[h1] <-- Review written for [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/35180752/] 3 Point Play [/url] --> [/h1]
Let's talk a bit about this one. For starters, for those of you that know my reviews, this will be the usual for you, but for the general public, these tend to be a little long, so I decided to add a "TLDR" in the beginning, starting from this one.
So, TLDR: Game has missing features, I do not recommend at its actual state.
For the rest of us, respectable people who like to read long af reviews, here we go.
So, REFUGE is a 3D Roguelike game which might as well be the central plaza on any chinese city, since there are just so many red flags there.
Starting from the beginning, there was a massive one in which the game would take like 5 minutes to start. Now, this is kind of a heavy game, but even then, I play other, heavier ones and they load really quick. Found out the graphics' settings were set to Epic, and had to change all of them to my preferred Medium configurations which I use for any and every game regardless of whatever it might run or not on my PC. I was pretty amazed at the amount of graphical configurations available there, you can make the game look really bad and it will run almost anywhere, in my eyes, that's a positive aspect. But then, I came to a sudden realization: You see, most games actually hide all of those configs under an "Advanced Configs" tab or something like that, and there was not one of those, nor actually configs for other aspects of the game, such as key bindings, sound, gameplay/difficulty.
Well, nevermind that, I configured the graphics to my liking and went back to the main menu, where I found there was 5 little icons with "modulators", basically different gameplay tweaks for your run, you can choose as many as you want. I marked the "Heavy Sword" one and jumped straight into the game. And when I say straight into the game, I mean, straight into the game.
My character, a dude rocking the good ol' Columbine style complete with the black trenchcoat and a mean attitude was there, in a shack, in the middle of a desert wasteland, with a sword and no introduction, no explanation of the core gameplay aspects or controls, no controller compatibility and a MEAN mouse sensitivity, like you'd move the mouse 1mm and you could pan the camera 360 degrees.
Got out of the shack, and started running around the light brown environment the devs had set up for us good boys and girls who received the game on our curator pages or purchased it.
Found my first enemy, and one-shoted him with my sword, seems that was a common thing, since most enemies I've found later actually had the same fate, and would die from only one strike.
Ended up dying later on when I left the enemies kill me so I could see what happens when you do it. But the answer was pretty much "Nothing happens"; you get a message saying "This is your end" and then you can go back to the Main Menu to a second run, pretty standard for roguelike games.
My second run was pretty similar, except this time I walked into a hurricane which did nothing, seems it was there just for the aesthetics? Decided to go and chase after one of the objective markers on my compass on the top side of the screen. Found a boss, couldn't damage him somehow, since my sword attacks wouldn't connect, and ended up dying there.
My third run was pretty similar, except this time I searched around for chests to get items, I liked how they affected my character's appeareance, then got killed by some sort of robot that launched a missile barrage in my general direction and got back to the main menu.
So, it was like 30 min filled by clunky gameplay, unexplained mechanics, some sort of "this is an asset flip" thought crossed my mind once or twice, as there are many NYPD cars, but the city didn't really look like New York by any means, as it was way smaller.
At the start of the game, once you appear, the only prompt you get to play is a little text message that says "Kill all the bosses" and that, coupled with a map filled with nothingness, made me think of a Ps2 classic I used to love, which was called Shadow of the Colossus, but then again, I'd be insulting SotC if I were to compare it with REFUGE, since even if both games share the same prompt (kill all of the bosses) SotC had a lot of charm, and you always felt like you were something wrong, and could even get to know those giant characters, even if you never crossed a word with them.
After my first run in this game, I asked to one of my fellow friends in the curator team if this was an early access title, to which he answered "No, it is not" and quite honestly, I'm surprised it isn't. In fact, I believe it should be an EA title because the improvements this game needs need to be crafted alongside a community of players that may be willing to cooperate with this project. Selling REFUGE as a completed game is really wrong, since, as far as I can see, this game is either uncomplete, unpolished or a cash-grab.
