's experiences instead of just "girl with gun go boom" [3].
Unfortunately, the game just sucks.
Rule of Snooze
Gameplay-wise, Rule of Rose is essentially the poor man's Silent Hill. The classic Silent Hill trilogy doesn't have great gameplay, but what it lacks in gameplay it makes up in atmosphere and storyline. Rule of Rose not only lacks the Silent Hill stylishness, but makes the gameplay worse.
The game has free movement rather than tank controls, but somehow the devs ended up with the worst camera scheme of all time. The camera is semi-fixed, but depending on where you enter a room from it will be angled in a different direction. This means that you will be constantly disoriented as you go from room to room, never knowing which way is up or down, so to speak. "Use the map," you say. Ah, but Dear Reader, the map isn't easily called up by pressing the triangle button--you have to press pause, navigate to the space on the menu where your map is, select the map, then select "Use" from your list of options, and only then can you pull up the map, which does not, by the way, tell you where save rooms are or which doors are locked the way that the map in Silent Hill did. And since so many of the areas (at least in the first 2-3 hours of the game) are so dull and samey, you will be going back and forth through the entire game area trying to find what you are looking for, getting disoriented by the ever-revolving camera--and make no mistake, you will backtrack through this game quite a bit.
While the game tackles some interesting themes, the way the story is told is just terrible. It's meant to be surreal, but is just incoherent. Silent Hill 2, for all its weirdness, sets out the ground rules of the story pretty quickly. James wants to find out why he got a letter from his dead wife asking him to come to Silent Hill, so he comes to Silent Hill, only to be met by the first twist--the town is filled with monsters and weird people. There are further twists in the story, but they are all based on the foundation of our main character having a realistic motivation and background. The groundedness of the main character helps contextualize the twists in the narrative and the surreal environment. Rule of Rose just feels like a bunch of "twists" thrown together because "ooh spooky." I always knew in Silent Hill 2 why James was doing what he was doing. I never figured out what was motivating Jennifer in Rule of Rose, or why she even bothered finding the next MacGuffin. This approach might work in an adrenaline-fueled action game, but in a story-driven horror game, it's just frustrating. The first chapter begins with Jennifer deciding to run after this random little boy (whom she meets in the first five minutes of the game) to a spooky orphanage. Then she gets buried alive and wakes up in an airship filled with weird children, with no explanation. Is this normal in the Rule of Rose universe? I don't know because Jennifer has been acting like a lunatic this entire time. Silent Hill 2 gave us a good 20-30 minutes of James acting like a normal person with normal motivations in a relatively normal place with no monsters or surreal events in order to set up the fact that the town of Silent Hill was not normal. Rule of Rose gives us 20-30 minutes of Jennifer acting like the world's dumbest slasher movie victim before then transitioning to something completely unrelated. The game seems like it's trying to go for a mystery, but just throwing together random, illogical occurrences does not itself make a mystery.
Even though the Silent Hills are graphically "out of date," they still have impressive and spooky monster designs, like Pyramid Head. About an hour or so into Rule of Rose we see the first monster and I almost laughed, because this thing not only did not look scary, but was also even smaller than our protagonist, who is a very slight teenage girl. "Big scary dude monster chases girl" is a recipe for instant horror; "hobbit-sized monster chases girl" is just funny. After your first encounter with this monster, one where the camera swings so that a stack of crates stands between you, the player, and the character on the screen, you don't see any more of these dweebs until you are suddenly ganked by 8 of them at a time attacking you...with brooms. This game gives Silent Hill 4 a run for its money when it comes to bad monster designs. As if this wasn't funny enough, you get to the end of the chapter only to witness Jennifer get tortured with the Rat Tied To A Stick...sorry, I know this is supposed to be a serious game, but there is no way that a rat tied to a stick isn't hilarious [4]. Horror games often aren't particularly scary to me, but they should at least make an attempt. 90% of the time this game isn't even trying to be scary, and when it is it's unintentionally funny.
