Regions of Ruin | A Review
Hello everyone, I am the cave-dwelling and beautifying G.E.M.Simov, a being that is almost like a dwarf, but with less beard, here to tell you about the game “Regions of Ruin”.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
Regions of Ruin (RoR) is a 2D, side scrolling game with a lot of elements. Some RPG elements, some city management elements, some open world elements, some exploration - there’s a large mish-mash of everything, even a bit of idle game.
The game, since it is a 2D sidescroller, takes place on a field that features 4 directions - Up, Down, Left and Right, and everything in between. The Player Character (PC) is situated in the middle, at all times, and they can move Left and Right by having the Player press the A and D keys. Pressing the W key makes the PC jump up, which is the only means of moving upwards, and pressing the S key (and holding it) while standing on a particular type of terrain will make the PC drop down, thus introducing downwards mobility (with the obvious exception of just walking off a cliff).
There is no fall damage, so there is no reason to worry about falling off of great heights. Aside from these methods of movement, the Player can also press the Spacebar while their PC is going either left or right (meaning while either A or D is being held down) to perform a dash. The dash is very quick, covers a good bit of ground and makes the PC invulnerable to damage? It provides invincibility frames, meaning that the Player can use the dash to avoid taking damage in combat.
Lastly, the Player can also press a couple of other buttons to do things. Pressing the C button makes the PC slow down considerably, having entered a ‘stealth’ mode. While in the stealth mode, the PC (normally) cannot dash, and also can not raise its shield. Additionally, an indicator showing whether the PC has been spotted by enemies shows up under the PC - it is a bar that shows a closed eye on the left and an open eye on the right, and when the bar fills, the PC has been spotted. The benefits of stealth come in enemies not noticing the PC immediately (thus resulting in easier means of getting to enemies or taking less damage) and in the chance to deal a lot more damage. Enemies who are not aware of the PC’s presence take 6 times more damage when they get hit, and that value can be increased substantially. A stealth hit is enough to kill almost anything.
Unfortunately, the game is not designed with stealth in mind - due to the fact that it is a 2D side scroller, and it features so few options for movement - but also because the game’s levels (the spots in which the PC winds up) are not designed to be doable by stealth. Enemies do not patrol, nor do they randomly turn around - they just stand and wait, so there is no room to stealth. Additionally, there are very few levels that feature terrain behind which the PC could hide (as there are some bits of terrain that, while stealthed, the PC can hide behind), meaning that stealth is not useful. It is convenient when an enemy somehow winds up unaware of the PC’s presence and gets obliterated, but the stealth mechanic is utterly pointless and horribly undercooked.
Now, a couple of other things were mentioned - damage. The PC has a certain amount of health, though that quantity is never shown to the Player - it is exceptionally esoteric, and more on that will be said in the Presentation part of this review. However, simply put - the PC has health that goes from ‘perfect health’ all the way down to ‘fainting under great pain’ or something along those lines. That health is the unarmored health of the PC - and if it goes down, the PC can die when being hit.
However, there is another value that works as health - that is the PC’s armor rating. Unfortunately, this is another exceptionally esoteric element, but when the PC has armor equipped, the armor takes damage instead of the PC (with the PC taking damage in the form of ‘wounds’ that can be minor or severe, and which can also afflict the PC with a negative effect, such as reduced movement speed, reduced jump height). Whenever the PC’s armor takes damage, the PC itself tends not to take damage, or, at the very least, the PC does not get wounded, and the armor rating is reduced by a certain amount (esoteric, because there is never any indication of how much damage the armor itself takes, only whether it has taken damage or not).
So, the PC has 2 health bars that roughly overlap, but do not totally (as the PC can die even though their armor is not broken, though it can also survive a few hits after its armor has been broken). There are other ways in which damage is mitigated - through resistances, and there are a few (4) elemental resistances and one additional for physical resistance, which… Which somehow work but then also do not work, due to the fact that the elemental resistances can go over 100% and into the 300s or 400s, completely negating any elemental damage the PC can take, however physical resistance, which supposedly works like elemental resistances, does not go up, with there being exceptionally horrendous diminishing returns on it (regarding which the Player is not informed).
