RiME

Rime is special and partly held back by the same reason: it's minimalist to a fault. The artwork is gorgeous and the music carries the action, in light of the otherwise absolute silence. I'm remidned of the quiet treks on horseback in Shadow of the Colossus, or the meditative exploration in Ico. There is no combat and no penalty for dying here. Mechanics are pretty few and do leave much to be desired. That aside, it was a great pleasure exploring the island and uncovering secrets along the way. You can tell that this was a team's passion project and I'm sure for some this will strike a chord. I do think that it hides its narrative and themes a little too much under dust, but if you dig even a little it won't be hard to get what's going on.

Rime ist recht kurz, aber ich bewerte Spiele ungern nach Spieldauer/Preis. Wichtiger sind mir eine stimmige Atmosphäre und guter Spielfluss. Und an dieser Stelle macht Rime alles richtig. Es bietet eine ruhige und entspannte Spielwelt mit vielen Details und versteckten Orten, die kleine Einblicke in die Geschichte geben. Dadurch, dass nur sehr selten direkt über diese erzählt wird, lässt es außerdem viel Raum zum Nachdenken und selber Interpretieren. Von der mangelhaften Stabilität und Performance, von der in vielen Reviews berichtet wird, habe ich übrigens nichts mitbekommen. Das Spiel lief bei mir permanent flüssig, ist niemals abgestürzt und ich habe nicht einen einzigen Bug gefunden.

All at once Rime is memorable, beautiful, charming, dark, mysterious, sad, cute, clever, and bursting with heart. This chill third-person puzzle-platformer isn't terribly challenging, which is good becasue it doesn't offer too many instructions at the start, instead favoring exploration and discovery. It's a big game world and will take some time to see it all. Even more to find all its hidden secrets. For your reward, the plot reveal in the last act brings brings a satisfying and emotional conclusion to the story and the characters. *sniff*

I am not the best gamer around and I get stuck occasionally with action sequences. I was enjoying the game, but a couple of times now, I have given up to go to bed, reloaded the next day, to find I am right back at the beginning of a long sequence that took me half hour or more. Terribly frustrating and kills the enjoyment of the game. Autosave is good, but not having any manual save at all is ill thought out.

For me it's a AAA game. It's also one of my favourites on GOG. It has beautiful graphics that makes you fees like you're inside Salvador Dalí's paintings. It has great music. Gameplay is nicely balanced around solving puzzles and doing some platforming. It's not too hard in any of this categories but hard enough to give a lot of satisfaction. Game has multiple stages with huge maps, each has its own vibe and graphical style. It's quite long, should take few days to finish it. Exploration is so much fun as all those big structures distance can be reached and most of them give you some reward for doing so. There is a mystery to solve that drives you through. Mystery that is well explained at the end and feels beautiful and satisfying.