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.

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.

I was recommended this game due to its similarity to the PS2 classic, ICO. Well, that wasn't wrong--there are _definitely_ many dimilarities. A young boy alone on an island with a (basically) mute companion, creepy shadow monsters, inscrutible architecture...yeah, I can see the resemeblance. Much to my disappointment, though, that's about where the resemblance ends. The gameplay is _similar_, but fundamentally different. There's really nothing but light puzzle-solving and quasi-platforming here. To Rime's credit, a couple of rooms definitely had me stumped for a little while, but I never had any real "Aha!" moments, which is disappointing for what's primarily a puzzle game. The story, while good solid and unique, tries to be deeper than it actually is, I think. Most of the allegory comes in real hard at the very end and the earlier parts are only, ah, loosely and retrospectively related. It kind of feels like the early bits of the game got built out, and then someone asked "OK, but what's it all actually about?" Still, Rime has a lot of heart! It has genuinely moving sequences, and some of the allegory is actually well done, overall assessment notwithstanding. You might not expect to sympathize with weird bipedal robot (I think?) things, but Rime will prove you wrong! The opening section is definitely my favorite, prompting a good measure of intrigue and magic that you just don't see that often these days, and that persists to some degree or another throughout. My take: if the marketing material appeals to you, you'll likely have a good time, like I did. Just don't expect some great allegorical masterwork, and approach it as a calm, short experience to take in between other games, and I think you'll walk away glad to have played it. =)