Genre: Action
Developer: Pixellore, Inc., REMIMORY
Publisher: Nicalis, Inc.
Platform(s): PC [reviewed], Switch, PS4, Xbox One
Release Date: Sep 4, 2019
Price: $39.99
Remi Lore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore is a game that caught me off-guard upon release. Not the fact that it’s an anime game with cute anime girls doing adorable anime thing, but because it’s a game that feels plucked out of another age. But even though it feels old it still feels fresh because of the state of modern gaming.
Remi Lore is actually a nice mix of a few genres all rolled up into one
Remi Lore is actually a nice mix of a few genres all rolled up into one. You play in a top-down view with action like a hack n’ slash. In a lot of ways, it plays like a cutified version of the Diablo, only nowhere near as deep. Combat is pretty generic with two buttons for basic and heavy attacks. But the game does mix things up by incorporating some SHMUP-style gameplay.
Certain enemies will attack you via projectiles as one would expect. But many of them will attack you using SHMUP attack patterns. They will move around and then shoot you like this were a magical-girl shooter. Large area sprays and bullets that track you make things a fair bit more challenging. You’ll have to avoid attacks while also hacking and slashing. It’s a good bit of fun, but because the game often gets so busy it often gets really hard to track yourself, the enemies, and the bullets.
In a SHMUP you have space to maneuver and enemies and bullets are clear, but in Remi Lore everything can turn into what amounts to a mosh-pit and it’s super easy to lose track of everything except your life-bar which is draining. To battle these enemies you can pick up loot in the form of cute food and snacks that anime girls seem to love while still keeping that slim figure. This food is then used in the shops on each map you are on. It’s also used to feed your magical friend that takes the form of a flying book like something out of the Pagemaster.
This flying grimoire serves as your guide, filling you in on the game’s story, but also as your special ability. By collecting pages you can then activate a series of special abilities to help you, especially during mob sections. One ability might allow your friend to shoot bullet spray like in Ikagura, free enemies for a time, slow down enemies and a few others. These are fun, but vital when you are being mobbed on.
Remi Lore is also an RPG-lite with a few things that you can upgrade to a limited extent. You can use the points you earn during play to upgrade your book’s power levels for each of his spells, upgrade your proficiency in your sword/hammer skills, and some lesser things like making things cheaper in the store and whatnot. It’s not a deep upgrade system and there’s a chance many people will skip over most of the upgrades because while basic, it’s not made super clear as to how to upgrade everything.
The main feature of Remi Lore, aside from the cute anime girl aesthetic, is the weapon drop system. Strip Diablo down to only sword or hammer drops and you have Remi Lore. No armor or anything like that, just swords and hammers with a cute anime girl. That said, these weapons are pretty varied and there are a ton of wild and silly designs. You can use a frying pan one minute, a balloon sword the next, and a soup ladle after that. There are more traditional weapons, but since this is all about loot collection you are going to see a lot of silly ones.
Strip Diablo down to only sword or hammer drops and you have Remi Lore
This is great, as seeing the weapons the team came up with is neat, but like Diablo, most weapons are going to be unusable. I don’t say this because a balloon sword would seem ineffective but because most of the weapons you find/buy are going to be underpowered. Early on I found a wicked strong soup ladle and had no reason for any drop I found or random weapon from the shop for several levels. I then found a futuristic-looking sword that was a hundred points above anything else I found for even more levels.
The game tries to mitigate this by giving weapons abilities, so while the hockey stick might be weaker than your candy cane, it might be a better choice because it allows for some stat buffs or effects. Maybe it can slow enemies, or maybe it’s weaker but its attack speed is higher. You get the overall idea, but it isn’t enough to balance things out unless you love being at a disadvantage. I love that eggplant dildo balloon sword as much as the next person, but I’ll stick to a traditional, boring sword if it’s a few hundred points higher in the attack range.
The story itself is as wild yet generic as any modern-day anime on television. You are a nerdy girl that spends time in the library. One day you find a magic book that came to her reality to hide from some bad stuff. You link up, head back to the book’s world, and fight mechanical monsters to save his world from another cute girl. There are a few cutscenes but most of the dialogue comes as you play. It’s predictable as all hell, but the conversations between Remi and her book friend are pretty cute.
I like a lot of what Remi Lore has to offer, but the problem is that it just doesn’t offer enough of it, or at least not enough depth to anything. Weapon drops repeat with too much frequency, enemy designs become generic because they are mostly all just boring robots, the upgrade tree is often only a few points deep, and while the combat has a bunch of options for combos, more often than not mashing a button gets the job done. When something new, or new area, came along during gameplay I was excited about it, only to be over it within a few stages because of lack of depth.
But I think the weakest part of the game is the stage design employed. It all just feels very cut-and-paste with no rhyme or reason to it. I can’t visualize the choice they wanted as paths just look like a means to an end. You run through mostly empty corridors until you reach an open area which then locks off until you beat all the baddies in it. It almost feels as if these sections got locked off so you didn’t keep going and get lost. You can go through multiple stages and feel absolutely lost as to where you are because everything looks the same. I even got sucked into this trance thinking that I was backtracking through stages because of the poor design.
Remi Lore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore is a cute game that doesn’t do anything wrong, but also fails to offer anything new
After playing I found out that this was intentional as the world is procedurally generated, something I’m not a huge fan of for the problems listed above. A person, or team with a vision, will always outclass something procedurally generated because the world and path before you are intentionally designed with the player in mind. A lot of people have noted that Remi Lore is a lot like The Binding of Isaac, which is fair enough on the surface, but that game worked better on the 2D plane and had a really strong and interesting story behind it.
Remi Lore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore is a cute game that doesn’t do anything wrong and isn’t broken or glitchy, but it also fails to offer anything new or expand on any of the mechanics or themes in play. What I do find strange is that checking the Steam review page after finishing this review I found the game with the “mostly negative” ranking even though only positive reviews were shown in the review section. Remi Lore isn’t a bad game by any means and I have no idea what black magic is going on with its Steam reviews. The real kicker here though is that Nicalis is asking $40 of this title and for what you get that’s far too much.
Stay away from this one as you are going to be disappointed with what little is offered. If it looks cute and interesting I’d suggest waiting for a Steam sale before taking the plunge. I don’t think that will take that long as this one seems full-priced just to grab early sales before dropping down to a more reasonable $20 after it starts to disappear from the public consciousness, something that already happening less than a week after launch.
Remi Lore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore is like an anime Binding of Isaac only nowhere near as strong or memorable as that classic
Final Score: 3/5
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