🏆 67%
Recore was a game that seemed cool but I knew basically nothing about outside of the very basic premise from the E3 reveal so many years ago. I'd heard it was plagued with terrible technical issues and loading times back at launch, and the game was quite clearly badly optimized and not even content-complete. I'd also heard that the definitive edition had fixed that up really well, and my experience playing it fits that hearsay well. I never played original Recore, but I really enjoyed my time with the definitive edition. It took me around 22 hours to get all but a couple collectibles and I also left a couple dungeons un-100%'d.
Recore is the story of a girl named Joule, a girl all alone on an alien world known as Far Eden save for her robot dog named Mack. It turns out though that Mack isn't actually the dog, but the core powering the K9 frame, and over the course of the game you'll get more corebots as well as a total of 5 frames to plonk them in as you unravel the mystery of why this planet is so desolate, why you're all alone on it, and why it's covered in horrible killer corebots. The story isn't anything super special to write home about, but it's done well enough. What's especially great are the corebots themselves. Their designs are good, but the animations on your companions just bring SO much life to them. Especially the way the dog frame will bounce around happily wagging its tail, run forward to where you're gonna go to try and lead you there. I found it very endearing, and it brought some well-needed levity to a story that can be pretty bleak and dark at times.
Recore is a really weird kinda game to describe that isn't really like anything else I've played. I imagine it might be somewhat like Metroid Prime, but not having played much of that, I can't say for sure. Either way, this product from Keiji Inafune and the Metroid Prime team plays like something between Metroid Prime, Breath of the Wild, and Mario Odyssey (the latter two not having been released yet when this game came out in 2016, for what it's worth). And it all kinda works in the end? At least it did for me. XD
There are 5 large, sub-open worlds with things scattered about them. You can just follow the story, or you can explore around looking for prismatic cores. The world isn't quite as tightly designed as Breath of the Wild, but how much you can just wander around these big areas looking for dungeons (which have a very BotW shrine-like feel to them) or misc activities to do for prismatic cores, health powerups, or crafting materials really scratched the same itch for me that BotW did. Prismatic cores are very much like Mario Odssey's moons in how you go around and hunt for them, and you need a certain amount of them to open up certain gates to let the story progress. Then the Metroid Prime bit comes from how you unlock new traversal abilities to go back to earlier areas to get goodies you couldn't access before as well as how this is a shooter with a lock-on mechanism.
Unpacking all of that a little at a time, the exploration and platforming feel great. The game controls fantastically, and Joule moves really tightly with her two jumps and an air dash. The dungeons are either combat trials, platforming trials, or mini-adventure (like proper little dungeons) ones. Each have a secret key to collect, 8 floating switches to find and shoot, and a time limit to do it all in, with each of those getting you a treasure for doing it. Do all three in one go and you get an extra bonus treasure. Interesting areas on the overworld where goodies may lie are signposted very well with bright glowy material collectibles that function like coins in Mario: they're a sign to where the action is.
The platforming SHOULD feel a lot more fiddly than it does, but it doesn't. Good camera control, a generous ledge-climbing feature, and a bright yellow circle indicating directly underneath you all help contribute to this. Even when I was just searching the world with a fine-toothed comb for prismatic cores, I was having fun because of how fluid and easy it is to move the character through the environment.
Another thing helping that was the combat. Joule has a rifle that can swap between white, red, blue, and yellow. Enemies also come in these colors (or combinations of them), and shooting them with the matching color does WAY more damage. You also have up to two corebots at a time in one of five frames. Each of the three colors of corebot has a special attack that corresponds to each frame (blue more quick & damaging, yellow more defensive, and red is damage & damage over time), and both your corebots and enemy corebots function this way. You unlock more corebot frames to use as you progress through the story, giving you more combat options as well as more traversal abilities to go back and nab more goodies with.
You can find blueprints and materials to upgrade your corebots (basically better weapons & armor), as well as rare silly-looking ones with special abilities. There's also a neat mechanic where killing an enemy outright will drop materials for crafting armor, but extracting its core when its weak gives you more energy that you'll need to use to boost your corebots stats (they're SUPER weak if you don't boost their stats, and they're killing machines if you keep up on boosting them). Tie that all in with a combo system that gives you more damage output as you keep dealing damage and avoiding taking it, and you have a combat system that I never got bored with. I know a common complaint for this game is that the combat gets repetitive, but I never found that a problem. There's a decent amount of enemy variety, and the level scaling is really viscous (it's pretty uncommon to fight stuff below your level unless you're REALLY backtracking), so there's always an element of danger especially to overworld-wandering enemies.
