‘RUINSMAGUS’ Review – Awesome Anime Vibes, Rinse and Repeat Dungeoning – Road to VR

RUINSMAGUS is a Japanese role-playing sport with a heavy give attention to dungeon crawling and magic-based fight. The sport’s anime-adjacent visuals and storytelling fashion are welcome and acquainted items, and find yourself delivering the form of motion you’d look forward to finding in VR sport constructed round a a lot bigger, extra established universe. Fight is usually efficacious, and it stretches you to implement all the things they’ve at your disposal, though it’s in the end held again by a lackluster stock system and repetitive dungeons. This, alongside various flatscreen holdovers, make this first-person magic brawler really feel prefer it adheres somewhat too rigidly to conventions to really be revolutionary.

RUINSMAGUS Particulars:

Accessible On: Quest, SteamVR
Launch Date: July seventh, 2022
Value: $35
Developer: CharacterBank
Writer: CharacterBank, Mastiff
Reviewed On: Quest 2

Gameplay

Ruinsmagus is chock-full of anime drama harking back to some medieval-flavored mainstays: Assault on Titan, Sword Artwork On-line, Full Steel Alchemist—you recognize, the form of present the place the protagonist is destined to change into the OP badass who saves the realm. It’s a enjoyable mixture that sticks to some acquainted worldbuilding ideas, and it virtually makes you’re feeling such as you’ve gone head first right into a a lot bigger anime sequence than the 26-mission sport would counsel because of the characteristically wealthy and expressive world.

I say ‘virtually’ as a result of, as you’d think about, there’s a couple of caveats that will pull you out of your full dive into the Grand Amnis, a city that sits atop an unlimited labyrinth of ruins stuffed with magic-wielding baddies. Nonetheless, there’s some laughs, romances, redemptions, betrayals—anime followers will really feel proper at house.

To keep away from spoilers, right here’s a reasonably imprecise rundown of the story: you’re a sucky wizard (Magus) who progressively turns into much less dangerous as you tackle two dozen sequential dungeon-crawling missions into some historical ruins. The world is seeking to you to seek out some fairly essential objects that may do… one thing essential that may impact the entire world. By your facet is scientist Iris who’s your fixed companion. When you’re away on dungeoning missions her voice is piped in via somewhat floating Chibi dude, who may challenge Iris as a blue hologram. Iris is principally the sport’s waifu, so there’s that.

The story has fairly broad attraction, however (as seen above) in the event you don’t perceive spoken Japanese, that is the place the ‘subs vs dubs’ crew wins the day. Ruinsmagus is voiced completely in Japanese and subtitled in English or Japanese, so take it or depart it. Subtitle home windows float across the heart of your imaginative and prescient and are interactable with both ‘A’ for proceed or ‘B’ to skip your complete part.

At the start of the sport you’re offered with the selection of Simple, Regular or Exhausting. There’s no indication what these three substantively imply, and there’s no option to change issue when you’ve blindly picked one. For the report, I went with Regular, and a couple of fourth method via the sport the issue ramps up fairly a bit, taking you from an space the place you might simply vanquish any enemy to dungeons that will require a number of tries. It’s extra an advisory than a critique, however don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Beginning with fight, the sport’s brawler-style battle system is a little bit of a combined bag, however I’d think about it largely successful in translating fast and tactical gameplay into VR. You’re given a selection of a most of 14 magic spells of which you’ll decide three (one main and two secondary) to bind to your proper hand.

Magical ammo is infinite, though it’s essential to reload your gauntlet periodically, which is finished with a satisfying downward motion. The little vials in your arm go down as you employ magic, which makes for visible indicator.

With solely few exceptions, magic is usually range-based, which means you both shoot spells from afar like a gun, or toss spells for space impact. Holding the ‘A’ button in your proper controller as a substitute of merely urgent it enables you to cost every means for a bigger impact. Ganking baddies additionally fills up an final means, including a fourth occasional energy to your arsenal.

There’s additionally defend to bodily shield your self from incoming projectiles and parry ranged assaults, sending their assaults straight again at them. Protect power routinely replenishes, though if the standing bar goes all the best way down throughout a battle you’ll must be mild in your ft in order to not take an excessive amount of well being injury.

And being agile in your digital ft is an actual should, because the a whole bunch of minions you’ll face together with periodic bosses will usually telegraph space assaults that may spell quick dying or severe damage in the event you don’t quick-jump out of the best way, a form of quick sprint transfer you’ll end up utilizing consistently.

