Rue Valley

just beat the game and ill say this: it failed as a game but it succeeded as a story just such an obnoxiously finnicky game first 5 hours were amazing and then the repetition sets in you're kinda doomed to fail the first time you play but unlike DE i think repeated playthroughs arent all that entertaining you're more or less just rushing to the ending hoping you can save a few very crucial inspiration points also it's not as well written as DE but like how many other games are? like 5.

Disappointed. Started out as something of an interesting adventure, but then devolved into a visual novel where you simply clicked "continue" or selected the one dialog option that was presented over and over. Would not recommend.

This game is great. However its a game of two halfs. the first half is the most ''disco-like'' with lots of leads to follow up. however not to spoil any plot points the second half of the game feels incredably restrictive and linier in comparison. I would also like to say here that the RPG aspects of the game are incredably underused and this is probily one of the main things that will turn off disco fans. I know this review may come across as negative, but as previously stated this game is amazing, its just not disco elysium so please dont expect that.

I believe the same thing will happen with this game as happened with Cyberpunk 2077; at first there is a lot of negative feedback, but overtime the game finds its audience and place. As far as I know, the expectations were really high with Rue Valley due to the legacy that Disco Elysium left behind. Like others have said, this is not Disco Elysium 2, it is visually similar and gameplay-wise has similar elements, but at least in my mind they fulfill different roles and serve different purposes. That being said the themes are similar, both incorporating themes of mental health, loneliness, loss and hopelessness. I personally enjoyed Disco Elysium more, but again, that sets the standard incredibly high. Rue Valley has an interesting story, enjoyable music, likeable artstyle and overall good gameplay loop. I think it suffers from pacing, sometimes feeling like there is so much to do while other times I found myself going in circles. I think it would greatly benefit from having the thoughts narrated by a voice actor. The story was good, but left me feeling a bit empty, I think there could have been something just a little bit more and it would have been just right for my liking. I also wish the character-building would have had a bit more effect on the overall story and gameplay, right now it felt more like pinch of seasoning on top instead of a fully integrated game mechanic. I look forward to playing more games from the same developers! All in all: it's a great game with very reasonable price and if you enjoy this type of games I suggest giving it a chance and seeing how you like it.

The appeal of having a time loop mechanic as the central gimmick of an isometric RPG is self-evident. What is usually done through save-scumming, replaying or simply trying again after a defeat, in a game like Rue Valley could become an active component of the game's narrative. The branching path structure of a cRPG also goes hand in hand with a knowledge-based structure: the match is so self-evident, so "made in heaven" that I don't understand at which point of the pipeline the dev team stumbled. As bluntly as possible, there is not a single knowledge-based quest in Rue Valley: the entire thing is so railroaded that at times it hardly qualifies as a "branching-paths" experience. Its most crucial moments are depicted in montages, the most significant choices are taken by the protagonist while we click at regular intervals on the same exact pixel, the basic gameplay mechanics are dependant on a form of abstract progression that comes up independently from your actions. Event the stats, tepidly copied with the skill checks in their concept from Disco Elysium, are irrelevant: passing a check or not only partially changes how you solve an issue, but not ever in a meaningful enough way to make me want to see the alternative. I can't say the gameplay is dysfunctional because it barely exists, which is an improvement from the gameplay actively trying to make me kill myself (I am looking at you, Planescape Torment...), but not as much of an improvement that I can declare the experiment successful. Because yes, this was an experiment, perceived as one by the developers and the audience alike. The first disco-like to win the race and come out as the flagpole of a nascent genre: that, in and of itself, contains many of the issues here. The developers are Serbian, yet the setting is a weird Americana reenactment; the aesthetic style is cartoonish and slick; the gameplay makes it impossible to miss out on stuff or get stuck; the writing is well-finished, but not as elevated or poetic as Disco Elysium's. In other words, Rue Valley attempts to cast a wide net and have a broader appeal than its predecessor, but by doing so it loses the uncompromising nature that the hardcore base enjoys. Considering that no one aside from that base is ever going to play Rue Valley anyway, that's another gamble going to the bin. Half the guilt lies on the gamers themselves (most of them wouldn't be caught dead having fun by reading something), and the other half on the game itself, as it squanders all that appeal with a truly excruciating amount of lists, instruction manuals and endless useless information that goes on and on and on. Every single quest seemed to have the "Oops! Here you can either read this whole thing for 20 minutes and learn nothing of value or you can skim through it and risk losing out on important info! Have fun!" and by the end of the game I was genuinely burnt out. I won't mince words about it: Rue Valley might be one the most boring games I've played recently, as even when it passionately tells you the story of its characters and setting, nothing ever truly comes together as it should. It mistakes the fascination we all felt for the lore of Elysium for a passion for random information about a fictional place, but I truly don't give a ♥♥♥♥ about the Apex Ore mine, the Kay family or Benjamin's paramilitary group. I give even less of a ♥♥♥♥ about Internet archives, reddit forums for anti-ghost reinforced doors or magnetic locks, yet Rue Valley seems to beliebe that to make you perceive the mental exhaustion of a time loop, it has to make you go through that very same mental exhaustion. Fundamentally, it's not a problem of competence, but one of creative bankruptcy. They could have told this story in a medium more coherent with the rigidness they required, like a novel or a movie, and it would have improved massively as a result. If we do tackle the themes this story brings up, then we can also gleam into a different kind of creative bankruptcy. The root of the problem is a certain obsession of certain contemporary artistic communities with therapy and therapy-speak, most often observed in the USA. Therapy is (like the game keeps reminding you over and over again) good and necessary for a wide variety of people; in fact, I can't imagine that it would do harm to anybody to try it out, even if they don't feel the need to. I can't and won't criticise the social function of works like Rue Valley that argue so much in favour of it, but waging the material benefit of an art-piece is no way of evaluating it. The incompatibility is not perceived because therapy is today propagandised as a means to probe the human psyche, while that never was its purpose. It's a clinical practice, it deals with what works and what benefits, not what is "true": the answers it gives are definite, a result of a scientific and probabilistic process because they need to reach a specific goal. Point being, there is no poetry in therapy. There is no transcendent meaning to things, even the language of therapy doesn't aim to make you feel like what it describes, but rather make you understand it. From this point of view, characters are understood not as people whom you get only glimpses of, but rather little puzzles entirely explained by their specific pathologies. No wonder that most of them are forgettable, and the only one given a shred of humanity is the goat himself, Dr Finck: when you understand yourself as the doctor who needs to convince the patient to get treated, you're going to end up having more empathy for him than for the patient himself. Art that discounts itself as a means through which its observer can cope with their own struggles often ends up spending the cheap coin of grief to justify its existence, because even its creators understand that, fundamentally, art should make you feel something and not necessarily explain that something to you. It reminds me of last year's "Hamnet" movie, which I didn't like because of this very same reason, and I agree with Ian McKellen's criticism of it in which he says that imagining that Hamlet was just Shakespear's way of coping with the loss of his son is speculative and downplaying of his artistic intent. As Rue Valley got to its last few hours of gameplay, there are a couple of twists and explanations that made me appreciate its narrative more. Granted, there are no breadcrumbs to be picked off here, there's just a few lore drops to be endured that leave ample space for interpretation. For one, I appreciated that the game didn't feel the need to beat you over the head with answers. Frank's story is touching, greatly helped by some standout vocal performances and a prose that finally finds its pace, albeit it's weird to have it completely overshadow Eugene's, and I expected a greater connection between the two. At the end of the day, what really disappoints of Rue Valley is Rue Valley itself, the umteenth American desert a mode literay videogame is set in, but one that lacks of identity and awareness of what the standards of the medium are. It's a valiant effort, but also one that teaches, once again, that sticking too close to your inspirations can make you blind to some evident flaws of what you're making.

