RIN: The Last Child

В игре есть всё, что мне обычно нравится: метроидвания, женский протагонист, мистический сюжет. Но игра жутко дискомфортна. Карта - главный инструмент удобной метроидвании, но здесь она не отображает запертые двери и ошибочно отмечает изученными широкие пространства. При использовании порталов быстрого перемещения вместо точек на карте показывают лишь список локаций - их названия нужно было заучивать?! Нужный портал ищешь перебором списка. Кухня заклинаний бессмысленна. Временный защитный барьер работает на один удар. Выпускаемые снаряды слабо наводятся, так какой толк, если их будет три? Улучшение бафа на ману заключается в расходе шкалы здоровья - прям то, в чем я "нуждаюсь" в пылу боя. Сюжет так же груб, как карта и способности. Отец героини послал её убить старших братьев и сестер, сказав, что они плохие. "Заботливо" с его стороны. Найденные сородичи говорят, что это папа плохой. Вот и вся интрига. К тому же, нескольких предыдущих детей божественный папаша посылал с той же целью, что и героиню, терпя в итоге их провалы. Вы же знаете, что такое безумие? Попыталась втянуться в игру, промедлила, теперь жалею, что дала игре шанс и не вернула деньги сразу. Попыталась выбить все ачивки (игра легкая) и без толку. Баги помешали. Последние способности просто не активировались. В нынешние времена игры на релизе покупать не стоит.

It's "kinda" fun, but very tedious. I like a world to get lost in and explore, but with major caveat to the 'lost in' part. The biggest issue is the way the game reveals the map. Instead of revealing part of the cavern you are in, it reveals multiple caverns in any direction of you and it makes it very difficult to tell what you have and haven't already explored. It's more than that though, there's just something directionless about it all. Perhaps if the world were sorted into biomes more clearly on the map. Every area feels like a corridor, places would feel more distinctive with more landmarks. I've enjoyed some games that have big open worlds with little direction, if anything it sounds like a plus on paper, but It isn't working for me here. There is a little bit of jank, but overall the platforming, music and visuals are enjoyable, some of it striking even. I was very on the fence as to whether i'd refund RIN, and ultimately decided against, which I kind of regret. Perhaps if more development time was/is spent, RIN could turn into something that would appeal to me more. As it stands it's a tricky one to recommend to people. I'm sure there are folks out there that will like the confusing navigation.

I'm really torn on this one. This game really wants to be Ori. Were is not for myriad of bugs, lack of enemy variety (like 6 different enemies, each of them reskinned for each biome), and inconsistent platforming I would have enjoyed myself. Specifically I encountered a bug about a dozen times in the final biome where if there were enough enemies or interactions on screen (not sure which) i would no longer be able to cast any ability without having die or restart. When I was having to reset the game every 5-10m that was the last straw. Once these are fixed you will have a solid, if generic, Metroidvania, until when I unfortunately can't recommend this one.

[b] TLDR: The game has potential, but it falls short at almost every turn. [/b] First, let me say that I do love the art style. I love the backgrounds and environment. The music is good but the loops are too short. It becomes repetitive quick. The sound effects can be atrocious when duplicated (multiple of the same effect at the same time. I'm looking at you, magic missile x3, or even synchronized geysers). I am not a fan of "hit the spikes, restart the whole corridor" pattern. The controls feel stiff and janky. The cooldown of the main attack feels inconstistant. The map is too big and feels empty most of the time. Most doors serve no purpose at all. When you die, the respawn can glitch and place you somewhere you're not supposed to be. Traversal options that are redundant (having both floating platforms & climbing vines when only one is required) Each regions have all the same enemies just with a different coat of paint. They have the same attack pattern, same hp, same damage. The only enemies I found to be different are the jellyfishes and the big woolies from the beginning. Minibosses? There is only one, copy pasted everywhere. Bosses are painfully too easy. Way too many bugs to justify buying this right now. At least wait until they patch the game to make it playable.

