Woop woop, that's the sound of the explormer police. But they can never catch me, not without finding the double-jump and air-dash first. Yes, it's another entry in our Explormer of the Week feature here on Giant Bomb dot com and we have a special treat in the form of a GOG freebie. I so rarely cover GOG games on here—I should really patronize that storefront more often, seeing as its DRM-free and I could grab 1995's hottest CRPG jam Albion when it's next discounted too—but I guess functionally it's the same as any other version. The game in question is Lost Ruins from South Korean developers Altari Games, which has a discombobulated amnesiac Japanese (or I guess Korean) schoolgirl wake up in a fantasy world and try to make sense of her dangerous new surroundings while looking for allies and a means to protect herself.

When I started the game there was a distinct feeling of "dang, someone's been copying Momodora's homework": the game has a similar doujin pixel style enhanced by some pretty attractive visual effects such as being illuminated by flames or having a waterdrop effect on the screen in rainy areas that felt reminiscent of Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight (the only Momodora game I've so far played; that's something I intend to amend eventually) as did the deliberate, tough action combat reminiscent of Soulslikes. One point Lost Ruins has to distinguish it from the crowd is a very item- and consumable-focused approach to its combat encounters and puzzles: even on the recommended difficulty setting, the second lowest, you can easily fall to weaker enemies if you're unlucky—in a weird coincidence, it has the same annoying feature Phoenotopia Awakening (which I finished a week ago) had where you can easily get wombo combo'd by multiple projectiles or attacks and can all but die from one bad clusterfuss due to your very limited HP pool—but by being a grown-up and actually using your consumables instead of staring at them longingly as they sit in your inventory doing nothing, you have the means of smartly dispatching most of the more troublesome foes before they ever get close.

It took some time to warm up to the deliberate combat of Lost Ruins due to that high difficulty right off the bat and how slow any weapons that aren't daggers can be but it's mostly a matter of planting yourself and figuring out which time in an enemy's approach is the ideal moment to start swinging. An enemy rushing towards you will get in the range of your zweihander long before you're in range of their weapon, but there needs to be some wind-up. Adding to this process that relies as much on observation as it does timing is a whole bunch of elemental effects like ice or bleeding to exploit, including those that synergize with the environment in some way like zapping enemies with lightning while they're standing in water or setting an oily floor on fire. Attacks to the rear do more damage, so a stealth backstab is a decent gambit if you have the means of going invisible, and if you can keep up with the ammo costs or have some way of effectively regenerating MP you can always go with ranged attacks if an enemy's melee patterns are a bit too inscrutable to evade. The game has an equipment system that allows items with passive effects to be equipped, whether that's regenerating HP while you're standing in water or enhancing a specific weapon class (like daggers or two-handed weapons) or the earliest piece of equipment which simply lets you float in place when attacking in mid-air which is way more useful than it sounds. You're limited to equipping just one of these at first, but eventually acquire the means to hold onto more at once. Depending on how you've chosen to take on enemies, there's some effective "builds" you can employ with the right combination of weapons, spells, and equipment. Rounding out the inventory are artifacts: these are acquired post-boss fights and remain permanently in effect, though they're not so much traversal abilities as they are things like the aforementioned extra equipment slots or a health boost. Incidentally, health is definitely something that'll be in short supply throughout the entire game: there's precious few ways to increase it and the harder enemies will make that bar vanish very quickly, though consumables and other healing methods can mitigate this deficiency.

While the game doesn't offer a huge amount of aesthetically-diverse locations in its relatively svelte world map of a castle sitting on a network of sewers and dungeons the visual effects are top-notch and the animations on all the major characters, most of whom are schoolgirls in sailor uniforms because I guess that's how doujin do, and minor enemies alike are silky smooth. While the combat is a little sluggish it has defensive options by way of shields and an evasive roll that is generous on the i-frames and offers the best chance of getting around behind enemies for a high-damage backstab, and these are all animated smoothly as well. I didn't really notice the music much, the game going for more of an ambient thing, but the sound design was suitably chunky and often provides some hint as to what's going on further into the current room. There's fast-travel portals damn near every five rooms or so which I appreciate for convenience's sake and the game has both checkpoints and regular savepoints, along with plenty of vendors mostly of the vending machine type. (I wasn't aware vending machines could get isekai'd too; or at least, that's what I thought before that one anime came out recently.) A large arsenal of weapons and spells with various elemental or other special effects makes for a decent roster to choose between, and though most get outclassed quickly some remain potentially powerful right up until the endgame with the right items. The starting gladius, for example, can be enhanced by the Leather Gloves equipment (which increases damage and speed of all one-handed weapons) as well the as Gladiator Armor equipment which specifically enhances the gladius's damage and gives it a life-stealing effect.

Lost Ruins didn't look like much at first and it does occasionally skirt into some slightly perturbing "ecchi otaku pervert" territory for its infrequent bits of humor but is otherwise a really solid, compact variation on the 2D "Soulsplorer" construct that has taken over this genre in the wake of Salt and Sanctuary and Hollow Knight and their ilk, and should be of particular interest to Momodora fans given the stylistic and mechanical similarities. Even for as painfully slow as those giant weapons are, getting the timing right when wielding them made them compelling to use and not just for the visual of a highschooler swinging around a sword or axe as tall as she is, and acquiring the late-game means of being able to spam powerful spells made plowing through normal mobs both satisfying and easy. Shades of Bloodstained in how tinkering with the inventory and systems long enough can produce some very intriguing (and broken) results. S'good shit.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Thanks for the review. This is one I have been thinking about getting for quite awhile but there are SO many Metroidvanias (YEAH! I SAID IT!) and I've already played multiple this year so it's just not a priority. Good to know it's quality though.