Intriguing story, challenging bosses, fast-paced and thrilling gameplay, but runs are too long and can feel unfair with bad-luck or high burst damage from enemies.

Wikipedia summary:

Returnal is a roguelike video game developed by Housemarque and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The game follows Selene Vassos, an astronaut who lands on the planet Atropos in search of the mysterious “White Shadow” signal and finds herself trapped in a time loop.

Review

Setup

  • Version: PlayStation 5
  • Difficulty: -
  • Total playing time: 28 hours (based on PS5 save stats)

Comments

Note

  • I got disappointed and tired, giving up on the game, the review was written before I finished it.

This was my second title played on PlayStation 5. I was intrigued by the new PS5 controller capabilities and how the game makes use of them.

While I like roguelikes in general, and I initially had fun learning this game, improving in each run and figuring out the general what worked for me, I eventually lost motivation due to how long the runs were taking and how little progress you would notice after dying.

The first biome was initially hard for me, but I eventually unlocked multiple upgrades, that definitely helped to sustain and improve in following runs.

After finishing a very long first biome run, the first time I reached the second biome I was rather strong and went straight to the boss without many issues. I died due to lack of healing items, but could have killed it in first try.

When finally reaching the third biome, it took a while to beat it but also found it faster than beating the first. However, I noticed that the game was giving me less and less permanent upgrades that were considerably strong (like sword or hook). At this point it became rather demotivating to repeat the runs through all these biomes when the rewards were, personally, negligible.

I managed to overcome the third boss and break through the main storyline, but the plot twist puts us back in the first biome in a different time. At this point I was rather disappointed, but gave it still a few more tries. Upgrades came through spending ether to unlock new possible items to find in the runs. I found this system to be rather bad because I couldn’t care for most of the random items that I unlocked.

Weapon wise, I only really liked the Carbine and the Hollowseeker. I tried each of the other weapons I would find, but they were either bad, or I couldn’t adapt to their play style. My character was becoming strong due to me always using the same weapons and unlocking their passive abilities, but they were also too slow to unlock and most didn’t feel strong enough to significantly make a difference for me.

Story

While starting in a very confusing manner, and sending you into a spiral of theories as to what was happening, it slowly evolved into something quite intriguing. Being stuck in a temporal cycle, coming back to a single point in time every time you died, is a small nightmare that would drive most slowly insane. I guess is fitting since we eventually start to find out that this is what appears to have happened to Selene in other timelines.

A plot twist happens after finishing the first half, where Selene seems to break out of the cycle, lives a whole life, only to finally die of old age and… Surprise! Getting back to the first biome, but seemingly in a future timeline compared to the start of the game. I thought that was rather interesting from a character perspective. It would be hard for me to even imagine what would go through her mind.

Characters

Selene was an astronaut and clearly equipped to face some challenges. However, we don’t have other characters to extract more from her. She mostly made comments for herself, and second guessed her alternative version’s recordings.

I didn’t finish the game, but up to the point I played, it wasn’t a memorable character.

Difficulty

The game doesn’t have a difficulty setting. So, the difficulty comes from the runs having different layouts, enemies, weapons available, malignant items, etc. The more risky your play style, like trying to grab infected items, the harder it might become due to the malignancy effects.

One of the things I disliked heavily, was that monsters could literally just materialize behind you. In a game that is heavily dependent on not taking hits to increase your stamina and get extra bonuses, having enemies suddenly teleport behind you without much warning was frustrating. While the gameplay pushes you into constant moving, jumping, and dashing, it was not uncommon to just get hit from behind in what I could only feel as a rather cheap mechanic.

The spike in monster challenge was also noticeable in the second half of the game. You would blaze through initial enemies, until reaching a frozen mountain area that would just obliterate you in each hit. That was also demotivating because it cost you time and patience to farm and advance through the biomes just to get exploded by a random combat further down the run.

Graphics

Each biome was quite different: jungle > desert > citadel > frosty mountains. The enemies were diversified enough that you wouldn’t get bored, and their attacks had nice animations that were also varying in visual and difficulty to handle.

Menu & Minimap

Menu was fine, but I wish it would save my last position so that when opening it up again I wouldn’t have to repeat the same commands. The minimap was different and interesting, due to also portraying the altitude. One very useful thing was being able to see enemy movement in the minimap, but this depended on having enough stamina to unlock this skill.

Music

Music did not stand out to me. But in the second half of the game, the first biome’s boss played a very nice organ music in the background, that indicated the direction to follow to find and face the boss, elevating in volume as you got closer. I thought that was a good song and a nice touch.

Pros

  • Nice atmosphere, different for each biome
  • Simple but fun fights, beautiful visuals even while fighting the small minions
  • Interesting boss fights, not exactly mechanic heavy, but different to be in a bullet hell within a TPS
  • Story was intriguing

Cons

  • Roguelike in which the runs take too long (up to an hour) and the permanent progress is disappointing, rewards are shallow and progress is slow. Eventually, this was such a deal-breaker that it made me give up on the game
  • Monsters appearing behind you when you are heavily dependent on not taking hits is a bit cheap