RUNE II: Decapitation Edition

First of all, this game has nothing to do with the original RUNE except the name and Story setting. RUNE 1 in a nutshell: Killing an enemy and taking his leg to beat the ♥♥♥♥ out of the next enemy. So: Simple and entertaining Hack&Slay with a proper story RUNE II: Clunky controls, Crafting, Housing, Farming (like running around chopping trees 1hit), skill/talent system, Quests, Story. So, it might not be this bad, but if you expect something like RUNE 1, dont buy it... it will be a waste of time for you.

Oh boy.. this is a tough review to write. Studio 369 inherited a right mess from HumanHead. I don't know what happened with the EGS bribe money.. but this game clearly was & IS NOT ready for RE-release. I really wanted to like and enjoy this game. Was a massive fan of the first Rune ( as it's called now Rune Classic ) Love Viking Mythology. But for the price they're asking and the actual state this launched in... I can't say that it's worth it at this point in time. Where to start... ? Game suffers from some optimization issues. The co-op is half baked ; only the host seems to be able to interact with quest givers, it's " one of those " restrictive on a leash type co-op games. Idk. why the publisher rushed it out the door like this, but it certainly feels insulting. The QA feels completely absent, as there are still placeholder map spots scattered throughout the game: ragdolls look and feel like an unfinished joke. Empty fields, clone stamped trees, idle groups of enemies stood still, staring at nothing... not even patrolling or going about their activities ( unless they're fighting other NPCs ) Questionable design choices.. like NPCs, resources and animals respawning like turbo rabbits all over the place - sometimes right in your face. glitched out surfaces and textures. The combat rework is there but lacks a certain responsiveness and weight ( for a proper combat system look at Elderborn, as an example ) as it is now, for the most part.. it feels like a third person Diablo clone clicker - clearly RUSHED and sped up artificially ; Lacks impact and certain hits don't always connect, like the jump attack combos. everything just feels wonky and rushed, like an utter joke. Quest structure and dialogue again feels very minimal and placeholdery. This should have been an early access title at BEST! The price tag and plethora of DLCs don't justify the purchase, not in this state... not by a long shot! I bought everything hoping they will put in the MASSIVE amounts of work necessary to actually call this a game. Don't let the advertisement fool you. All the mentioned additions could be great, if they would just hire a competent QA lead and sufficient staff to actually complete the game. Keep a close eye on Studio 369 and Publisher Ragnarok Game, LLC. & how they decide to treat this issue. I hope that one day I can change this review into a positive. If you want to support the game's further development, maybe get it.. but at your own risk ; So far 369 said they will be looking into the optimization, but if they don't address the other GLARING issues I've mentioned, then fudge it. GL 369 !

[h1]A cursed game with a very troubled development cycle...[/h1] What happened Human Head Studios did a closed beta back in 2018 on steam to gain interest from players then they went silent for 4-6 months. At that time we gotta remember they were also selling backers/supporters edition on their website during the beta but what's sad is that they ended up pulling a last minute epic store exclusive stunt move. After launching on epic and screwing their early backers they shut down the studio, abandoned the game and left it unfinished. Another scummy tactic from a bunch of sellouts, i almost backed the game and oh boy am i glad i didn't. Now here we are almost two years after the initial planned steam release... Well Studio 369 i appreciate you guys are at least trying to improve and fix the game on what must be a messy code base. The game in itself isn't completely bad, it's just nothing special. RUNE II is a very straight forward action/rpg with basic crafting/loot elements. You won't find deep characters development or rich story here. If you decide to play this, thrust me it won't take you too long to realize that it's average at best. From the blurry graphics (the generic blurry UE4 look), the unstable performances to the clunky combat system, everything feels under developed and rushed. To the game's defense i will say some environments looks better than the others, nothing groundbreaking but still few well designed areas. Atmosphere is alright, overall it's kinda faithful to what we can imagine from the vikings fantasy times. In the end RUNE II still can be fun to play if you like vikings games and can tolerate the clunky combat, the annoying janky UI and few bugs here and there. That's a very light recommendation from me, only buy it on a very very deep sale. Since we won't be getting AC Valhalla on steam i guess that's one of the only few options we got for recent viking themed games. [spoiler]Oh btw ♥♥♥♥ Chris Rhinehart.[/spoiler] [h1]Rating 5.5/10.[/h1]

