Library Of Ruina

[h1]!! WARNING SPOILERS !![/h1] I initially tried LoR because of roland in aba, and then because of how much ive heard my friends and others talk about how great this game is. TL;DR: The game gets a 6.3/10, some of the worst quality of life in a game, time bloat, convoluted descriptions, and very awkward end-game pacing. Genuinely just larp the game instead. lets start with some pros and cons. [h2]Pros:[/h2] - Amazing worldbuilding, and overall story - GREAT main characters (Roland & Angela) - Expansive deck-building playstyles - Very distinct and charming art-style - SURPRISINGLY GOOD OST [h2]Cons:[/h2] - [b]SOME OF THE WORST QUALITY OF LIFE IN ANY VIDEO GAME IVE PLAYED[/b] - very convoluted descriptions for mechanics, and passives, which couldve been condensed into "give +1 strength" - horrible time bloat where a singular level can take up to multiple hours, and on the low end, around 20-40 minutes - terrible late game pacing [spoiler]involving angela confronting herself, where the game just suddenly puts a genuine ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ realization (multi-boss level) in between very engaging character growth and development, like why wtf?[/spoiler] - Unsatisfying resolution for one of the major antagonist(s). [spoiler] argalia [/spoiler] - Unhelpful tutorial (I had to ask my friends for general basic mechanics, instead of learning it from their built-in tutorial) Now I want to use the rest of the space here to really delve deeply into some of the points, and put more context that really made this game significantly less enjoyable. Firstly, I streamed 95% of the time to my friends who wanted me to play, and right before even starting the game, a small argument ensues whether I should download certain mods or not. At first I was against it because I like to enjoy games in their purest forms, but after some persuasion I decided to trust them (and thank god I did). I wasn't aware of how bad the QOL really was, and by the end I ended up downloading [b]SEVEN[/b] steam workshop mods, including NoGrind, and bug fixes. I have never EVER played a game where downloading [b]SEVEN[/b]. [b]MODS[/b]. was almost considered necessary if you wanted to enjoy the game NORMALLY. Even then, I still managed to get softlocked TWICE right before beating end-game bosses, having me to essentially restart and completely waste hours during a singular run. When discussing to other people who have played this game, I have always said this joke where the players who enjoyed every second of this game has a gaming variation of stockholm syndrome, where you experience painful qol, spend hours upon hours beating some boss that has very tedious mechanics, and getting that dopamine rush on the victory screen illusions them into believing they are having fun. When you're playing LoR, youre spending most of the time on actual gameplay with id say very little on the actual overarching narrative, where the ratio of gameplay:story feels to be around 90:10, for the first 70% of the game. Because I am genuinely interesting in the story, I felt like im just dragging my feet for hours and my reward is a crumb of story, and the cycle repeats over and over again. It gets bad to the point where nearing the final realization (pseudo boss-rush) part with angela, people have told me that they ended up CHEATING to get past certain bosses, because of how obnoxious some of the bosses can be. It gets extremely worse when this happens in the MIDDLE OF THE END CUTSCENES, WHERE THEY EXPECT YOU TO BEAT 6 BOSS LEVELS, RUINING THE IMMERSION AND EMOTIONAL MOMENT. Like keeping it real for a second, one of my main driving forces to finishing this game was to give this review, as someone who actually played and beat the game. I ended up ranting a lot lolz, if you know me at all you probably are surprised by me even making a review like this, and yeah this game fueled me with a lot of negative emotion (hurr durr abnormality pages) im putting comments on because i genuinely am curious to hear what people are gonna say, something along the lines of "ur bad at the game son" + "dude is just lying!!" etc etc. [b]ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ABOUT MY PLAYTHROUGH:[/b] - no guides - very little backseating from my friends who watched me play (as per my request) - NoGrind mod - did NOT do most [u]general[/u] receptions - main endgame pages: purple tear, xiao, yae, red mist, olivier, nikolai - did NOT play Lobotomy Corp. (watched some explanation video and pretty much understood the gist, and was even tested by some more extreme pm fans to see if i actually knew :sob:)