Either way, the PC can take damage. The PC takes damage by being hit with an enemy’s weapon (in the case of enemies who have weapons), being hit by a projectile (an arrow, a spell or… spit?) and by particular enemies who just run at them. The PC can also be stunned, though that is more of a cosmetic effect that takes away control for a moment, without introducing a real danger of taking damage. Still, the PC can get stunned, and that happens either when they attack a shielding enemy with a light attack OR they get hit by an enemy’s heavy attack.
Attacks - the Player can press the Left arrow key to make their PC perform a light attack in the direction the PC is facing. That attack does not break stealth, is instant, does some damage when it hits an enemy, breaks (or damages) objects that can be broken or damaged, and causes the PC to get stunned if it connects with a shielded enemy’s raised shield. The alternative is the Right arrow key (heavy attack, also does not break stealth), which makes the PC raise their weapon and hold it for a bit over their head, after which they bring it down and deal a lot more damage than they would with the light attack, while also stunning the stricken enemy for a small amount of time. Heavy attacks break through enemy shields, but if the PC is stricken by a light attack (from an enemy) while performing a heavy attack, they will get stunned. This does not apply to projectiles, thankfully.
Certain enemies can perform heavy attacks, and they function largely the same as the PC’s heavy attacks. Lastly, the PC can be made to raise its shield, which is done by pressing the Down arrow key. With a shield raised, the PC moves a lot slower and normally cannot dash or jump, but reduces the amount of damage taken from attacks by 90%. If the PC is hit by a light attack while its shield is raised, the attacker is stunned for a moment. If the PC is hit by a heavy attack - the PC is stunned.
That is as far as mechanical complexity in combat goes - there is a certain playstyle that allows the PC to perform ranged attacks, but they work roughly the same way enemy ranged attacks do: they do damage, they do not stun, and they get almost entirely blocked by shields; but it is not exceptionally extreme at changing how the game’s combat plays out. The Player makes their Character dash around, has them jump up and down to get behind enemies, and hopes for juicy critical strikes, while occasionally raising their shield to stop themselves from getting skewered by a random arrow.
Now, there is equipment in the game, and there are breakable objects. Equipment shows up from either breakable objects (very rarely, though it does happen sometimes) or from interactable objects (almost all of which can be opened by being hit with a light attack, thus working like breakable ones, with scant exceptions), which are interactable with via the E key.
These objects range from chests to armor stands to weird, mythical rune podiums. Whenever an equipment item shows up, it flies out into the air and must then be picked up via the E key, after which it slots itself in one of the Player’s Inventory Slots. If the PC does not have a corresponding item currently equipped, the item will be automatically equipped.
The items in the game range from weapons (axes, hammers and varieties of swords), shields, helmets and armors. The latter three come in four tiers, each better than the previous - leather, bronze, iron, adamantine. The weapons… They also appear to have tiers, but there is no visual indicator. Their numbers are just better, dependent on which spot they are found at. Aside from having these tiers, items can also be magical, coming in 4 tiers of magicalness - Blue (weakest magic effect), Green, Orange and Purple. Purple items are unique, whereas all others are randomly generated (with exceptions that are clearly discernible as such) and are exceptionally powerful, but are also impossible to modify. The lower tiers offer varying rooms for modification, with Blues being most open to it (excluding the non-magical items which are even more modifiable).
This aspect of RoR is actually one of the more entertaining ones - the Player has access to an unlimited amount of gold, and thus resources, and thus items, allowing them to look for items with good basic numbers, to then modify them into incredibly powerful tools. Statistically, a Purple item has more numbers than any modified number, but due to the fact that they are not exceptionally geared towards the Player’s desires, could be slightly worse than a modified item.
Other than these items, the Player can collect resources (which are limited by an arbitrary cap), which resources are then used in the PC’s settlement to build and upgrade buildings. They can also be used to complete quests or craft non-magic items (for selling or for crafting). Resources are another undercooked mechanic, because of the limited quantity that the Player can store (even after upgrading the relevant building, the maximum number of stone that the Player can have is 4500, and the game allows the Player to collect… Well, well over triple that AFTER all buildings have been upgraded) and because of the fact that they are largely useless beyond upgrading and building structures in the settlement.