This is a complicated recommend. This game is rough around the edges. It's enemies are samey and nothing is particularly complex. HOWEVER: This is obviously a labor of love. I'd much rather give this a look than some kind of soulless cash grab. Grab it on sale, give it a look, leave constructive criticism. So, in that vein: Adding more enemy variety with different movesets would help keep things interesting Grouping the warp gates by area would help readability, or even showing where on the map each warp gate is would be a huge step up Being able to warp to gates on command would be huge. The map is very large and backtracking is inevitable, but the gates are just a LITTLE far apart. Makes things feel too spread out and empty. Shrinking things slightly or being able to warp more freely would help. The shrink power is a neat idea, but seems to be used VERY sparingly. Might be something you could have cut. Haven't finished it yet, but I think this was a very good attempt, and I'll keep an eye out for future games from this dev.

This is one of those cases where I wish a sort of middle point existed for reviews. This is a very cautious recommendation, in the case where the game is on sale. I created a video review of it, providing footage and a detailed account of the pros and cons I identified. You can watch it by following the link below: https://youtu.be/9YzzxRUS-Xs For those who do not wish to watch the video: Pros: - Beautiful art style - Interesting story premise - Deep combat system based on magic - Some good platforming segments - Solid length, if you wish to 100% it (around 12 hours on average, based on popular feedback, with lower and higher extremes based on player skill and observation level) Cons: - Chaotic and confusing map design that makes it difficult to understand which places you have already visited (some updates have been released since I finished the game to improve the situation, so it should be better now, though not sure exactly by how much) - Tedious and unimaginative boss fights, for the most part - Easy combat, overall, making it unnecessary to experiment with different spell combinations, thus making it easy to just stick with your starting spells (there's a hard mode as well, but I didn't try that out) - Story leaves a lot to be desired, despite strong potential - For the most part, simplistic platforming, though with the occasional exciting parts - Biomes lack the attention to detail that would elevate them and make each area stand out It is definitely a solid first attempt at the genre, and I'm hoping to see another metroidvania from these developers!

This game has an interesting story, but it is hidden behind shoddy mechanics, a poor ability to read user inputs, layered background images that mask key features to progress with without guessing or looking up a walkthrough, and similarly, a missing objective to find the end boss, after having you follow an objective marker for the entirety of the game. It tries to supplement this with a myriad of traversal features, but honestly none of them feel impactful and most of them are only applicable in the single biome that you unlock them in. I was hoping for better.

It scratches the itch for a new Ori game a bit. It has a few rough edges, but is enjoyable enough.

