EDIT:

Spoilers are now open!

Prior post:

Welcome to the Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club. Our Seventh game is Raji: An Ancient Epic. The target completion date is May 2, 2022.

We ask that until that date you use the forum software to mark any spoilers, either story based or mechanical, in the discussion below. Ideally the bulk of the discussion will occur after May 2, but if you want to comment before then you are welcome to so long as the spoilers are marked. We ask that if you leave a comment before that date you also come back to the thread after it to read other people’s comments and respond to them, though of course we cannot force you to do so.

All are welcome to participate regardless of whether you have stated a preference to or not and there is absolutely no commitment. You do not have to finish the game to participate but please let us know if you have not.

You can find out more about the Unsanctioned Unofficial Game Pass Game Club or suggest future games for it here.

What is Raji: An Ancient Epic?

It is an action game in the style of the PS2/PS3 God of War titles set in the Hindu mythos and produced by an Indian studio.

How long is Raji: An Ancient Epic?

How long to beat lists it as 4.5 hours long.

I'm starting to worry that I like the concept of Raji more than the execution. So much of the first part of the game feels like a prequel to an eventual sequel. The platforming parts are tranquil and relaxing, but the combat sections of the game are baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. And it's really something that the best scenes or visuals don't require any player input.

@zombiepie: I think the combat and gameplay do improve throughout the game and some of the boss fights are kind of passable, but my sense from this game is that it was made by people with a lot of experience with art and much less with actual gameplay and combat. Possibly people who had worked in the Indian graphics outsource industry but spent less time on game design and gameplay programming?

It works and it's definitely not the worst playin game I've ever finished (especially because it's short) but there's a lot of gorgeous art with the murals and other environmental details and the combat never gets better than meh.

Spoilers are now open!

I did a separate post on this game and don't have much more to say about it.

To me it's one of those games that isn't bad and shows a fair amount of potential (especially in the art design) but lacks sufficient mechanical complexity or level design to be more than a meh gameplay experience. The Hindu lore is genuinely interesting and the murals are spectacularly colorful and gorgeous but the game's story itself is pretty lackluster and the combat and platforming feel like they're from a B game from the PS2 era or maybe a late downloadable 360 game.

Obviously the game's story doesn't resolve in a meaningful way and I'd be potentially interested in a sequel that could expand on the gameplay ideas and maybe more meaningfully incorporate the lore into the gameplay like the recent God of War game does, but to some extent this just feels like a proof of concept for a higher budget game from an Indian studio making its own work. Obviously it would be great if the Indian game industry can make more original works and do less pure outsourcing for other studios so in that sense this game is really cool, and it also has a setting that's still pretty rare in video games (how many notable games are actually set in India, which has over 10% of the world's population? Assassin's Creed Chronicles: India and? Uncharted: Lost Legacy sort of counts, but obviously the focus there is on Western characters). For those reasons I appreciate it more than I would have as a pure gaming product.

But it's not a great sign when talking about the circumstances of your game's production is in some ways more interesting than talking about the game itself. The action feels dated and repetitive, the enemy designs are artistically interesting but have no interesting mechanical wrinkles except for those enemies that move along the surface of a half dome, and it all works but it's just kind of there. Some of the bosses try more interesting things but they are also the jankiest part of the game.

A cool project that stands out more for aesthetics and what it means for Indian game development than as a great game on its own.

I wonder if anybody else has the same problem with Raji as i do. Due to perspective (i guess) I was having really hard time during combat. Like when I jump or try to land a hit, i end up missing the spot i intended so many times. As if i cannot see from that camera perspective correctly.

It's pretty unique and cool looking game, so that made me quite sad because i cannot play it for this weird reason unfortunately

I unfortunately didn't get to play this on time as I recently got a new job and lost out a fair bit of free time I had. Even based on people's reactions though, I think I want to give this a go. But with everyone bringing up the ps2 era combat, I'm wondering if the simple mechanics cause the game to be more difficult or if it just plays a little boring? I can usually get through a monotonous combat flow but if the combat is tough and tedious, I might just skip it altogether.

@noboners: I did not have the same problem @donutello did regarding the game's difficulty. I found it to be mostly a cakewalk except for some of the platforming sequences where the camera perpective and kind of clunky controls made me die a bunch, but the checkpointing is generous so I wouldn't call it frustrating so much as a little annoying.

Of course I also beat every major God of War game (including the PS3 versions of the PSP games) in the last few years so I have had a lot of experience with this kind of combat in that perspective. On the other hand the perspective thing is something you will either find difficult or not almost immediately so you don't have to worry about it starting easy and getting hard or frustrating. It doesn't. You just have to make sure to use executions to refill your life and you won't die more than a handful of times in combat. If you like simple 3D action games with really good and unique art design then it's not a bad time, and some people really love it.

I'd say give it a try and bounce if you're not feeling it. My opinion on the game didn't really change from the first half hour or so except to be a bit disappointed there wasn't more to it and the story doesn't end conclusively. But at about 4 hours long it's not a massive investment.

I didn't have much trouble with the combat, except for some boss battles. It is... functional, as others have said, and the closest comparisons are with PS2 or early 360/PS3 era action platformers. It got better the more I advanced, since the upgrades made the combat a lot easier.

I did found the camera and the jittering of the controls made some platforming sections (and one specific boss fight) a pain to complete. Some bugs also forced me to replay some sections, due to the character getting stuck in the geometry.