To be fair, I will mention a few good things the game does. The art style for the menus and chapter headings has a whimsical, British children's book/Tim Burton vibe to it. There is also a dog in the game [5], who acts as a diegetic quest marker--for example, you can let the dog sniff an item that belonged to someone and then he will lead you in their direction. It's an interesting idea, but I feel like the execution here is not only bare-bones, but also stuck in a boring game.
In short, this game is just a bad Silent Hill clone with a few interesting ideas that don't outweigh its flaws. Maybe there is some mid-game twist that would totally blow my mind, but I highly doubt it. Life is too short to continue playing this.
And oh yea, the "controversy"--this game was banned in several countries due to a misleading review that claimed all sorts of scurrilous and false things about the game. "Every frame is dripping with sadism and perversion" wrote the reviewer, evidently confusing Rule of Rose with Rumble Roses. The scarcity of this game due to the bans + overall poor sales made it a cult classic, but the rumors of its sordid nature are happily untrue.
On the other hand, if you die in the game, you die in real life.
[1] Before I get crucified by the Terminally Online Wall-of-Text posters--yes, I realize that statements about sex and gender are always generalizations, they do not accurately describe every single person, and if they don't describe you, that doesn't mean that you are somehow invalidated. My intention is to describe some large-scale trends, not set a normative framework for "Every person of each gender ever." Now fuck off.
[2] Not that a teenage boy would handle things rationally either.
[3] Although personally I'd rather play "girl with gun go boom."
[4] Apparently, according to the IGN review there is also an "Onion Sack" later in the game, which just sounds funny to me.
[5] This is always a plus--dogs are on my short list of animals that I don't want to see tied to a stick.
While other survival horror games feature zombies, ghosts, and red pyramid thingies, Rule of Rose makes the player face the most terrifying thing of all--being an adolescent girl.
And I'm only half-joking here.
Back when I was in college I took a class where I had to read this awful, boring book called Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood. As best I remember it, the plot of it was something like "young girl gets bullied by her friends in middle school, then grows up and uses this as a reason to leave her boyfriend or something." It made no impression on me--it was an absolute slog. And every woman in the class loved the book, because they all related to that adolescent experience.
Teenage boys [1] are mean and terrible, but they are usually mean and terrible in a straightforward way. The other boys might bully you, but at least you kind of always know where you stand. Adolescent girls, on the other hand, seem to play this 5-dimensional chess game of pettiness and backstabbing. Guys, at least in the genteel settings that I frequent, tend to age out of the chest-thumping machismo if they don't want to go to prison, women can, if they want, continue larping Mean Girls for the rest of their lives (not to say that all of them do). And girl's bullying just doesn't make sense to me, as a dude. A teenage boy would bully another boy by pointing out that he has a small pp--cruel, but I can see the logic behind it. But a teenage girl will not only bully another teenage girl by pointing out that she has small boobs, but will just as easily bully her by pointing out that she has big boobs, which does not really make sense to a guy.
All of this is not to say that women are bad or that all women continue to carry on their worst behavior from their teenage years or anything of that nature. What it is to say is that there's a distinctive and very negative sort of adolescent female experience that women can really relate to and men find kind of alien. And it's this sort of experience that Rule of Rose is capturing.
Rule of Rose is about the horrors of being a young teenage or preadolescent girl trapped in a hierarchy of other petty and vindictive teenage girls. And its quite literally a hierarchy--there's a poster in the game of a crudely drawn chart showing where every girl stands, from the "Princesses" and "Duchesses" up at the top to the main character, Jennifer, being classified as a "Beggar" at the bottom. The main character's goal near the beginning is to get into the room of the "Aristocrats" (all the other girls--this is clearly a metaphor for joining a clique). Once she gets there, at the end of chapter 2, she gets tormented by the other girls--and then at the beginning of chapter 3, we're back to trying to get into the Aristocrats' room to join the cool kids table. Definitely not the way a teenage boy would handle things. [2]
All of this is to say that, in a way, Rule of Rose is the only feminist game I've ever played. Other games may have female action heroes doing the same things that male action heroes do, but this one seems designed around specifically female experience, of the kinds that I mentioned above. Like Cat's Eye, it's not really for me, but I can appreciate the artistic boldness and creativity in making a video game about women's experiences instead of just "girl with gun go boom" [3].
