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    RONIN

    Game » consists of 4 releases. Released Jun 30, 2015

    Players take out their enemies, one calculated move at a time, in this action tale of revenge.

    Ronin is so close to being good that it hurts.

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    The_Nubster

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    I got this based off of the Quick Look, and I just started playing a few days ago. However, a lot of the problems Vinny mention are very real and don't seem to work themselves out. I usually like games because of their ambition, rather than their polish (Alpha Protocol, Enslaved, Papo & Yo), but something about Ronin just isn't clicking with me. I don't regret the money I spent on it because, when things work out, it feels amazing. It's just that the game is stopping those scenarios from playing out every single step of the way.

    First off, there are enemies introduced almost immediately who can completely counter your plan of attack. The game encourages hopping on people and stunning them, but the very first new enemy introduced is one who will kill you for doing so. Before you've even got a chance to wrap your mind around the mechanics of the game, you're already being punished for attempting things.

    Second, the split between stealth and real-time is handled very poorly. Combat is turn-based while exploration and stealth is real-time, which is fine in and of itself. However, the concept of lockdowns, which are countdowns until reinforcements spawn, and not setting off a lockdown being a universal secondary objective, this split between real-time and turn-based becomes tricky. Often, you'll find yourself in a very large room filled with enemies. It looks like an arena, but as soon as all of the enemies near you are dead, the game will automatically revert to real-time. This doesn't stop Lockdown timers from ticking down, though. On top of that, there's no clear indiciation of whether or not the game is paused or that there's a lockdown happening, except two small icons on the periphery of the screen.

    On the subject of steatlh, it's very nebulous in this game. On its face, it looks a lot like Mark of the Ninja, down to the very clear light and dark areas. In Ronin, you can even pass through enemies in the dark without alerting them; you are 100% invisible. When you start to interact with the enemies, though, it gets incredibly difficult to determine what's going to happen. When someone in killed in the dark, despite you being able to run around like a maniac, others can somehow tell what's happening. When this goes on, it seems to be a dice roll on whether or not the nearby goons will "scan" for you (and enter a combat scenario) or begin a lockdown (which will count down automatically, because the game won't revert to a turn-based mode).

    My very final complaint is with the controls. You can move with the left stick like a normal-ass game, but you jump with the right stick. It's a flick motion, and if you hold the stick, it will paint an arc that you'll follow when you let go. As it goes, though, it's fairly imprecise. When you let go of the stick, your jump may shift and you'll find yourself a few feet away from where you wanted to go. In exploration, this isn't a huge deal, but it's the difference between life or death in combat. Enemy attacks are painted with a red line, and sometimes jumps can take multiple turns if they're over a long enough distance. Countless times, I've found myself aiming to duck under incoming bullets, but having my jump shift out slightly enough to put myself into a multi-turn jump and directly in the line of fire.

    Ronin is a very interesting game. Mixing exploration, stealth, and turn-based combat into a Gunpointy, Mark of the Ninja-ey, even Hotline Miami-i revenge tale is an incredible idea on paper. There are just fundamental design choices made that hamper its ability to be fun to play. In a game about mobility, there are too many situations where your choice to embrace that mobility is punished. In a game about pixel-precision, you're not presented with sharp enough controls or information detailed enough to accurately judge the outcome of your actions.

    I want to love Ronin. I keep playing it hoping that its problems will solve themselves, that I'll fall into a groove or a flow, and melt away into the action. But I don't. And I'm not sure it's worth banging my head against to find out if that will ever happen.

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