The combat's biggest fault is that it doesn't give the player enough information. You can die SO fast (for basically the entire game, even the first corebots you meet hit really hard) that if you're caught off-guard by something, that can be a death right there (although luckily death respawns are nearly instant). This game really could've used something like Dad of War's ring around the player that points towards incoming attacks, because sometimes you're SO overwhelmed with enemies there's just nothing you could've done to not die. It can sometimes feel like you just had no control over whether or not you lived or died and you just didn't get lucky enough.
Part of this is certainly down to how the game handles its combat. You have a lock-on for your gun as well as air-dashes and a double jump. A big part of combat is avoidance and constantly moving, and once you get the hang of that and also start using your corebots special abilities as much as possible, you'll start dying a LOT less. That said, you can still stagger from stuff like fire REALLY hard, and the screen is often so busy that no matter where you are in the game, you're never entirely safe from a death that will feel like it was unfair. It's certainly not how the bulk of the combat feels, but it's a frequent enough problem that it alone is more or less what keeps me from recommending this game as highly as I WANT to recommend it.
Presentation is a mixed bag. The graphics are pretty for an earlier Xbone game, but nothing super outstanding. The previously mentioned corebot personality is definitely the strongest part of the game's presentation. The environments don't have a toooon of variety, as most are just the craggy desert that makes up the surface of Far Eden. Either that, or underground caverns or tech facilities. It's not allll the same, but it feels pretty samey. The music is also nothing to write home about, and sometimes the VA is pretty bad too. Especially for the tank-related new content they added for the definitive edition, Joule's VA sounds like she's really phoning it in for some bits of dialogue where her tone will be weirdly detached from the emotional content it seems the words she's saying should have.
Performance on my base-model Xbone was mostly fine. If you're looking over a huge vista with tons of stuff on-screen, you're gonna get some framerate dips, but the game never stuttered in a way that affected how I was playing it in a meaningful way. Loading times are generally pretty quick if not instant (for things like respawns after death or fast-travel within the same region), so that's nice. The only really noticeable problems are things like texture maps REALLY freaking out some times in the Shifting Sands area, or texture/model pop-in being pretty noticeable as well. Not stuff that bothered me at all, but if you're someone who would be bothered by that, you're probably better off getting Recore on PC or on an Xbone X.
Verdict: Recommended. The combat issues keep me from giving this the highly recommended I really wanna give it, but it's still a game I enjoyed a ton. I really had no idea what I was going in for, and I was very pleasantly surprised by the end of it. This game is easily worth its $20 digital price tag or going through if you happen to have Game Pass if you like action/adventure games and platformers. It's not Dad of War and it's not Breath of the Wild, but it's honestly close enough that I really hope Microsoft lets this team revist Recore someday. With some tightening up mechanically, this yet-to-be-a-series could be something really really special. Microsoft have a Nier on their hands with Recore, and if they were so inclined to give it another entry in the series, I think they could easily give it its Automata.
Recore is the story of a girl named Joule, a girl all alone on an alien world known as Far Eden save for her robot dog named Mack. It turns out though that Mack isn't actually the dog, but the core powering the K9 frame, and over the course of the game you'll get more corebots as well as a total of 5 frames to plonk them in as you unravel the mystery of why this planet is so desolate, why you're all alone on it, and why it's covered in horrible killer corebots. The story isn't anything super special to write home about, but it's done well enough. What's especially great are the corebots themselves. Their designs are good, but the animations on your companions just bring SO much life to them. Especially the way the dog frame will bounce around happily wagging its tail, run forward to where you're gonna go to try and lead you there. I found it very endearing, and it brought some well-needed levity to a story that can be pretty bleak and dark at times.