Enemy variability, outdoors of periodic bosses that are usually enjoyable and attention-grabbing encounters, feels on the low facet. Though enemies acquire new powers as you progress via the sport’s two dozen missions, it’s principally: small man, tank man, quick man, flying man, and big guardian. Enemy spawn factors are additionally tremendous predictable since vast open areas at all times sign a battle.

I gained’t spoil and boss battles, however all of them are designed in classical motion RPG fashion, the place the atmosphere is molded across the bosses means—assume The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and lots of of these encounters really feel like they’ve been ripped from the clutches of Nintendo. And that’s excessive reward!

Each the defend and offensive magic are fairly straight ahead and work nicely. One factor that’s certain to journey you up although is the comparatively large variety of consumables at your disposal, a lot of that are unlocked round midway via the sport. These embody varied well being potions, a number of grenade kinds, and a handful of syringes for magic protection and offense. All of that’s nicely and good, however stock administration, or the shortage thereof, makes the entire expertise of utilizing these things principally a endless scramble of biking via each merchandise.

Your stock is represented as a single chest holster slot. Urgent a button in your proper controller cycles via these things one-by-one, which means you’ll have to undergo your complete record throughout fight simply to get to one thing.

What usually finally ends up occurring is you simply vomit out no matter is in your stock as you scramble to dodge magic missiles, defend your self, return fireplace, all of the whereas wanting down on the holster to visually verify that you just’re really on the precise merchandise.

And shopping for them is an absolute chore too. It goes like this: finish a mission, view your rating, cycle via a textual content description of the belongings you obtained, teleport to the store, scroll via each merchandise, click on the merchandise you want, add the variety of lacking objects you want, purchase that particular class of merchandise, exit the store to teleport again to the hub, expertise no matter story bit there could also be, and head into the following mission.

Since you’re consistently utilizing consumables, you’ll must mechanically full these steps for each merchandise you require each single mission of the sport. And that objectively stinks.

Exterior of enemies, dungeons really feel very samey and seemingly empty, which is a disgrace. There’s no loot to seek for, or byways to discover; all rewards are foisted upon you on the finish of mission the place you’re graded in your time, dying, and kill efficiency. I saved anticipating bigger, extra labyrinthine dungeons, however all Ruinsmagus appears to have the ability to serve up is similar dungeon items on repeat with completely different colours.

In all, Ruinsmagus took me over eight hours to finish, which included a number of deaths all through dungeons and boss battles. There’s a such a mechanical nature to the sport that it could be finest performed in shorter stints than my hours-long gameplay classes.

Immersion

Ruinsmagus packs in a heap of enjoyable moments that make you’re feeling such as you’ve stepped into an anime. The story is perhaps somewhat predictable, however the creators present a deft hand in making a world that feels alive and lived-in.

The sport’s music can also be equally superior, offering swelling orchestral preparations to underline these key narrative beats.

My solely want is I might have extra of these moments, and that they weren’t so damaged up by the mechanical nature of the sport. Principally, I hate the concept that, outdoors of fight missions, most interactions happen via 2D menus with laser pointers. Object interplay is fairly non-existent outdoors of some magazines you’ll discover laying round, all of which snap to your hand at awkward studying angles.

Whether or not it’s the mission choice board—which solely ever has one mission at a time—or the close to fixed prevalence of pressured teleportation throughout narrative sequences, you’re consistently being reminded that you just’re not a participant however moderately a watcher in what unfolds. You could be ‘pale to black’ 3 times in a couple of seconds simply as you enter a reasonably nonconsequential chat. It appears the builders determined to section single narrative encounters so finely that each time a brand new character springs into the chat you’re pale to black to reset the scene, which isn’t nice for participant company. Total I might have appreciated Ruinsmagus to have made me really feel like I used to be extra of an lively participant and never only a faceless protagonist that was at all times led by the nostril to the following mission.

Ruinsmagus additionally suffers from each frontloaded tutorials and early exposition dumps which set some expectations early on. Instantly you recognize this can be an expertise that focuses purely on fight and passive storytelling—the form of dialogue drip I’m used to from a  lifetime of Last Fantasy video games. That’s no actual shock coming from a JRPG, however in VR all of it feels somewhat too outdated since immersion and participant company are such essential components to the medium.

Consolation

Ruinsmagus is frenetic, however it’s in the end very snug because of some built-in consolation choices. There are a couple of moments when your motion is pressured throughout narrative bits, though these are sluggish and only a few.