This is a game that tries to do a lot of things but does not do a very good job at any of them. The combat is "okay", but it is kinda slow and has a lot less finesse to it than the parry and dodging might have you believe. Enemy variety is pretty low, with bosses being particularly lacking. The skills do add some more depth and replayability I suppose, but as I am standing before the final boss, I am currently not sure I would want to replay the game at all, which is not a good sign. The crafting system is mostly pointless, you can never really craft anything better than what enemies randomly drop all over the place except at the very beginning (and at the very end where it is a plot point). Therefore all the crafting ingredients and random trash drops do very little but make things more tedious because of the inventory management. Making buildings is also barely consequential. The exploration aspect is pretty lacking in my opinion. I went out of my way to explore places outside of where the story wanted me to go, and while some had *something* on them, the majority of it was featureless hills without any enemies, NPCs, collectibles, or point. On the more out-there islands I found maybe *three* places of interest. The game is also significantly glitchy, of course, though I guess it would be foolish to assume a game like this wouldn't be. Where the story campaign really lost me, though, was the final 20% or so. (Spoiler warning): So as you progress Ragnarok, you start the age of fire. That leads the entire world to be engulfed in flame, everything is red, the game becomes not very appealing to look at. That was already not very nice. However, in the end, you play in the age of night. Everything is dark, and I could not find a meaningful way to make any light. Outside of some specific better lit places and the occasional "the moon briefly appears" glimpses of light, visibility is so bad that I can barely see anything. I basically just walk towards the quest waypoint on the map, spending a large portion of that time walking against walls, rocks and trees I cannot tell from the path, and swing my weapon at floating health bars. Maybe if I turned the graphics up to high, this would not be such an issue, but my computer cannot handle the game on those settings. I wish I could say that the multiplayer redeems the game, but so far, whenever I checked for PvP servers online, there was not a single soul online on one, so I have no way of knowing if that part is any good. So right now, I sadly have to give a thumbs down.

