Author Topic: RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore (Switch) Review  (Read 1317 times)

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Offline Grimace the Minace

  • Matt Zawodniak
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RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore (Switch) Review
« on: February 25, 2019, 07:01:00 PM »

Rogue-lite-lite.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/49852/remilore-lost-girl-in-the-lands-of-lore-switch-review

RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore is a rogue-lite action game starring a high school girl named Remi. After startling a magical book named Lore, Remi was accidentally teleported into the fantasy world of Ragnoah—an alternate dimension being ravaged by mecha-monsters who are led by an android named Choux. Playing as Remi, you need to fight your way through various areas in Ragnoah to reach a portal that can take you home to Earth.

Gameplay is surprisingly reminiscent of action RPGs like Diablo. Playing in an isometric view, you’ll hack and slash your way through worlds, picking up loot dropped by enemies to power up your character. Though the loot will mostly be currency to spend at shops and on upgrades, you’ll also find chests with increasingly powerful weapons. The most fun I had in RemiLore was getting stronger weapons and unlocking better spells and upgrades over the course of the game—the classic scenario of “watching the numbers go up” that draw people to loot games.

Watching the numbers go up is probably the main thing that will appeal to players of RemiLore, since the game itself is too dull for the campaign to be particularly interesting. Though each weapon type has its own unique combo list, there isn’t a lot of strategy involved in using them. Learning actual combos with each weapon never felt like it was any more useful than just mashing buttons to keep hitting mecha-monsters in the face. There just isn’t enough variety in combat to keep RemiLore engaging for all four acts.  

Even though there are around 10 weapon types, I had only unlocked two by the time I had finished the game, and between the two—the one-handed sword and the hammer—I only actually enjoyed using the sword. Although I would keep finding newer, stronger swords, their movesets were the same. My equipped spell would change with each weapon, but since they were all area-of-effect spells that more or less happened independent of my other attacks, they never actually made combat any more exciting or interesting.

The monotony wasn’t helped by RemiLore’s supposed rogue-lite nature. I say “supposed” because it didn’t actually contain the kind of numerous deaths that a rogue-lite is known for. On my first run through the game, I played the entire campaign from start to finish on my first attempt without dying. This isn’t because I was particularly skilled, but rather because the game was way too easy. You do unlock a harder difficulty option, but that’s not until you’ve already finished the campaign once, and by then you will have long since gotten bored with the repetitive combat.

The most fun I had playing RemiLore was in an alternative game mode where my weapon switched to a completely different weapon every time I defeated an enemy. This actually ended up being a much more interesting challenge that forced me to stay on my toes and adapt to my changing moveset. Unfortunately, once again, this better game mode is not unlocked until you’ve already completed the entire campaign, making it difficult to recommend. A full playthrough of RemiLore is about two hours, and I have trouble saying it’s worth slogging through a brief but boring campaign just to get to an alternative game mode that’s only kind of more interesting.

RemiLore just doesn’t have enough variety to stay interesting for more than a few minutes. Though the characters are mildly entertaining with an impressive amount of dialogue to flesh out their interactions, there’s just too much you need to put up with to get to the good parts of the game. Rogue-lite and Action RPG are two crowded genres, and RemiLore unfortunately decided to tackle them both without covering even the basics of what makes either interesting in the first place.