Unfortunately, the game just sucks.
Rule of Snooze
Gameplay-wise, Rule of Rose is essentially the poor man's Silent Hill. The classic Silent Hill trilogy doesn't have great gameplay, but what it lacks in gameplay it makes up in atmosphere and storyline. Rule of Rose not only lacks the Silent Hill stylishness, but makes the gameplay worse.
The game has free movement rather than tank controls, but somehow the devs ended up with the worst camera scheme of all time. The camera is semi-fixed, but depending on where you enter a room from it will be angled in a different direction. This means that you will be constantly disoriented as you go from room to room, never knowing which way is up or down, so to speak. "Use the map," you say. Ah, but Dear Reader, the map isn't easily called up by pressing the triangle button--you have to press pause, navigate to the space on the menu where your map is, select the map, then select "Use" from your list of options, and only then can you pull up the map, which does not, by the way, tell you where save rooms are or which doors are locked the way that the map in Silent Hill did. And since so many of the areas (at least in the first 2-3 hours of the game) are so dull and samey, you will be going back and forth through the entire game area trying to find what you are looking for, getting disoriented by the ever-revolving camera--and make no mistake, you will backtrack through this game quite a bit.
While the game tackles some interesting themes, the way the story is told is just terrible. It's meant to be surreal, but is just incoherent. Silent Hill 2, for all its weirdness, sets out the ground rules of the story pretty quickly. James wants to find out why he got a letter from his dead wife asking him to come to Silent Hill, so he comes to Silent Hill, only to be met by the first twist--the town is filled with monsters and weird people. There are further twists in the story, but they are all based on the foundation of our main character having a realistic motivation and background. The groundedness of the main character helps contextualize the twists in the narrative and the surreal environment. Rule of Rose just feels like a bunch of "twists" thrown together because "ooh spooky." I always knew in Silent Hill 2 why James was doing what he was doing. I never figured out what was motivating Jennifer in Rule of Rose, or why she even bothered finding the next MacGuffin. This approach might work in an adrenaline-fueled action game, but in a story-driven horror game, it's just frustrating. The first chapter begins with Jennifer deciding to run after this random little boy (whom she meets in the first five minutes of the game) to a spooky orphanage. Then she gets buried alive and wakes up in an airship filled with weird children, with no explanation. Is this normal in the Rule of Rose universe? I don't know because Jennifer has been acting like a lunatic this entire time. Silent Hill 2 gave us a good 20-30 minutes of James acting like a normal person with normal motivations in a relatively normal place with no monsters or surreal events in order to set up the fact that the town of Silent Hill was not normal. Rule of Rose gives us 20-30 minutes of Jennifer acting like the world's dumbest slasher movie victim before then transitioning to something completely unrelated. The game seems like it's trying to go for a mystery, but just throwing together random, illogical occurrences does not itself make a mystery.
Even though the Silent Hills are graphically "out of date," they still have impressive and spooky monster designs, like Pyramid Head. About an hour or so into Rule of Rose we see the first monster and I almost laughed, because this thing not only did not look scary, but was also even smaller than our protagonist, who is a very slight teenage girl. "Big scary dude monster chases girl" is a recipe for instant horror; "hobbit-sized monster chases girl" is just funny. After your first encounter with this monster, one where the camera swings so that a stack of crates stands between you, the player, and the character on the screen, you don't see any more of these dweebs until you are suddenly ganked by 8 of them at a time attacking you...with brooms. This game gives Silent Hill 4 a run for its money when it comes to bad monster designs. As if this wasn't funny enough, you get to the end of the chapter only to witness Jennifer get tortured with the Rat Tied To A Stick...sorry, I know this is supposed to be a serious game, but there is no way that a rat tied to a stick isn't hilarious [4]. Horror games often aren't particularly scary to me, but they should at least make an attempt. 90% of the time this game isn't even trying to be scary, and when it is it's unintentionally funny.
