Another day, another roguelike. The indie market is absolutely flooded with these types of games and that’s not exactly a bad thing. No one will ever argue about the quality of games like Dead Cells, Downwell, The Binding of Isaac, Spelunky, and many others. You just need to provide players with a nice setting and overall addictive gameplay to convince them to always play one more round. This is where RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore equally fails and succeeds.

Published by the good folks at Nicalis (Ikaruga, The End is Nigh, The Binding of Isaac), RemiLore is a small but very functional hybrid between a roguelike and your typical isometric hack and slash title. The plot, or whatever the heck this game considers to be a plot, is as follows: you control a lazy girl, Remi, who was tasked to clean up an old library until she finds a sentient book called Lore. She then gets immediately transported to a new realm full of magic, supposedly breathtaking visuals, and a ton of assassin robots. Yep, this is one of those games…

RemiLore is a roguelike that tries to tell a story through loads of text and conversations between the girl and the talking book, but the best I can say about this attempt at storytelling is that it is forgettable. The dialogue is poor, often times downright cringeworthy. It never reaches the levels of delightful awfulness as seen in Vroom in the Night Sky, mostly because the translation isn’t as abysmal as that game’s, but it’s so obtuse and intrusive that all you want to do is press the skip button and go back to slaying robots, because that’s where the games excels.

RemiLore‘s hack and slash mechanics are easily the best feature in the entire game. It’s fast-paced and easy to learn. You have two attack buttons and you’re able to create lots of combos by mixing those together. You also have the ability to perform up to three really fast dodge attacks, as well as some special attacks linked to your current weapon. Some of the attacks present in the game are an area freezing effect blast and a time control spell. Since all enemies are easy to telegraph and not very hard to beat, it feels great to just massacre hordes of robots in front of you and watch your combo meter soar, as well as getting a sweet S ranking. It feels like a kawaii version of Devil May Cry.

Beating tons of enemies with the game’s satisfying combat system is what drives you forward. You won’t care about the story, the repetitive environments, the annoying voice acting, or the passable soundtrack. Even the character design is bland, as you’ll be killing different color palettes of the same robotic foes 99.99% of the time. It’s best to play RemiLore in smaller sessions and preferably on arcade mode where the game tones the storytelling aspect down in favor of a faster, slightly more challenging roguelike gameplay style. It all can be summarized in killing enemies and getting new weapons, all of them based on the least weapon-looking utensils you could ever think of, such as brooms or a pair of scissors.

RemiLore is not inventive or groundbreaking. It is a simple roguelike that would have been considered completely forgettable if its combat system wasn’t so fluid and actually fun to invest time on. That being said, do I really think RemiLore is worth picking up for the insanely high pricetag being asked at the moment? Definitely not and especially not on the PS4. Whenever they decide to sell it at a discount on the Switch eShop, then go for it. It’s shallow as a puddle, but it’s still quite fun in short bursts.

 

Graphics: 6.5 The framerate is excellent and the amount of colors onscreen is nice, but the game doesn’t push any graphical boundaries. The overall level and character design is also very repetitive.	Gameplay: 8.5 The combat system is fast-paced, easy to grasp, and quite entertaining. Being able to rack up a huge combo score without ever getting hit by an enemy feels very rewarding.
Sound: 6.0 The soundtrack is repetitive, but not too bad. The same can’t be said about the voice acting: it’s obnoxious.	Fun Factor: 6.5 The story is laughably bad,and the overall experience is pretty shallow, but RemiLore gets extra points for featuring a simple and entertaining combat system.
Final Verdict: 7.0

RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore is available now on PS4, Xbox One, PC and Switch.

Reviewed on PS4.

A copy of RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore was provided by the publisher.