They can be sold for gold, but for some reason there is a mechanic that reduces the amount of money the Player gets for every single unit of resource sold, down to a minimum of 10 per unit, which is so miserable it is almost pointless to sell them. The only use for them(safe for using them during sieges, but there’s no point there - they have an impossibly negligible effect), that being crafting items, is also undercooked, in the sense that the game does not require anywhere near that much optimisation of gear - the Player will have access to the best gear very early on, FAR before actually upgrading their buildings to be able to craft that particular gear, so it is a pointless, albeit neat, mechanic. Regardless, the number of resources the Player can collect being limited even after the final building is built, and even after all the additional ‘funky’ tavern related things that can happen have been done, is a bit infuriating, because that negates another mechanic.
The settlement gets populated by dwarves the Player finds and rescues while running around the world and exploring ‘spots’. These dwarves can then be used to gather resources from spots that have been cleared (all enemies therein have been killed), which is a neat thing, and is exceptionally useful in the early stages of the game when the settlement and resource mechanics are actually working and are worthwhile, but at one point the Player has no need for resources, has a hundred rescued dwarves and 50 spots they can gather resources from and has no reason to do that. It does not help that the way this resource gathering works is real-time - every dwarf, up to 4, provides 12 units of a given resource per minute, and the Player can either wait or go explore other spots, which is not a bad idea, and actually works decently well.
Alas, there are other issues here. For some inexplicable reason, the way dwarves work is messed up, in the sense that assigning 4 dwarves increases the rate of production by 12 per minute up to 48 per minute at 4, but assigning a 5th dwarf does not increase the rate of production at all. Assigning a 6th dwarf increases the production rate up to 60 per minute, and then the 7th, 8th and 9th do not increase the rate, with the 10th increasing it up to 84 per minute… Which means there are diminishing returns. Not to mention that the interface is exceptionally wonky, allowing for either all in (put all dwarves on one spot) and all out (take all dwarves out of a given spot) or addition and subtraction of 1 dwarf per click, which is tiresome and bothersome after a certain point.
So, yet another undercooked mechanic. That’s a shame. The settlement is a similarly unfortunate mess, because the Player has 11 slots that they can fill out with buildings, though these slots are not available all at once. Initially, the Player can only build 1 thing in the very middle slot (the 6th), then the 5th and 7th slots open up, then, after building in the 7th slot, the 8th opens up, and so forth. This is not well thought out, because some of these buildings are… Utterly useless. Literally, there is no point to visiting them (like the training grounds), while others only have a use on the highest difficulty, and then they are also not actually useful if the Player knows how to get their needed items and how to level up.
What happens is that the Player builds up their settlement with only buildings that are available, thus being unable to think about how they will be using the buildings in question. As an example, the Player starts off by building their fireplace in slot 6, and the fireplace is where the PC levels up, so that is useful. That is also where the PC spawns when the Player goes back to the settlement, so it is convenient. However, after that, the Player will build their storage building either in slot 5 or slot 7, which is not that bad, as that building offers a chest for storing items.
Next up is the tavern (let us say slot 8, for the sake of the example), which is virtually useless. It features yet another undercooked mechanic - companions - which is useful in the highest difficulty, but is totally optional and is negligible. It allows the Player to recruit companions (in exchange for gold) who run around with the PC and automatically attack enemies. They also take damage, but other than just showing up and doing more damage, they are virtually useless. Their damaging capabilities are also useless, because everything dies in 1 crit or 2 non-crits.
Either way, the tavern is a worthless building that occupies space. In slot 9 the Player builds their trading post - which would ideally be either in slot 5 or 7, maybe 8 or 4 (so that it is adjacent to the chest from the storage building) - as it is important for the Player to have quick access to non-Player Characters (NPCs) who will buy the Player’s junk off of them. The game does put an NPC with a store right next to the fireplace (slot 6), but that’s also not done all taht well, because there are two other NPCs between whom that store NPC is sandwiched, making the Player accidentally interact with either of them first before the desired store NPC. That also happens with the storage chest - it literally overlaps with one of those NPCs and so the Player needs to put in more time than they ought to, every time, when they want to access their storage chest.
So on and on this goes, until the Player gets access to the important buildings - those being the Runeforge and maybe the Refinery. By that point, however, their settlement would have been filled out (with only the training grounds missing, so there are 3 free slots at the very edges of the settlement). Thus, what happens is that the Player builds their runeforge at the corner of the settlement and every time they come back from an adventure, with their inventory full, they have to go through the entire settlement, use the Runeforge, then go back to the center of the settlement to sell the items left over from the Runeforge activities. This adds up - considering the fact that there are more than 100 spots to explore in the game - so there’s a lot of pointless walking about which can not be alleviated in any way.
