Ever since Ico became popular I’ve seen a lot of games attempt doing something similar – a puzzle and platforming 3D game with no spoken narration, simple but beautiful artstyle, moving music and some central concept/idea to it all. And as more and more indie developers became enabled to use powerful engines that allow creating something mechanically simple, but beautiful and, hopefully, evocative, the amount of games of this type went up dramatically. RiME is just another example of this type of game. Made with lots of care, genuinely good looking, with a good story concept behind it and yet all too familiar, not particularly fun and ultimately forgettable.
The big issue RiME has lies in the fact that the game never really gets anything to truly hook you with. You run, jump, climb and scream at things to solve problems as you start the game, and that’s all you do until the end, with all of these basic mechanics being rather bland. There’s never any clever challenge or strategy involved with the platforming bits as they just use the modern approach to 3D platforming where you go along the only (and usually obvious) path, clearly outlined and never need to think where you are in space. Puzzles suffer from a bizarre decision to make action button work only after a short pause after a full stop and scream not working at times if another animation is playing, meaning you always come to a full stop, wait a bit and then hope that you can perform the action necessary, which isn’t helping already mundane puzzle design.
And the game never properly knows if it wants to be about exploration or not, as it would give you a bunch of things to collect throughout the game world, and give you an open space, but then can just push you into a linear path when you least expect it with no way to backtrack and see if you’ve missed anything. In addition right from the start it gives you one of the most obnoxious “guide” I’ve encountered in games – a magic fox that barks (more like yaps) to “help” you find the way. With the issue being that it always does it either when there’s only one way you can take, or when it’s somewhere offscreen and you can’t possibly know how to get to it, making it useless and annoying in both cases. And not helping if you’re trying to explore.
There’s no good story or even mood hook either. There’s an attempt at one, but when the revelation of what this game is all about comes, it feels unexpected because the game never actually delivers on that mood at any point prior to that. Like if I’d start showing you my ninth grade pictures while punk rock plays and then at the end tell that this experience was meant to help you understand how to make better pasta. It’s not completely unrelated because I like pasta, but… It still doesn’t feel like that’s what the experience was supposed to be about.
Not that the game doesn’t try to be interesting and evocative. It does look good, it does sound good (sans that annoying fox), there are a few puzzles that aren’t boring and there are moments that are genuinely interesting. And there is a certain desire to make the game feel as varied as it could. It’s just that this isn’t enough and it’s one of those instances where after finishing the game in 5 hours you feel drained as if you spent the entire day and all your energy on it without really getting anything in return.
RiME seems to have its heart in the right place and it does feel like it tried to be an interesting moving and beautiful journey. But it’s not what it turned out to be. It’s not a game you should be specifically avoiding and maybe you would have some good times with it, just wondering around and enjoying the look and the mood of the areas. But I can’t recommend specifically purchasing the game unless you get it as part of some bundle as your time and money would be better spent elsewhere.