Rin the last child is a rough gem, but a gem nonetheless and one that, despite its flaws, i still really enjoyed. Before going into this i knew the game had a mixed rating, i did not know why but i had already picked it up since i liked the artstyle. As with any game that has a difficulty option and mixed reviews i opted for easy. Since most often the reason for the low ratings has to do with combat. With Rin it sorta had to do with that but not really? The combat in rin is basic, very basic which is mostly due to the very little enemy variety. I think accross the whole game there's probably only a dozen or so different enemies in terms of attacks. They have reskins for each biome but this makes the combat quite repetitive. Luckily there's a large assortment of spells to break this monotony, 18 to be exact. And while some of these function relatively similar most of the are completely unique. Now i'm not gonna pretend they're perfectly balanced since the base attack can get you through the whole game but the option is there and appreciated. Reason why you don't have to engage with this system, atleast on easy difficulty, is that most enemies are generally pretty weak. I heard one reviewer who played on normal also mention how easy combat was so maybe it also applies to hard although i'm not sure. Now for regular enemies this wasn't an issue for me personally, it actually made the game very chill to just explore about but when it came to the game's bosses. Said bosses were complete pushovers and i didn't not have to respect their mechanics in the slightest to beat them. Which is a shame as they featured cool designs and were intergral to the game's story. Said story while not breaking any new ground was actually enjoyable to me despite its predicatable nature. The reason i liked the story is the way you gradually uncover the backstory of the entire world through these lore monolits. Finding these was the driving force for exploration for me personally as none of the other collectibles were particularly game changing. Speak of exploration this is another area that probably contributed to Rin's mixed ratings. More specifically the mapping system and how it works. The integration is just a bit odd, it reveals in large chunks as soon as you step foot in one. So even if you didn't go there yet it will still have shown up on the map already. Sometimes these chunks are manageable in size but often they're quite large with some branching paths too. This makes it a bit hard to keep track of where you have and haven't been. This is further complicated by the lack of markers you can place as the game itself only shows portal and save points. The mapping system also makes the exploration a bit less exciting as you already know what will come up. Luckily the map is very open ended so it's not one of those super linear metroidvania's but rather a fully open ended one. which is why i enjoyed exploring it so much. There's lots of things to collect, as mentioned before but most of these can be picked up on the first pass. Now there's definately some backtracking required but not as much as some other MV's. Most of the movement upgrades were only used in their respective biomes which is a shame as that's a fundamental design pillar of metroidvania's. The biome interconnectivity was also a bit of a let down as except for one case all biomes only connect to the central hub one. I would have liked to see each biome connect to adjacent ones by one way doors or ability gating as this makes the map feel even more open. Still though the map felt open enough as is so it's not a deal breaker. What could be one for many people though is the rather basic platforming most of the time. Most biomes have simple platform jumping with some spikes occasionally. There's only a few cases where the platforming gets a bit more complex, which were the most fun parts of the game for me. There's a lot of wind currents to glide through spike mazes though, so if you're like me and loved Ori's sorrow pass then you'll love this. Actually the movement felt a bit ori like to me at times, especially with the grapple and glide but also just how agile the player character is. I would have loved to see some more complex platforming but as it stands it was fine and enjoyable enough. What was very enjoyable though were the games visuals and music. Each biome is vibrant and colourfull and a joy to look at. And while there is a lot of repetition due to how big the map is and the restrictions of indie games only having budget for a limited amount of assets, i still found that they did a good job of staging the screens. Within each biome there's like 5 subparts that feel unique, for example the jungle has a dense jungle, bioluminiscent moss, red cobweb, green poison and large mushrooms subbiomes. And while there's only a few setpiece rooms with unique or memorable assets i enjoyed uncovering the vistas. This is all complemented by a very relaxing soundtrack that enhanced the overal experience. There's only 1 soundtrack per biome, 1 combat soundtrack and the main menu theme so a total of around 7 tracks. And since each biome is so big you'll hear these soundtracks very often but they're dynamic enough whilst not drawing too much attention, that i didn't get tired of any of them. In fact i quite enjoyed them, especially the one in the central biome with the pan flute. Once again the OST gave me some Ori vibes which is a huge plus to me. If the soundtrack were to come on sale for a reasonable price i would definately pick it up but i'm not sure if that'll happen as development/support for this game seems to have ended. A shame as i would have liked to see one more patch adressing some concerns. First of all the integration of custom map markers would be a huge plus for most players. I did a good job of keeping track where i have and haven't been but by the end i also missed 2 collectibles and had to consult Demajen's map for guiddance. I would also like to see some sound design issues get fixed when hitting mobs with attacks, which can get quite loud. Other than that the game is in a good spot technically. I only had lag in one area which probably had to do with an unoptimized asset that was used a lot there. I also only had one small bug that was easily fixed by reloading to main menu. Loading times were also very fast when booting up the game but also when teleporting between areas. Finally i want to give special mention to the fact this game does one of my favorite things in metroidvania's that's actually very rare, which is seemless screen transitions. Like in ori you can keep running through rooms without load screens or doors or any other form of seperation. There's probably chunks going on behind the screens with streaming to optimize the flow but during gameplay this is perfectly integrated. This does so much for immersion and is something that's quite hard to pull of i'd guess, given that so few games do this. I just wanted to mention this as it is often overlooked for how much more enjoyable it makes the game. Which is why i'm recommending it in the end, despite the rough edges. Maybe not at full price but if you can pick this up for 15 bucks or lower i'd say it's a good investment.

J'aime beaucoup ce jeu (un + pour le gameplay, l'histoire, les combats, ...) et ce style de jeu. Cependant quelques points négatif surtout au niveau de la carte: - On découvre la carte via de grande zone, du coup parfois compliqué de se souvenir si cette endroit est nouveau ou si on y est deja passé. C'est dommage qu'il n'utilise pas le systeme des autres, ou la zone découverte est grise au départ et devient en couleur quand on passe à cet endroit (j'espère m'expliquer clairement). - La géolocalisation de rin ne se fait pas toujours bien, ce qui complique la tâche de savoir où elle se trouve. - Et L'absence de puce se fait très ressentir, obligé de prendre des photos de la carte pour se souvenir là ou il y a un truc qui n'a pas été exploré ou récupéré.