There is no way of increasing the PC’s movement speed, so the Player just presses spacebar and waits for the PC to get there; there’s no way to shuffle the settlement’s buildings around so that the ones most often visited are right next to the fireplace; ultimately, the game is just lacking in a regard that requires that it not be lacking.
I’ve said a whole slew of things so far, and it’s a mixed bag. On the one hand, I really like what the game is doing - in concept - but in execution, it is missing a lot. It even finds a way to incentivise collecting lore-related items, by offering power-ups that can be purchased… But then there’s a broken-appearing interaction caused by that, due to the fact that the interface (thus a Presentation issue, but I will leave it here) for this power-up acquisition features locked compartments - locked behind building upgrades. So what happens is the Player collects books until books stop dropping, and then the Player, having reached upgrade 3 of the building in question, goes and takes a look, noting that they have collected everything up until the last row of power-ups, and then upgrades the building… And is left with the impression that they must now collect the rest of the books that needed to be collected, because the Interfrace fails to mention that the Player has been collecting the books needed for the last row of power-ups. There is no indication that they have been collected as long as the Player has not upgraded the building. This is such an oversight that it left me thinking that the book mechanic was just broken. It is not, but it’s infuriating that I was running around without my power-ups when I could have had them 10 hours ago.
Power, though - power. Enemies grow in power based on their spots, with those on the other end of the map being toughest and deadliest, and those on this end of the map (the side where the Player starts) being weakest. The growth in power is ludicrous, as enemies at the start of the game take around 100 damage and die, while enemies later on in the game can withstand 10000 damage and still keep going. It is made ridiculous by the fact that the progression is so short - the Player goes from leather armor through 2 types of intermediate armor and then is at the best armor of the game. 4 types of armor, while really concise and actually sensible, is exceptionally jarring when the Player just finds an item that gives them 5 times as much in a certain stat as they have off of their levels.
This is one of the issues that the game has - the PC’s power level is wonky. The PC gathers experience from killing enemies and can level up, but every level yields a single point to add to a stat, and after 20 hours of playing and clearing the entire map, the Player will not be higher than level 19, maybe 20 if they have done a lot of bounties (a tavern-related mechanic for infinite gold and experience, though the latter is affected by monstrous diminishing returns). That means that the Player’s power comes not from stats gained through levels, but from the gear they find and from the skill points they allocate.
As mentioned, some mechanics can be altered. Dashing while stealthed can be done if the Player allocates a skill point. Moving quickly while shielded can happen, or the amount of damage shielded can be increased to 100%. The game features 4 skill trees, each roughly related to a certain mechanic, and every level the PC reaches awards 1 skill point. The 4 skill trees are, as follows - one for light attacks, one for ranged attacks, one for defense, one for heavy attacks.
These skill trees offer abilities, which replace one of the three buttons that the Player has access to (those being the Left, Right and Down arrow keys), doing roughly the same, but slightly differently, OR passive bonuses, which either increase damage or allow for something different to happen. As an example, the passive bonus could be a bleed that does as much damage as the attack that caused it, but over 6 seconds, essentially doubling the Player’s damage output, or a skill that allows the PC to dash while shielded, stunning enemies they pass through.
These skills are where a lot of power lies, with each offensive tree having a ‘doubles all damage with X’, while the defensive tree has a trio of skills that essentially double all of the PC’s armor. That said, it feels as though the arrangement of the skills on the trees is… Rough. Some nodes are connected, others are not, then there are these weird paths that just go and go - it’s messy, and it’s a bit bothersome that the Player gets so few points to play around with, since there are 56 possible skills. That is clearly meant to encourage replayability, but… Well, as mentioned, the game’s gameplay is exceptionally same-y.
The Player selects a spot on the map, goes in, kills all the goons by pressing the Left Arrow key and jumping around like a monkey, then spends half to a minute of running around collecting stuff (because everything explodes outwards when an object is broken or opened and is not then drawn towards the PC, which is a bit baffling; ALSO, anything not picked up despawns, including items, be they orange or purple), then goes back to the settlement, runeforges the items for essence, then sells whatever’s left, and goes on to repeat this until there’s nothing left to do.
