RiME

It looks well, but the world feels empty, and it is so boring, the whole game can drive you into your sleep very ezly

A pretty game with nice music, a vague story, and exploration. You start off on a beach, lost. You can explore a beautiful island, occasionally being interrupted by cutscenes that usually include an adorable fox. There are puzzles, but they are not very complicated and mostly require some sort of environment manipulation. I like the puzzles because the concept is interesting, but they're not very hard. One mechanic in the game is yelling at things. No, really - that's a thing. You yell at statues to make them open things. Yell at large balls to make them resonate with statues so they open and/or activate several things. Pick up balls and take them somewhere to yell at them and kill or activate things. Yell at fire to make it more fiery. It's kind of interesting because sometimes the yell button does something other than yelling. I loved the beginning of RiME because it's beautiful and there was so much exploration in the first part. The movement was sort of wonky because even though the player character is running all the time, he's kinda slow which can get annoying, and climbing is irritating because first of all, he doesn't just grab on to ledges, he half-grabs them and kind of fumbles around every time; second, when you have to jump over a gap, his jump is normally JUST far enough, so if you don't nail it, you'll fall and have to climb up again. There is a lack of direction in this game. Some clues as to where you're supposed to be going would be nice, especially when you want to explore before actually continuing with the story. Screw that bird too. This is a game that doesn't need enemies. Later on - when the bird showed up - it got kind of annoying, and nothing after that was as wondrous and fun as the first part. Still a recommendation from me. It's very beautiful and fun overall if you can deal with its issues. Wonky performance; had to turn down some settings for stable FPS, and turn down more for it to not burn up my GPU, and that's not just me.

Rime tells a touching story in a smart way. This, and the fact that the art is gorgeous, are its strongest points. Unfortunately, for me it wasn't quite enough. I feel like there's no gameplay. You're just walking around, solving pretty easy puzzles and doing some pretty easy platforming. It's a very... relaxing? game, objectively good, just not for me - and not for its full price, IMO.

I've bought this game after playing Hob and Epystory, games that really touched me. But in RiME story unwinds too slow and it is stretched beyond the limits, so I almost forget it when game suddenly ended. I was hardly remember anything bright and emotional about it. And puzzles: main problem with them is to find them and understand what you exoected to do, after that nothing to think just push the buttons.

I was a little bit skeptical about buying and playing this game. It took me multiple tries. Especially because of its technical side. But I decided one day to finish it and it was really great decision. I wasn't able to stop playing as I was progressing the story. I am not a fan of adventures, it always failed while resolving riddles and puzzles, but this game was doable for me, so I was able to finish it and it took my breath. I like to story and the world... everything. This is really awesome game.