Rune II: Decapitation Edition is a beautiful disaster. The long road getting to this point in time can fill its own book, and I suppose it only makes sense that RUNE II was never going to be a great experience. What does surprise me is that this is technically the finalized edition of the game that released over a year ago. This game and entire experience just leaves me feeling bad for anyone who jumped on this the first time around.
I never played the original release so I can’t speak on it, but there is a beautiful Steam store page quote about how much better it was than the original release. Look, you don’t get credit in my review book for releasing the game you should have released in the first place. And all of this just sucks because the core of RUNE II is a fantastic one way down under all the jank. The mythology is there, the action is there, the style is there. The only thing that isn’t is all the connecting fibers pulling it all together.
This time around you have more of a story. I know that sounds wild but the original released really lacked something to give you a reason to do anything other than killing Loki because he was being a dick. Sure, a story and these extra elements help, but it still feels like an afterthought and the characters in the world are idiotic. Characters have voice acting that is painful and show the lack of a vocal director. One person is a British person, the next tries to play Norwegian, another like a pretentious New York theater snob, and another like a 15-year-old Southern Californian girl who is mad at her parents. All of these voices in a single, tiny village.
RUNE II: Decapitation Edition wants nothing more than to take me out of any sort of world it is trying to build like some random Russian PC game released in the early 2000s. Add the fact that most of the NPCs in a village slide around in a T-pose before you get close and you have the video game equivalent of The Room. Please, for the love of all that is holy, have some standards as consumers and stop making excuses for badly made games. And shame on all “game journalists” that praise this broken mess because its got some blood, guts, and isn’t as broken as it was a year ago.
I know it’s weird to start a review so negatively before talking about the games basics, but it can’t be helped. I don’t want people reading this or thinking there is value here when there isn’t right now. I understand bugs and glitches happen no matter how big your staff or budget is. I understand that players will find issues that Beta testers miss and will find unique ways to break your game. Trust me, I’ve been on both sides of that as a former tester and as someone who loves poking and prodding a video game. Hell, I spent my first hour just cutting down trees and finding fun ways to kill myself and NPCs, something really fun to do.
What I can’t forgive is the bugs I encountered before I even took on a single mission in the main story. The first random enemy I found didn’t attack me because they were lodged into the environment; the first time I was told to jump up a ledge I teleported into free space next to it and just floated about; building my first structure saw me stuck in the walls; the first raft I built loaded into the next stage and wedged into the dock triggering an endless smashing sound effect that drowned out the rest of the game. This all happened before the main story even got started. All this happened in what amounts to the tutorial for the damn game. These are front and center bugs that make me wonder how broken the original release was, and I know things are bad because the game prominently features a “kill” key to unstick your character from the world, something I haven’t seen in a game in decades.
Visually, things are also a mess. For whatever reason, the game running on my home machine or on the work testing rig looks pretty bad. The screenshots look fantastic but they never really translates to in-game footage even on the highest settings. There are so many outlets and people talking highly about this game and it boggles my mind as to why. I really hope this isn’t some sort of Driv3r situation. RUNE II: Decapitation Edition is simply not a good game and has very few redeeming qualities as it is to justify a purchase. I wonder how many people initially praising this game will look when worst games of 2020 lists start rolling out. Every positive review over on Steam all come with some sort of major caveat. In 2020 you can’t get away releasing a broken game simply because it has lots of blood and guts.
The control system is clunky and confusing too. Playing on a controller is a nightmare and a keyboard and mouse combo is the best way to tackle the title. The inventory system feels old-fashioned, overly fiddly, and dosen’t pause during combat. Items often don’t stack correctly and item management is unnecessarily clunky on the scale of the old Ultima games where everything just gets tossed in a black hole of a sack. All of this hurts the experience which is a shame as the original RUNE was a simple, yet fantastic experience. In the original was all about chopping up a baddie and then moving on to the next. The kicker was being able to beat someone to death with their own arm of leg. And that would have worked here if the whole thing wasn’t so broken.
