Didn’t expect to finish this in 2021 but here I am.
When you dive into Returnal, you are first taken by the incredible art direction, moody, Gigerish environments with an over abundance of particles and detail in the landscape. For a while I simply soaked in the atmosphere, some of the best in gaming. Then you really play it and you’re met with an over the shoulder bullet hell roguelite like a 3D enter the gungeon. Then you die. And like any good roguelite that happens a lot. You die and loop, die and loop and gain knowledge, permanent upgrades and grow a pool of items to help you get further and further.
It felt like this game was going to take ages to beat, and I briefly considered adding it to my rotation of Roguelikes I play, just picking it up here and there. But much like Hades, it’s narrative and mysteries it sets before you make it to where beating this is incredibly rewarding. Unlike other Roguelikes where narrative is an afterthought, it ties several of the mechanics into the story and rewards you abstractly for your effort in this regard. PT-style story sequences where you piece together clues of Selene’s background and the mysterious forces affecting her.
The resolution wasn’t super clear, but it does play it’s hand well throughout.
I would advise anyone scared off by its difficulty to stick with it as not only does it seem to soften its difficulty at the halfway point, it really does just take that big of roguelite luck and building to breeze through it. I was stuck in the first area for a long time, the next a little shorter, then rapidly went through the rest.
I feel like due to the type of thing it is, the scarcity of ps5s and some of its peers it’ll be relatively slept on but I think this is a great title to help justify my poor decision of early adopting a ps5.
When you dive into Returnal, you are first taken by the incredible art direction, moody, Gigerish environments with an over abundance of particles and detail in the landscape. For a while I simply soaked in the atmosphere, some of the best in gaming. Then you really play it and you’re met with an over the shoulder bullet hell roguelite like a 3D enter the gungeon. Then you die. And like any good roguelite that happens a lot. You die and loop, die and loop and gain knowledge, permanent upgrades and grow a pool of items to help you get further and further.
It felt like this game was going to take ages to beat, and I briefly considered adding it to my rotation of Roguelikes I play, just picking it up here and there. But much like Hades, it’s narrative and mysteries it sets before you make it to where beating this is incredibly rewarding. Unlike other Roguelikes where narrative is an afterthought, it ties several of the mechanics into the story and rewards you abstractly for your effort in this regard. PT-style story sequences where you piece together clues of Selene’s background and the mysterious forces affecting her.
The resolution wasn’t super clear, but it does play it’s hand well throughout.
I would advise anyone scared off by its difficulty to stick with it as not only does it seem to soften its difficulty at the halfway point, it really does just take that big of roguelite luck and building to breeze through it. I was stuck in the first area for a long time, the next a little shorter, then rapidly went through the rest.
I feel like due to the type of thing it is, the scarcity of ps5s and some of its peers it’ll be relatively slept on but I think this is a great title to help justify my poor decision of early adopting a ps5.