[h1]IN NEED OF SIGNIFICANT OVERHAUL[/h1] To preface, I was an Alpha & Beta tester for Rune II and actively provided feedback to help the Dev team improve this game. I also played the original Rune for over 14 years and was active in the competitive PvP scene. I never believed Rune II had to be a clone of the original, but it had to feel like Rune and improve upon what made the first game great. As it stands, this game FAILS ON BOTH ENDS despite holding much promise when Humanhead was at the helm of development. Although bearing the “Rune” name, this game does not share the original game’s free-flowing (and deceptively complex) combat and movement, platforming options (e.g., think what was possible in DM-MtEverestFinal), and modding capabilities – all of which continue to keep the original game alive for over 20 years now. Both Humanhead and now Studio 369 wanted Rune II to be different, which is fine. But what these small Dev teams wanted from the very start (and STILL want) was far too ambitious – a large open-world PvE story mode with co-op elements AND a robust PvP with separate deathmatch modes, alongside a compelling story, UI, gameplay and server infrastructure. What we ended up with instead was a less than mediocre outcome on all fronts. This was a Sisyphean task from the start, and Studio 369 has only made the game feel more foreign to old-school Rune players. I know Studio 369 was put in a very tough position after Humanhead Studios left, but that does not change the fact that this game is a dreadfully poor successor to the original Rune. For specifics, I’ll focus on one of Rune II’s biggest problems – its poor combat system. Rune II’s combat is janky, has poor hit detection, has next to no flow and worse of all, is NOT fun. Pain delays are pretty much non-existent so there are no consequences to getting hit, and attack spam is encouraged. The camera does an annoying shake every time you hit something. The game’s dodges are restricted to four sides instead of being omnidirectional (full 360 degrees) based on keyboard presses. There are no natural hit combo strings. You cannot string attacks into dodges to drag and get delayed strikes and/or combos. There is no crouch and by extension crouch attacks to evade blows and bypass shields through precision strikes. You cannot dodge after jump attacks to drag attacks and transition into combos. Weapon swings are delayed, and if you press attack after suddenly switching directions, you are not guaranteed to swing in that direction. Weapons have little angular/swing variety, so most weapons feel alike and there is little room for creative freedom in combat.Damage values are laughably low and limb severing is a rarity that only occurs out of sheer luck. Shields do not passively stop attacks. The game's rolls renders the double-tap dodges useless because they're faster, are more evasive, and because double-tap dodges cannot synergize well with strikes. Characters are not forced to pause when picking up items so combat devolves into people running through weapons, picking them up, throwing them at opponents, and then continuing to run away. It is almost impossible to catch people who actively run away from you. You can also hoard and then spam health runes which, because of their instant activation, allow players to abuse them mid-combat and become unkillable. The direction you aim a power attack is almost always inconsistent with where your character actually swings, and there's no way of reliably aiming it when you use even a little bit of rotation mid-combat. It's even worse when you try to aim a power attack while in mid-air. And the UI system for changing weapons is horrible, forcing you to hold the mouse wheel which often causes you to instantly activate food/runes by accident. The game also forces you to rely on inventory screens in the current deathmatch betas when you’ve picked up a lot of items, which should never be a part of the experience in a deathmatch/arena/PvP mode in a game like Rune II. Rune II encourages swing and shield spamming and the exploitation of power attacks. On top of that, Rune II’s hit detection is poor, players can dodge immediately after being hit, weapon swings can oftentimes be delayed to absurd degrees and still hit someone seconds after the swing completes. The combat is slow, terribly unresponsive, buggy and incredibly simple. Player-rotation is also forcibly limited to be more dark souls’ish unlike the full rotational freedom Rune Classic provides. To Rune II’s benefit, throws and the game’s egg-shaped movement (where backwards movement is slower than other movement directions), are great (if tweaked somewhat) but that’s where the positives end. It does not help that the game’s poor graphic optimization and inconsistent netcode causes further slowness/teleporting/oddities mid-combat in Rune II. EVERY problem I described here that Rune II has, the original Rune DOES NOT have. Likewise, the features I mentioned that are missing in Rune II, EXIST in the original Rune. The original game was not perfect by any means but its core combat experience remains unique to this day and would have helped Rune II differentiate itself from its competitors. The formula for success was right in front of Studio 369’s face but they purposely ignored the original Rune to give a metaphorical middle finger to Humanhead Studios – just like they did with their title, "Decapitation edition". What's even more frustrating is that all of these combat problems were reported over the past 2 years but the combat has only gotten worse since then. To Humanhead's credit, they listened and implemented a lot of community feedback even though most of the changes were incomplete and rushed. The same cannot be said for Studio 369. In fact, some community members were effectively silenced by Studio 369 in the Rune II discord when bringing up some of these combat topics because, in the Dev team's own words, "we're not making a remaster of another game" - completely refusing to acknowledge any merit in our feedback and instead dismissing the Rune Classic community as an annoying vocal minority. Unfortunately we are a minority BECAUSE thousands of fans of the original game were completely turned away by Rune II when they saw what a buggy, unresponsive, not fun, incomplete game it was as far back as the Alpha phase. And the game's gameplay has not gotten much better since then. Those of us that remain still want to see Studio 369 succeed and fix the game so that all those veteran players can return - but right now, the Devs lost most of their goodwill with the Rune Classic fanbase. Studio 369 explicitly stated they want Rune II to be different from the original Rune. But what they offer instead (as far as gameplay & combat is concerned) is far worse than both the original and other melee-based combat games. Basic tweaks to the speed and inputs of combat will not be enough to put Rune II on par with other IPs. It needs significant overhauling, and until that is done, it is unlikely that Studio 369 will find much traction and continued support for new PvP game modes like deathmatch and arena (which should have been a part of Rune II from the start). If the fundamental combat system itself is flawed and not fun, then adopting new PvP game modes would be fruitless affairs. The poor combat system implicates the enjoyability of Rune II’s campaign/PvE as well, which is further plagued by poor AI in the enemies you find in the open world. I can only hope that Studio 369 narrows its focus to first revamping the gameplay and combat experience. Once that happens, it’ll be far easier to ensure the game’s success and to have competitive and viable PvP modes, and a more enjoyable PvE experience. As it stands, this game is only “Rune” in name and while I wish Studio 369 the best, this is not a game I will play or advise fans of the original to purchase.