To be fair, I will mention a few good things the game does. The art style for the menus and chapter headings has a whimsical, British children's book/Tim Burton vibe to it. There is also a dog in the game [5], who acts as a diegetic quest marker--for example, you can let the dog sniff an item that belonged to someone and then he will lead you in their direction. It's an interesting idea, but I feel like the execution here is not only bare-bones, but also stuck in a boring game.
In short, this game is just a bad Silent Hill clone with a few interesting ideas that don't outweigh its flaws. Maybe there is some mid-game twist that would totally blow my mind, but I highly doubt it. Life is too short to continue playing this.
And oh yea, the "controversy"--this game was banned in several countries due to a misleading review that claimed all sorts of scurrilous and false things about the game. "Every frame is dripping with sadism and perversion" wrote the reviewer, evidently confusing Rule of Rose with Rumble Roses. The scarcity of this game due to the bans + overall poor sales made it a cult classic, but the rumors of its sordid nature are happily untrue.
On the other hand, if you die in the game, you die in real life.
[1] Before I get crucified by the Terminally Online Wall-of-Text posters--yes, I realize that statements about sex and gender are always generalizations, they do not accurately describe every single person, and if they don't describe you, that doesn't mean that you are somehow invalidated. My intention is to describe some large-scale trends, not set a normative framework for "Every person of each gender ever." Now fuck off.
[2] Not that a teenage boy would handle things rationally either.
[3] Although personally I'd rather play "girl with gun go boom."
[4] Apparently, according to the IGN review there is also an "Onion Sack" later in the game, which just sounds funny to me.
[5] This is always a plus--dogs are on my short list of animals that I don't want to see tied to a stick.
Do not get me wrong: this is arguably my most favourite game of all time. But I have to acknowledge the game's drawbacks here, and because of that, I have to knock it back a star. This game is, however, one of the most compelling and heartwrenching stories in gaming, and is something that truly means a lot to me.
the only thing stopping this game from being perfect is the combat, it would work so much better as a walking simulator! other than that, rule of rose masters everything else. i love seeing female adolescence and trauma through the lens of fairytales and flowery language to remind the audience that jennifer was too young. a silly yet efficient reminder that these are just kids, capable of doing awful, awful things, but still, kids playing a game.
diana in special stands out to me the most: she's just awful. maybe there's a reason for that, after all the adults around her aren't exactly teaching her to be a good person. but to jennifer, she's just a mean girl. the things diana did might not impact her, she might not even think about it often, but to poor jennifer, it's a scar she carried for a long time, something that takes a long time to make peace with.
rule of rose tells this bittersweet tale in a way that haunts me, if i think too much about it: it never hide its horrors, only try to cover it a little with rose motifs, because it's a children fairytale. but in its core, it's a letter full of empathy to all those kids that were mistreated, and it says "you can survive this, and you can move on"
hits too close to home and i know i'll keep this game in my heart for a long time.
diana in special stands out to me the most: she's just awful. maybe there's a reason for that, after all the adults around her aren't exactly teaching her to be a good person. but to jennifer, she's just a mean girl. the things diana did might not impact her, she might not even think about it often, but to poor jennifer, it's a scar she carried for a long time, something that takes a long time to make peace with.
rule of rose tells this bittersweet tale in a way that haunts me, if i think too much about it: it never hide its horrors, only try to cover it a little with rose motifs, because it's a children fairytale. but in its core, it's a letter full of empathy to all those kids that were mistreated, and it says "you can survive this, and you can move on"
hits too close to home and i know i'll keep this game in my heart for a long time.
this game has such an incredible aesthetic and vibe, but oh my god the gameplay is so dull and frustrating. i loved the Find gameplay loop at first, but after a while I just completely ignored it. half the weapons are completely useless, and finding extra food isnt really worth it, because half the time it felt like i was just searching for things to trade IN for items, which isn't nearly as fun or useful. the bosses also single handedly killed any momentum this game had for me. i think it's still really interesting, and its the first time "creepy children" has ever been scary to me, but i just dont think i love the whole experience.
