I read enough reviews for Returnal to know its not for me. I like Roguelike games and I was really looking forward to Returnal but the mechanics of the game really turns me off. One of the things I like about Roguelikes is that when you die, the permanents you get and the currency you acquire continue to make you want to do another run. This seems to be the opposite of Returnal. It goes out of its way to punish you for each run where everything is a gamble. It does not inform you about the items you can purchase with your ether so you can basically get nothing and lose all your hard earned currency. You basically cannot balance risk versus build of your character which is what makes it fun to keep dieing and trying. The main problem is that they make the loop not fun which I know will result in me losing interest and not playing. At 70 bones, I just do not have the patience to play a game where the Roguelike loop just isn't fun and rewarding.
When you think about some of the best Roguelikes games, they always offer systems that give you the opportunity to build different characters as you continue the loop. Returnal does not do any of these things which means once you beat it, there isn't really and real reason to come back. Its not that the game is difficult, its that it doesn't make it fun to want to get good which is a miss in my eyes.
Last edited by Machiavellian - on 29 April 2021