The game had one other interesting mechanic that wound up shooting itself in the foot - RoR, having this exploratory tinge to it, features the map (as stated), which initially starts off completely unknown. There is a little splash of color, which is where the PC is, and a few icons indicating adjacent locations, but nothing else. The Player must then click on a spot on the map and organise a scouting expedition to discover points of interest, which costs a certain amount of a certain resource. Doing so reveals a bit of the map (very nice) and shows new interesting locations (some of which are actually quite cool, featuring platforming puzzles or funky little stories; others are abominably annoying based off the fact that the Player has to go to another location, take a screenshot of something [or write it down] and then come back to input the code and open a container to get a probably middling item). Unfortunately, this does not show all the locations.
In essence, what happens is that there are a bunch of locations that can not be discovered like that, which just makes the act of exploring the map for the sake of exploring it and finding everything feel utterly pointless, since there are those completely unhidden spots around the world that cannot be found unless the Player goes and does something particular (roughly following the main story of the game, if that can even be said). This somewhat undermines the exploration aspect of the game and makes it… Somewhat tacked on. Naturally, that mechanic also disappears completely at a certain point in the game, and is never to be heard from again.
That’s the issue. The game has a load of mechanics, many of them very interesting and conceptually superb, but they are not present at all. If the game has 100 spots to explore, the Player will be geared out by the time they’ve gotten to the 25th one, and the rest 3/4ths of the game will just be spent clearing spots out, rather than looking for cool loot. If the game has that much content to do, it actually does not, because, again, the Player is done with the settlement around 1/3rd of the way into the game. The Player is done with the Library 1/3rd of the way into the game, the Player is not going to be using the refinery, the Player is not going to be using the market (for resources), the Player will not be using the apothecary for healing items, because those take up space in the inventory and, frankly, the PC is not taking damage in the first place - everything is there, as an idea, but it actually is not there, in truth.
There are bosses - named and big and scary, but they are just bigger, healthier versions of normal enemies, with one miserable exception that barely counts as a boss (since it just spawns normal goons). There are puzzles involving parkour and moving platforms, but RoR does not actually work with moving platforms, and so the PC will be thrown off of the moving platform in an exceptionally janky manner. The puzzles requiring note taking? Those are screwed up by something regarding the Presentation of the game.
RoR is simply so overwhelmingly janky, so clearly lacking something, that it bothers me immensely. It becomes a grind halfway through, it’s insanely repetitive, but there is intention in it that’s absolutely excellent. It’s great, but it’s also terrible, in this weirdly contradicting sense.
2/3
Presentation
Regions of Ruin is a very stylized game that relies on minimalist pixels to present itself. That makes it very reminiscent of other games, and in regards to its backgrounds (which are the most entertaining and pleasant part of the visuals) that is totally true, with them being exceptionally evocative. When it comes to things in the foreground, such as the PC and the NPCs, things are a lot more frugal. Things are very minimalist and the main difference between them are colors and silhouettes. That works, but there is a slight bit of distance between the vibe of the moving parts and the backgrounds. Regardless, it looks pretty good.
The game has a lot of problems with visibility, though, which comes about as a result of the pixel-art graphics. It is most egregious in regards to items that can be picked up - they drop down and almost immediately merge with the space they have wound up on, due to the fact that there are foreground and background objects that obscure them. Additionally, the color for most of them is so earthy and similar to brown or dark, that they chameleon their way into being difficult to discern. This is alleviated by the fact that text floats above them, indicating what they are, but the issue remains that they are difficult to see.
That is exacerbated when talking about items that are not going into the Player’s inventory - resource things. Ore, coal, stone, even wood - they are small, tiny blocks that have the exact same color as the background or foreground and are even more finely hidden than everything else. Then there’s the fact that things become almost impossible to see when night comes around - and it comes around often, and quickly - or when the PC ends up in a cave. The way everything is darkened is exceptionally bothersome and really obscures things, resulting in a pseudo need for the Player to just attack the air in front of themselves in hopes of finding something.
Lastly, and most egregious, is the problem of the map’s visibility. The map’s icons, when not visited by the Player, are capable of merging with the map itself - this happens in the northern, snowy regions, which are white and grey and black, and the icons on the map, when undiscovered, are… Grey and white-ish and a little black. Some of them are made to resemble pine trees, and the map has, on its background, pine trees… Resulting in some spots being absolutely nightmarish to notice.