Gameplay... Tem um combate é extremante podre e irritante, tu pode até evitar com exceção dos boss, o que sé salva é a exploração que é até ok.
Trilha sonora, puta que pariu, Yutaka Minobe coma meu cu, que bagulho foda forma como tu é inserido no ambiente e como maior parte traz uma sensação estranheza com o que é apresentado em tela é extraordinário.
Um jogo com enredo doentio, e forma que conduzido foi algo interessantíssimo de sé ter uma experiência, forma que Jennifer ao ser inserida e tendo que lidar com situações estranhas com seu fiel amigo é algo recompensador no final do jogo, é um jogo que sé alguém quer ter uma experiência narrativa neste gênero, este jogo é um ótimo começo. Uma pena gameplay me irritar tanto.
Trilha sonora, puta que pariu, Yutaka Minobe coma meu cu, que bagulho foda forma como tu é inserido no ambiente e como maior parte traz uma sensação estranheza com o que é apresentado em tela é extraordinário.
Um jogo com enredo doentio, e forma que conduzido foi algo interessantíssimo de sé ter uma experiência, forma que Jennifer ao ser inserida e tendo que lidar com situações estranhas com seu fiel amigo é algo recompensador no final do jogo, é um jogo que sé alguém quer ter uma experiência narrativa neste gênero, este jogo é um ótimo começo. Uma pena gameplay me irritar tanto.
estetica y musica inmaculadas
8.5/10.
Ó céus, o que eu presenciei....
"Say
Where is my shame
When i call your name"
Sem dúvida nenhuma love suicide a música tema desse jogo virou fácil uma das minhas músicas prediletas.
Nada a comentar além de QUE FOI UMA EXPERIÊNCIA AFÁVEL.
Que evento foda,
Que história boa
Que narrativa ótima!
A trilha sonora é GOAT DEMAIS PQP!
Eu só não consigo gostar mais desse jogo por causa do combate, se orientar nesse jogo ou tu apela pro Brown ou explora no modo hit or miss, não que seja ruim, mas o mapa é bem fútil, por sorte memorizei todos os cômodos rápido o que me permitiu amenizar meu sofrimento.
Rapaz esse jogo é quase absurdo, não consigo dizer que bate de frente com SH 2, mas é um ótimo achado, a temática de fato é bem discursada... dito isso tem outra coisa que não curti muito que foram as boss fights e a dublagem... dito isso foi um jogo muito bom.
Ó céus, o que eu presenciei....
"Say
Where is my shame
When i call your name"
Sem dúvida nenhuma love suicide a música tema desse jogo virou fácil uma das minhas músicas prediletas.
Nada a comentar além de QUE FOI UMA EXPERIÊNCIA AFÁVEL.
Que evento foda,
Que história boa
Que narrativa ótima!
A trilha sonora é GOAT DEMAIS PQP!
Eu só não consigo gostar mais desse jogo por causa do combate, se orientar nesse jogo ou tu apela pro Brown ou explora no modo hit or miss, não que seja ruim, mas o mapa é bem fútil, por sorte memorizei todos os cômodos rápido o que me permitiu amenizar meu sofrimento.
Rapaz esse jogo é quase absurdo, não consigo dizer que bate de frente com SH 2, mas é um ótimo achado, a temática de fato é bem discursada... dito isso tem outra coisa que não curti muito que foram as boss fights e a dublagem... dito isso foi um jogo muito bom.