Lone Ruin Review: Is It Worth Trying Out At All?

The magic-based roguelike twin-stick shooter Lone Ruin has a heavy emphasis on replayability, as it is said in its description. You will become an explorer in search of a powerful ancient force as you discover a fallen magical metropolis that was constructed over a magical wellspring utilized by ancient sorcerers to sustain and alter their own bodies.

Although the game’s description is written as though you would be going through Lone Ruin with hours upon hours of replayability, the reality is actually quite different. In this review, we will be going over the Pros and Cons of this game and give you a summary of whether it is good enough to try out. Let’s get started.

Is It Worth Trying Out At All?! – Lone Ruin Review

Pros

As always, we will be going over the Pros first to give you a good light of the game first.

Sound

The music of Lone Ruin can easily be the best thing about the game hence it being placed as the first Pro in this review. You will be getting an energetic feel that can almost outdo any of the other roguelike titles. These 40 minutes of the OST soundtrack that you can hear will give you the right vibe and just place you in the chaotic setting of things.

Visuals

The concept art of this style of game is utterly brilliant and perfect. It has a very beautiful 2D with a 3D design that is both pleasant to watch and very interesting to play in. There are different sets of things that you’ll come across and the 3D environment is just perfect since you’ll be running across all of its corners.

The effects and the many spells that you will have at your disposal all have a different style and the enemies that you’ll come across, although not a lot of variety, a significant amount of detail has been put to make them how they currently are.

Loadout Combinations

In addition to the standard two spell slots, you may equip a maximum of four spells, giving you plenty of room to maneuver. Whenever you feel like it, you may cash in some of your spells for money, level them up if you choose the appropriate route, or combine them with a powerful blessing.

Gameplay

Lone Ruin is a well-designed twin-stick shooter that has a gaming experience that is both entertaining and fast–paced. You will need to do everything so smoothly and fast that will make you feel as though you’re going lighting quick through the game since it’s fun! You will be getting hoards of enemies coming your way and after a level, you’d be getting choices to upgrade your character.

Combined with the many load combinations that you can do, although limited in many ways, you will be having quite a bit of fun.

The only big problem is that you’d be having so much fun, that after an hour you’d have seen it all.

Cons

Now we shall continue with the bad side of things. Oh, boy.

Lack Of Content

After you have played about an hour of Lone Ruin, you will quickly come to realize that everything you’ve seen so far, is as much as you’d be actually seeing. There is a very big lack of content that is almost painful to experience.

All the same things happening over and over again will become quickly tiring. Yes, there are a variety of spells that you can do but the cooldowns on them will make you feel as though they are part of your normal attacks and have no rewarding elements. Also, the upgrade system all drives to the same road and you’ll also feel as though nothing is different.

The enemy variety is also where the game highly lacks. You will be getting the same things throwing themselves over and over again at your feet. There is some sort of progression to them in the first hour of the game. After this, you can easily memorize them and that’s about it.

Story

You are an adventurer with the ability to cast spells, have come to discover the root of the corruption in order to eliminate it once and for all and restore peace and prosperity to the city. Even while it’s a fascinating idea, it’s only given very few cutscenes that are vague and not at all well explained. It is an interesting and alluring story, yet the devs didn’t add anything to it at all which is a real shame.

Road Map & Early Access

Talking about the previous topic has made a lot of people realize this game could have been an Early Access game as it is. We need a stable and visual road map for future updates and patches to be able to actually see where the game is going. As it is right now, it doesn’t feel like an actual release at all.

Enemy Approach

The game’s opponents are designed to be simple to avoid yet punishing if you are hit, a concept that can be executed successfully as in some other games of the type but which is underutilized here. This grows very old and no matter what type of mode you’d be playing, you will feel as it is all the very same.

Difficulty Issues & Replayability

When you want to be doing something new (after 40 minutes of finishing the game) in Lone Ruin you will eventually check out some of the other modes and difficulties. If you try out Hard Mode, it becomes hard but not at all challenging.

It is very difficult to explain but the best way to put it is that the enemies in Lone Ruin weren’t designed to be that hard in the tight environments and maps that this game has. They were designed to be made in wide open areas as in the previous games. In Lone Ruin, however, you have fewer enemies that are very beefy and long to kill while using the same strategy to take them down.

This makes the game feel as though the replayability is nonexistent. You’d breeze past everything so quickly and it just becomes a matter of how long you actually want to hit the same enemy with the same attacks until it goes down.

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