So much has been added that doesn’t expand the core experience. I don’t know about the original RUNE II release but the added elements of crafting, building structures, and farming resources feels tacked on, unnecessary, and poorly implemented at best. I’m not saying I’m against these idea of features, but I am saying that their addition took time away from fixing or even tightening up the basic combat system. Instead of the game doing one thing really well and being short, simple, and most importantly, fun, the game is a jack of nothing with too much going on. And I’m not alone in this as game games own Beta testers have taken to forums to call out the game in more detail than I ever could. Needless to say, they did not love the experience.
I’ll do my amateurish way to describe the combat which feels clunky and inconsistent. In a game like this you need some sort of flow to what you are doing and how you are fighting. Sword combat has a flow, hammers have a flow, bows have a flow, each type of weapon has a style of play that works for different types of players. The main issue here is that all combat lacks a flow or art to it. No matter what you use it’s all about spamming the attack with little impact or reward. There doesn’t seem to be a definable break or damage period to allow you to maneuver or engage the enemy. Enemies seem to just get get and keep on trucking, the same with yourself. A staggering attack is tied to the heavy attack button which turns fights into coloring by numbers. Knock an enemy down with heavy and then spam your basic attack until you win.
That is your standard move and I didn’t find any sort of combo chains that you could pull out. There is a dodge move but only of use when you get mobbed. You can’t slide a dodge and parry together to get behind someone. You can’t bypass shields in fun ways and movement can break your attack leaving you wondering what is going on at times. Combat is a cluster of wild swinging in two different directions. Chopping up arms and legs is fun but feels random and comes off as weird when I’m using a big hammer that should do crushing damage. And then there is the jump button. Oh boy, is there the jump button.
Jumping is broken as I noted before even talking about the combat, but it gets worse later. Jumping during combat can break a swing and you can’t can’t doge roll after trying for a jumping strike, making it pretty useless during combat. But what’s totally a treat is that when you are knocked to the ground you can still jump. This results in your prone body bouncing like it’s on a trampoline. I’ve used this skill(?) to bounce away from whatever danger I was facing. How do you release a video game in this day and age with a broken jump button. HOW? There are lots of additional little things that kill the combat experience but just know that it’s complete jank and every issue I talked about was reported over and over again during the testing phase of the game.
There’s an entire thread dedicated to figuring out a way to skip the opening cinematic that the game forces on you. Seriously, the game takes ages to load. Everything about this smells of a rush job which doesn’t make sense considering the time used to overhaul the original release. The store page even jokes about trees killing you like its some hilarious thing until you get screw over because chopping down trees can lead to death at any moment. Hell, there is a section of the game’s description that tells you to pass on the game if you hate certain things, one of which includes being a fan of the original RUNE or games longer than 4 hours. How the hell does that even happen.
I don’t care about small issues if your core gameplay is solid and fun. The problem with RUNE II: Decapitation Edition is that it’s not that fun, at least not very long, because the core system is so jank. The original RUNE didn’t have these sorts of issues and all this title does is help tarnish what the original experience provided. Controls fight you are each and every single turn and the game is so far away from RUNE it’s crazy. Original RUNE players are going to be pissed at what they have done here while new players are going to ask whats so special about the experience when so many other games exist that do this very thing better.
I hated writing all of this because there is a lot of fun to be had in RUNE II: Decapitation Edition that is covered up by technical and design issues. There are bursts of fun, especially very early on but it just doesn’t last. Maybe a few more patches can help things out but I doubt it at this point. If this is what happens after a year of fixing the original release it might just be time to call it a day and let RUNE die.
Pros:
+ It Loads
+ Mostly Playable
+ Devs Are Trying
Cons:
– Weak Combat
– Visually Lacking
– Collision Issues
– Day 1 DLC
– Poorly Optimized
– Laughable Voice Work
Final Score:
“Stay Away”
*Review copy provided by the publisher*
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