玩了这游戏八小时不到，身为一个剧情为主的游戏玩家，我硬着头皮玩了前7小时的游戏内容。总体上这游戏靠着类似极乐迪斯科的画风吸引了我，最初也是虽然看了很多差评，但还被最初的游戏试玩打动了就等折扣下单了。结果最初的5个小时确实还不错，没有明显的不适感。但最后快到结尾时不知道是不是选错了选项，让我一直周而复始的经历时间循环，没完没了。而且制作组是不是脑子抽也不知道，时间循环也就罢了，我当做是为游戏主题服务，可是你让我一直循环的同时那个循环CG还不能跳过，我完完全全看了30分钟的循环啊。也是体会到主角的无奈了，是我我也想摆烂了。但拜托我是玩家啊，你就算给我一个BAD结局都好过一直放你那破CG好吧。说实话真破防了，各位想买这款游戏的也别买了，完全是浪费钱，不如找视频解说看看得了。

I played a piece of garbage story writing.

Первая половина игры 8/10, Вторая половина 2/10. Просто нудная шляпа с бесконечными вынужденными таймскипами. В среднем игра на 5/10. Положительный отзыв только за первую половину.

2026.7.7，我打完了这款游戏。 总结，神人游戏，没病别买。 《懊悔谷》——借无限时间循环讲透了人面对遗憾的两种选择：要么直面伤痛完成自我和解，要么抹杀一切情绪、永远躲在循环里逃避现实； 它不像《极乐迪斯科》批判外部世界，而是向内深挖人的懊悔与脆弱。 「时光杀手」结局不是“完美通关”，而是彻底沉沦的悲剧，反向衬托出了和解结局的救赎意义。 游戏极强的情感代入感：角色的遗憾、痛苦刻画细腻，很容易让我带入自身现实里的“懊悔情绪”，这是本作最出彩的地方，也是和《极乐迪斯科》差异化的核心——迪斯科聚焦社会思辨，本作聚焦个人内心创伤与悔恨。 整个懊悔谷，应该不是一个真实的小镇，而是主角逃避自身巨大悔恨、自我构建的心理幻境；时间循环是他不愿直面过往罪责，潜意识造出的“避风港”。小镇居民的痛苦，都是主角内心压抑情绪的投射。 其实好想给差评，因为这游戏明显是个半成品，其实好多事情能讲，比如家族企业矛盾映射美国社会，破裂的家庭矛盾，所谓的20：15固定的那个电话到底何意味？（烦死了，也没什么剧情）等，我也还想给莱莉一杯咖啡，跟罗宾聊聊漫画和钥匙卡，去酒吧坐坐，找戴利“破坏规则”，玩玩飞行机游戏，无聊的看看莉莉丝这本书…… 但是，我偏偏很喜欢这种恰到好处的留白。 我挺喜欢莱莉和罗宾这两个角色的，哈哈。 我还想继续玩这个美丽而遗憾的故事啊，音乐挺带感。可惜了，为什么铺垫的东西都没讲完，结局只是这么个结局，虽然接受，但还是好舍不得。。。 OS：谁知道还会不会有更新……相信猫头鹰吧，求更新，最好来点大的！！！ ：）我爱懊悔谷

Людям не нравится эта игра потому что это не Диско Элизиум. Эта игра просто норм, средняя, вполне интересная. Не слушайте критиков которые воняют в интернете услышав что разработчики диско сделали не-диско и поиграйте сами чтобы понять что к чему