A dead and abandoned game; glad this got de-listed and wish this would happen more often.

Received Game for Free from a Friend. Game shouldn't have been released as a completed game. There are waaaay too many bugs for this to be anything more than a beta. Many issues prevailing on the starter island. Save games completely messed for multiplayer. Game has some serious potential. But currently the game is poorly optimized, has some issues with camera angles and not being able to see what's going on (camera zooming in and out to find a proper angle, but fails at this miserably). Sailing a boat isn't fun, your characters "hop" around while the boat attempts to catch up with the graphics going on around it. And teleporting bears lol. Items not dropping that are required for questing. Terrible controller support with regards to menu. It's fine for fighting. Menus appear to have a dotted line showing up, indicating where the UI layout should be. Trying to check your inventory with a controller is a chore, as the boxes don't highlight correctly (they go off center of the item your looking at, so you may accidentally salvage things you don't want to)..The list goes on. Oh cringe moment..every time you or a party member levels, everything slows down, making it feel like there's a lag spike and seriously harming the combat environment when you aren't ready for everything to just slow down at a moments notice. Bad mechanic, should be removed. 157 Alpha testers listed in the discord, yet game breaking bugs found on starter island makes you question, what was anyone testing? Keep up the work. But for 30 bux, game isn't worth it as it is. Drop your price by 10 bux and for your next game you make, take a bit more time before doing a hurried release. Cause I'm sure this is a nightmare for all of you hard working folks in the company. Forgot to add. The more we as a gaming community condone this type of unprofessional behaviour (Releasing a game and making your PUBLIC playtest for you and find your bugs) the more it will happen. 10 years ago, this behaviour wouldn't be tolerated and the community would backlash. Have we all turned so lazy that we can't have legit games listed as "Official Release" be the legit game we expect to pay for. As in a completed, finished, maybe a few bugs game? One where the discord isn't riddled with bugs being listed and showing a supposed 157 playtesters? Don't show off how many testers you have unless they actually are doing work. Because as far as I'm concerned, not one of them did their job.

Support is already gone. Game dead, before being even playable.

I was excited for this game. I loved the first Rune and was honestly expecting more of the same. But this, I have no idea what this is. This is a bizarre viking game that seems to have no idea what it wants to be. It has an Open world that doesn't really serve any purpose at all for being open world. You collect resources like it is a survival construction game, but you don't get to do anything interesting with them. The buildables are all in preset locations, you basically just repair existing structures for basically little or no reason. Enemies respawn like you're playing an MMORPG. Enemies scale in level with you, making new powers and gear feel exactly the same as your old gear and levels. This really genuinely feels like the result of a team with absolutely no vision for what they are making. I cannot see how this game could ever be patched into something enjoyable. The game has had a year and a half of patches and updates before I even touched it. I wish i could like this game, but there is nothing here to enjoy.