The legendary Serious Sam reloads and rearms in an explosive, turn-based RPG developed by indie developer Vlambeer (Super Crate Box, Ridiculous Fishing). Serious Sam: The Random Encounter follows Sam and his band of oddball mercenaries as they battle across a pixilated world teeming chaotic battles, hordes of bizarre creatures, and mysterious secrets. Choose your weapons and take aim at the most random Serious Sam adventure yet!
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Random Encounter is a decent RPG with a bit of turn-based elements, starts off pretty quick and it end fairly short.
But in the end it becomes a roguelike for no reason, and it was not meant to be that.
Story
So, as mentioned in the game that the events of first encountered didn't go so well so our hero is being sent to the future to kill mental. In the story you will find some kind of allies with the same wish as sam, fork parker sents sam there where he encounters them. Gregory and a damn cowboy that I forgot his name, the trio is after mental and they elso encounter ugh-zan III while mental tricked them to visit his temple and they didn't find him. So after the fight of ugh-zan the game ends.
Problems
If you fuck up the final boss, you fuck up your save.
you might start from 0, at the beginning or a random save so BEWARE this game is already a bit frustrating in 2 hours and might become a roguelike.
Conclusion
If you got the temper, got the time go play it that's all im gonna say, some guys will find this game to be easily abandoned.
But in the end it becomes a roguelike for no reason, and it was not meant to be that.
Story
So, as mentioned in the game that the events of first encountered didn't go so well so our hero is being sent to the future to kill mental. In the story you will find some kind of allies with the same wish as sam, fork parker sents sam there where he encounters them. Gregory and a damn cowboy that I forgot his name, the trio is after mental and they elso encounter ugh-zan III while mental tricked them to visit his temple and they didn't find him. So after the fight of ugh-zan the game ends.
Problems
If you fuck up the final boss, you fuck up your save.
you might start from 0, at the beginning or a random save so BEWARE this game is already a bit frustrating in 2 hours and might become a roguelike.
Conclusion
If you got the temper, got the time go play it that's all im gonna say, some guys will find this game to be easily abandoned.
Another vicim of the early 10's weird aesthetic that I can only describe as "indie gymbro" that gave us some of the ugliest games I have ever seen like Broforce, Rocketbirds, Shank, Expendabros, etc...
It's a bit fun, with some more involved rpg mechanics and a charming art style, but pretty surface level overall.
Serious Sam: The Random Encounter was potentially novel when it was first released and very likely a highlight as part of the marketing push behind Serious Sam 3. However, under a modern lens and as a standalone experience, it falls a little flat.
Presentation wise, it delivers. The pixel art is all rather nice with some lovely chunky sprites and expressive animations. The audio is pretty good for the most part in both sound and music, (though I had a couple of issues where the music would just stop looping during combat). There are some fun little cutscenes and dialogue moments to setup both the game and encounters. It all feels rather polished.
But then there's the design, which is a mostly frustrating affair. The core of the game consists of a couple of basic JRPG combat tropes lightly mixed with bullet-hell elements. That's a cool idea, but these bullet-hell moments don't exactly allow you to dodge bullets once you've unlocked your full party. Once all three members are unlocked, I found it to be mostly pointless to include player movement at all. There was the odd instance where an enemy was already wide of hitting me, and I chose not to move into their path to make a shot. Not exactly satisfying. It's all stick and no carrot.
The item system's usefulness is also poorly signposted, and I feel specific item use is the only way you can finish the game. The difficulty has been tuned so tough that there's no room for error throughout a play through. This feels like it needed more testing time and a significant pass on the tuning.
The juxtaposition of such strong visual design against such sloppy game design is wild.
All in all, too random.
Presentation wise, it delivers. The pixel art is all rather nice with some lovely chunky sprites and expressive animations. The audio is pretty good for the most part in both sound and music, (though I had a couple of issues where the music would just stop looping during combat). There are some fun little cutscenes and dialogue moments to setup both the game and encounters. It all feels rather polished.
But then there's the design, which is a mostly frustrating affair. The core of the game consists of a couple of basic JRPG combat tropes lightly mixed with bullet-hell elements. That's a cool idea, but these bullet-hell moments don't exactly allow you to dodge bullets once you've unlocked your full party. Once all three members are unlocked, I found it to be mostly pointless to include player movement at all. There was the odd instance where an enemy was already wide of hitting me, and I chose not to move into their path to make a shot. Not exactly satisfying. It's all stick and no carrot.
The item system's usefulness is also poorly signposted, and I feel specific item use is the only way you can finish the game. The difficulty has been tuned so tough that there's no room for error throughout a play through. This feels like it needed more testing time and a significant pass on the tuning.
The juxtaposition of such strong visual design against such sloppy game design is wild.
All in all, too random.