Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Red Goddess: Inner World (PS4) Review

Red Goddess: Inner World stars Divine, a daughter of the gods, as she navigates her inner world to discover her forgotten memories of the past.  It is an action/adventure metroidvania style game, which is a genre I really like.  The game is pretty linear, as you have to collect crystals to proceed through certain gates, and there weren't really any you could skip.  The map does a good job of showing where they are, but it would also be nice if it showed checkpoints on it too, or maybe even coins that you saw but haven't grabbed.

There are three basic forms that you use to make your way through the game.  The first is Divine herself, who can levitate some objects but also gets the super useful wall jump and double jump.  Then there is the red rage form, which can attack enemies and break red blocks.  The third is the blue fear form, which can also attack enemies and destroy blue blocks.  Note that there is a short cooldown when switching, so make sure you are pressing the correct button, otherwise you have a second or two before you can change again.  It isn't a big deal, but I did mix up which button changed to which form more than a few times.

Exploration is mostly done with Divine, and is pretty standard.  Unfortunately, her jump feels a bit float-y so I had some trouble aiming her during the jumping sections that required precision.  She also cannot bounce, so after you land, there is a bit of momentum to carry her a tad forward, that again, made some jumping more troublesome than it should have been.  You also cannot jump right after you land.  It's not the end of the world, but I prefer platforming controls to be super precise when you require that precision from the player.

Combat is also a mixed bag.  On one hand you get some satisfying attacks, since you can launch targets into the air and combo them, or hit them back to the ground.  On the other you get enemies that can get annoying when fighting multiples.  If they overlap, it can be hard to know when to dodge, since it is hard to see them all.  Some enemies shoot fireballs at a distance, and it can be troublesome to get over to them while dealing with their friends.  You do get a handy dodge roll, but that isn't always enough to save you.

There are also a few minor problems I have with the game.  First and foremost being how easy it is to die.  There are plenty of pits that if you fall into, instant death.  Also, numerous spikes that will outright kill you.  Of course, not all spikes will do that, some just damage you.  If you take damage, you do not get any invincibility frames, which is standard for a reason.  All too often I would get hit and fly back, only to land on something that would either hurt me again, or just kill me.  Ugh.  This would be less of an issue, but I feel there are not enough checkpoints, and the penalty for death is waiting 30+ seconds for the game to load.  It won't bother everyone, but one of my pet peeves is load times after a death.  I realize it is not always something that can be changed, though.

Also, I want to specifically call out a chase sequence that happens in the game.  I'm not sure why there always seems to be at least one of them stuck in every game in this genre, but I don't like them.  Rushing people through part of your game tends to highlight the flaws in said game, at least in my opinion.  While running and jumping through the section, you have to dodge a few fireballs from enemies.  It shouldn't be too hard, but getting hit by one can easily send you flying back, and either into a pit (death) or cost you a chunk of time (likely death).  There are numerous pits, too, and parts where you will automatically wall cling, making the section harder than it should be.  You will likely have several deaths, all resulting in waiting for the game to load, then starting with an un-skippable cutscene.  Well, all the cutscenes are un-skippable, which again, should not be a thing anymore.

When the game first launched, it had some framerate issues, but those have since been patched.  So if you do play the game, make sure you get the update to make it run a lot smoother.  However, I had a save file that was started before the patch, and made a section afterwards become unplayable.  When I got to a certain section of the spider caves, the area would not load and I would fall though the map.  I started a new save file and got past that part, but I wasn't too happy about having to re-do 2+ hours again, considering that also contained the chase sequence I don't like.

Admittedly, Red Goddess: Inner World does have some issues and is a bit rough, however, it is still kind of fun to play.  If you can look past or deal with those, there is a decent, linear, action/adventure metroidvania game to play.

No comments:

Post a Comment