RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore follows a motif very often seen in anime: An unlikely hero (or heroine in this case) gets delivered into a magical world and embark on a mission to defeat tons of mechanical creatures using bizarre weapons. And don’t forget that these foes will drop snacks upon slain. It has everything an anime fan would love, and it would have been a great game without a totally out-of-place feature: Roguelike permadeath.
Currently available on PS4, Xbox One and Switch, with a PC version coming soon, RemiLore I an anime-inspired game that tells the tale of Remi, a normal high school student who accidentally gets teleported into a magical realm by a living spellbook known as Lore. This realm, Ragnoah, is swarmed by vicious mechanical beings, and now, Remi must fight her way past them to find the portal that’ll take her home, armed with Lore’s magic and tons of wacky weapons. Basically anything could be used to beat up the machines in this game, from a broom or a golf club to a hockey stick.
The action of RemiLore is admittedly very satisfying. Depending on the weapon you have equipped, Remi either overwhelms enemies with a flurry of blows from a fast but low-damage sword or brings them to their knees with sheer brute force from a slow, high-powered hammer. Enemies’ attacks are pretty telegraphed, so combat is all about timing your strikes and dodges well. The game also allows for some strategic options by letting you combine the skills of your weapons with Lore’s collection of spells. For example, a slow spell makes for a great combo with a weapon that deals increased damage to slowed enemies. Still, the core idea of the game is just all about getting lost in the mindless hacking-and-slashing.
Satisfying action
Publisher Nicalis describes RemiLore as a “rogue-lite”, suggesting that it has some with the roguelike genre. All the levels in the game are procedurally generated, so every time you come back to the four regions of Ragnoah it’ll be a whole new adventure. There will be different weapons, enemies, and bosses. And these roguelike aspects aren’t too bad.
The problem here is when Remi dies, that’s it. There is no respawn. You must restart again from the beginning of the series of levels that you are currently on (For example, if you’re on level 2-3 then you must start again from 2-1). Alternatively, you can start a new game altogether, but any upgrades that you’ve unlocked with “dessert points” will be carried over.
In roguelike games, this serves as a way for players to power up until they are strong enough to progress further into the story. But with RemiLore, there are so many random factors at work here that planning ahead is very difficult. Finding a bad weapon at the beginning or getting trapped up in a small room full of dangerous enemies can totally ruin progress.
And that’s frustrating. The characters are well-designed. The dialogue (fully-voiced in Japanese) is entertaining. They make players want to progress to know more about the realm, about Remi, Lore, and other characters. Being stopped dead in their tracks and having to start over and over again from the beginning just because of bad RNG is just simply disheartening.
To make matters worse, the game only has one save slot for all game modes, meaning if you want to switch to co-op mode, everything is reset again.
If only RemiLore had been a simple hack-and-slash title or an Action RPG. The story is intriguing, the combat is excellent, yet the roguelike elements are redundant and does nothing but holding back the game.
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