The gameplay in Returnal is SUPER solid. It feels great to move around the environments and most of the weapons feel great to use, take some nuance to get the hang of, and are rewarding to get better at using. The gameplay by itself is 5 stars out of 5, unfortunately it is let down by most everything else in the game.
The systems in Returnal all seem to want you to do different things, which makes the play experience very scattered and unfulfilling.
Proficiency, weapon upgrading, and general difficulty make exploring everything not really worth it and not really necessary.
Artifacts, Parasites, and Health upgrades (the stuff that makes each run unique) make you want to explore every part of every biome, to maximize your power. However, the lack of midrun saves and the fact that a 3 hour run in Returnal becomes sort of a slog makes it feel like the developers don't intend for you to play this way.
These combine to make both strategies feel bad in certain ways, but the effectiveness and speed of not exploring make the first more preferable, obviating most of the systems that make this a roguelike.
Enemy and level design don't help here either. Some of the rooms are very well made and are cool arenas to play around in (the circle arena in the arctic biome), but most end up being unused or plain. Many enemy types have attacks that are instant and hard to avoid, attack from outside your view, or have strange timing based tells (dodge 4.5 seconds after this attack starts) rather than readable attack patterns. Most enemies encourage you to stand outside rooms and kill them in safety, rather than engaging in the traversal and movement mechanics. There are occasionally moments where a set of enemies and a room come together for a fast paced, hectic experience that makes you feel accomplished, but these are rare.
The generation of the biomes also doesn't lend itself very well to the structure of the game. A simple hub/spoke system to explore each biome would have been welcome, allowing you to skip to the part of the game you currently want to play, rather than slogging through a random amount of early biome rooms looking for a portal.
I don't like the narrative of Returnal at all. At best it is uninteresting and overwritten, at worst it lacks coherency.
I had a lot of fun playing this game initially, but the systems really wore on me by the end and the narrative failed to deliver for me at all.
I would love to see a game with mechanics that are this solid that is executed with more attention paid to how systems interact and the roguelike elements of the game.
The systems in Returnal all seem to want you to do different things, which makes the play experience very scattered and unfulfilling.
Proficiency, weapon upgrading, and general difficulty make exploring everything not really worth it and not really necessary.
Artifacts, Parasites, and Health upgrades (the stuff that makes each run unique) make you want to explore every part of every biome, to maximize your power. However, the lack of midrun saves and the fact that a 3 hour run in Returnal becomes sort of a slog makes it feel like the developers don't intend for you to play this way.
These combine to make both strategies feel bad in certain ways, but the effectiveness and speed of not exploring make the first more preferable, obviating most of the systems that make this a roguelike.
Enemy and level design don't help here either. Some of the rooms are very well made and are cool arenas to play around in (the circle arena in the arctic biome), but most end up being unused or plain. Many enemy types have attacks that are instant and hard to avoid, attack from outside your view, or have strange timing based tells (dodge 4.5 seconds after this attack starts) rather than readable attack patterns. Most enemies encourage you to stand outside rooms and kill them in safety, rather than engaging in the traversal and movement mechanics. There are occasionally moments where a set of enemies and a room come together for a fast paced, hectic experience that makes you feel accomplished, but these are rare.
The generation of the biomes also doesn't lend itself very well to the structure of the game. A simple hub/spoke system to explore each biome would have been welcome, allowing you to skip to the part of the game you currently want to play, rather than slogging through a random amount of early biome rooms looking for a portal.
I don't like the narrative of Returnal at all. At best it is uninteresting and overwritten, at worst it lacks coherency.
I had a lot of fun playing this game initially, but the systems really wore on me by the end and the narrative failed to deliver for me at all.
I would love to see a game with mechanics that are this solid that is executed with more attention paid to how systems interact and the roguelike elements of the game.