Another issue that can be added to that list is related to quests. Some NPCs have clearly distinguished exclamation points over them, indicating that they can give the Player a quest, but then others do not - because the background behind them is white, or yellow, and so the exclamation point merges with it totally. Then there are NPCs that give out quests but do not have exclamation points, or question marks (for completion) over their heads at all.
The quest issues do not stop there. Some quests (most of them) feature an indication on the map screen, making spots that feature a quest pulse regularly, indicating that there is a quest - and there is also a little snippet of text reminding the Player which quest it was. But then other quests do not have those things - or they are not sufficiently there. A quest has the Player go from place A to place B, to kill something, but then there is no indication on place A that the Player has to go back to turn the quest in. That would not have been that much of a problem if the spots themselves were labeled more distinctly, but that is not the case.
The Player needs to remember the spot relative to other spots (because the names of the spots themselves are very ambiguous - wild pines, fine pines, fallen pines), and even in the event that they roughly remember the name, it is made difficult, because to access the name of a spot the Player does not just mouse over it - they need to click it, which creates an exceptionally bothersome and clunky means of dealing with this. Regardless, the Player is likely to miss out on a quest reward, and ESPECIALLY likely to forget where a certain ruin with an unsolvable puzzle (that requires visiting another place to then come back to with the answer), and will then miss out on more stuff. This issue is made doubly worse by the existence of quests that take place entirely within a single spot and can be failed, but after being failed they… They just stay there, always pulsing, always indicating that there is a quest there which cannot be completed.
So the game has issues with its visibility, with its legibility… And it has issues with its writing, too. Multiple occasions featured apostrophes placed where they were not meant to be (an apostrophe before the ‘s’ of a plural form), “your” and “you’re” being messed up, and some problems with grammar. The game’s Story, which is delivered through text (most of which in ‘books’) has a lot of problems because of the way the text is written. The words are conjoined in such a manner that makes them struggle with flowing finely, which really puts a damper on one’s enjoyment of (or even willingness to engage with) the story.
This also extends to the game’s means of teaching the Player how to play it. In fact, not just that, but also the menus themselves. When the game starts, the Player is invited to take part in a tutorial, and while doing that they will be shown text boxes that describe certain mechanics and elements of the game. As new mechanics become available, text boxes will show up to quickly explain them, though never sufficiently, requiring some figuring out.
Then the issue with the menus, the User Interface, comes into play. The Player does not have the information they need - they never do. There is a very esoteric and unusual means of showcasing the PC’s health, which is a status message that describes it, which is also color coded, with red being VERY BAD and green being very good. That works. What does not seem to work all that well are the means through which wounds are conveyed - there is no indication in the tutorial (when combat is being explained) that wounds affect more than just the PC’s health, and can reduce their movement speed, their jump height, and so on. Similarly, there is no explanation as to why selling items does not net the Player the value that’s shown on the item’s tooltip, instead getting them some lower quantity of gold. There is no explanation as to why assigning 5 workers to a spot yields the same resources per minute as assigning 4 workers to it.
The game explains some things, but then it does not explain everything. Additionally, it really dislikes showing the Player information. When opening one’s skill screen, which features a bit of statistical data, the Player can mouse over three stats and get tooltips, but then all the others do not yield anything, thus leaving the Player exceptionally uncertain. What does armor rating do? How does it work? Is it different from Physical Resistance? These questions pop up and the Player has to come up with answers for them by themselves, rather than being given answers.
Additionally, questions such as: “Why does my Physical Resistance stat say 67% when the items I have equipped should amount to more than 100%?” remain unanswered, because the game does not bother with informing the Player how these mechanics work. Are there diminishing returns? Does that particular resistance only go up to a certain value without being able to go higher? Is there something else at play?
On top of that, and more related to Gameplay - the Player is not always shown their resources. That is okay, but then there are situations in which they are shown their resources without having opened up their inventory - though those situations do not include the act of picking up a resource. There’s another question that the Player can wind up asking themselves without being given an answer by the game - what happens if the Player picks up resources while they have the maximum quantity of those resources? Why does the Player not get shown how many resources they have just collected? THEN there’s the fact that some numbers just do not fit in the allocated slots - most egregious of all being the number for essence used (in Runeforges).
These things are relatively minor, but there are so many of them that they just add up and create this unpleasant feeling. The game tries to present itself nicely, but it trips over many things, constantly, and what the Player gets is the equivalent of a pretty lady trying to walk with elegance, in high heels… While having, OBVIOUSLY, never worn high heels in her life.
In regards to sound and music, the RoR does not do that bad a job. It features a song for each biome, with there being roughly 4 of those, and a few more song options for particular locations, but the way the music works will have the Player feeling very fed up with a certain track (the one that plays in the biome the Player starts in, as an example), even if it is not a bad track. Granted, the game’s audio is also quite loud - especially its sound effects, which are all very satisfactory.
2/3
Story
Regions of Ruin takes place on a funky continent which featured an apocalyptic war between everyone and everyone else, with the exception of the dwarves, who shoved themselves in their mountain homes and hid. Then they came out long after that, but somehow (inexplicably so, which I attribute to the grammar and to the fact that this stuff was clearly translated, poorly) they get curb stomped by the kobolds, goblins and orcs who apparently won the apocalyptic war and are scattered to the wind.
The PC - some dwarf dude - appears as if through mitosis and, together with his trusty caravaneer, sets out to do… Something. It’s not very clear what he sets out to do, aside from set up a place to live safely, but that’s what he does - establishes a settlement - and then dwarves start coming in, flooding in from all over, while the PC keeps wandering about, killing anything in sight and saving other dwarves. He becomes a great hero, and winds up tipped off about funky ruins with runes in them, and there he gets a little task to go and activate 12 special beacons in special places, and then, after that is done, he is told that there is a goblin king… And he goes and kills the goblin king…
After that the dwarves are supposed to go underground and there’s gratuitous sequel-baiting, implying that the exploration of the regions of ruin has only just begun. I don’t mind it setting up a sequel, but there really was barely anything that could be considered a story. Yes, there were some other little bits of stuff that I neglected to mention, such as a lumber dwarf who starts checking out dangerous strongholds and asking the PC to clear them out, and the PC ultimately kills ALL orcs on the continent and brings about safety for all dwarves, but that was very unimpressive.
The story suffers tremendously from the fact that it is Presented in this nearly incompetent manner - mainly because of the fact that whoever was doing all the writing did not have a good enough grasp of the English language - but also because of the way it is written. There are a number of ‘books’ that the Player can collect and read through, and a lot of the stuff written within is exceptionally fluffy(meaning that it’s just filler with little actual content, some of the written things overlap and little is said with lots of words), with egregious examples of: ‘some people think there are women dwarves, but it is a fiercely guarded secret’ when the books in question are being collected and are apparently written by dwarves?
There is a world, which appears to be relatively vast and filled with stuff. There is lore - and there are many little stories that show up and engage the Player, there’s lots of interesting stuff. But it is not sufficient - the way RoR presents it to the Player is dreadfully inadequate, and even if it were the most astounding stuff ever, it would still be penalised for lacking so much. There are countless questions that appear and none are left answered, but at the same time there is an overwhelming understanding that the answers are, probably, not going to be worth it, due to the fact that there is an unnervingly… Middling quality to everything that is more intricately explored.
The story is definitely this game’s weakest link, but it is exactly like the rest of it - undercooked and missing that polish that would have made it very provocative and engaging. Alas, it does not have that, and all that is left are just a few neat tidbits and encounters that might pique one’s interest.
1/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the Legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? I thought about it, long and relatively hard, but I will ultimately proclaim that NO, RoR does not get the legendary point.
It is exceptionally interesting, conceptually, and it has a lot going for it, but it also has a large number of failures. There was a lot to be annoyed about or bothered by, there was a lot to want and an incredible amount of roughness to smooth over, and it was clearly not smoothed over. Thus, it does not get to spark any flames. 0/1
Conclusion
5/10 Regions of Ruin is an alright game. It could have been very good, but it fails in many regards and overstays its welcome. It is exceptionally difficult to recommend, too, because it is a mish-mash of concepts that are all more interesting, conceptually, than the game itself, but dwarf enthusiasts and fans of more experimental titles that attempt to mush lots of genres together might find it entertaining.
In the bag of mediocrity it will go, though. Lots of potential squandered…