Recore is a really weird kinda game to describe that isn't really like anything else I've played. I imagine it might be somewhat like Metroid Prime, but not having played much of that, I can't say for sure. Either way, this product from Keiji Inafune and the Metroid Prime team plays like something between Metroid Prime, Breath of the Wild, and Mario Odyssey (the latter two not having been released yet when this game came out in 2016, for what it's worth). And it all kinda works in the end? At least it did for me. XD
There are 5 large, sub-open worlds with things scattered about them. You can just follow the story, or you can explore around looking for prismatic cores. The world isn't quite as tightly designed as Breath of the Wild, but how much you can just wander around these big areas looking for dungeons (which have a very BotW shrine-like feel to them) or misc activities to do for prismatic cores, health powerups, or crafting materials really scratched the same itch for me that BotW did. Prismatic cores are very much like Mario Odssey's moons in how you go around and hunt for them, and you need a certain amount of them to open up certain gates to let the story progress. Then the Metroid Prime bit comes from how you unlock new traversal abilities to go back to earlier areas to get goodies you couldn't access before as well as how this is a shooter with a lock-on mechanism.
Unpacking all of that a little at a time, the exploration and platforming feel great. The game controls fantastically, and Joule moves really tightly with her two jumps and an air dash. The dungeons are either combat trials, platforming trials, or mini-adventure (like proper little dungeons) ones. Each have a secret key to collect, 8 floating switches to find and shoot, and a time limit to do it all in, with each of those getting you a treasure for doing it. Do all three in one go and you get an extra bonus treasure. Interesting areas on the overworld where goodies may lie are signposted very well with bright glowy material collectibles that function like coins in Mario: they're a sign to where the action is.
The platforming SHOULD feel a lot more fiddly than it does, but it doesn't. Good camera control, a generous ledge-climbing feature, and a bright yellow circle indicating directly underneath you all help contribute to this. Even when I was just searching the world with a fine-toothed comb for prismatic cores, I was having fun because of how fluid and easy it is to move the character through the environment.
Another thing helping that was the combat. Joule has a rifle that can swap between white, red, blue, and yellow. Enemies also come in these colors (or combinations of them), and shooting them with the matching color does WAY more damage. You also have up to two corebots at a time in one of five frames. Each of the three colors of corebot has a special attack that corresponds to each frame (blue more quick & damaging, yellow more defensive, and red is damage & damage over time), and both your corebots and enemy corebots function this way. You unlock more corebot frames to use as you progress through the story, giving you more combat options as well as more traversal abilities to go back and nab more goodies with.
You can find blueprints and materials to upgrade your corebots (basically better weapons & armor), as well as rare silly-looking ones with special abilities. There's also a neat mechanic where killing an enemy outright will drop materials for crafting armor, but extracting its core when its weak gives you more energy that you'll need to use to boost your corebots stats (they're SUPER weak if you don't boost their stats, and they're killing machines if you keep up on boosting them). Tie that all in with a combo system that gives you more damage output as you keep dealing damage and avoiding taking it, and you have a combat system that I never got bored with. I know a common complaint for this game is that the combat gets repetitive, but I never found that a problem. There's a decent amount of enemy variety, and the level scaling is really viscous (it's pretty uncommon to fight stuff below your level unless you're REALLY backtracking), so there's always an element of danger especially to overworld-wandering enemies.
The combat's biggest fault is that it doesn't give the player enough information. You can die SO fast (for basically the entire game, even the first corebots you meet hit really hard) that if you're caught off-guard by something, that can be a death right there (although luckily death respawns are nearly instant). This game really could've used something like Dad of War's ring around the player that points towards incoming attacks, because sometimes you're SO overwhelmed with enemies there's just nothing you could've done to not die. It can sometimes feel like you just had no control over whether or not you lived or died and you just didn't get lucky enough.
Part of this is certainly down to how the game handles its combat. You have a lock-on for your gun as well as air-dashes and a double jump. A big part of combat is avoidance and constantly moving, and once you get the hang of that and also start using your corebots special abilities as much as possible, you'll start dying a LOT less. That said, you can still stagger from stuff like fire REALLY hard, and the screen is often so busy that no matter where you are in the game, you're never entirely safe from a death that will feel like it was unfair. It's certainly not how the bulk of the combat feels, but it's a frequent enough problem that it alone is more or less what keeps me from recommending this game as highly as I WANT to recommend it.
Presentation is a mixed bag. The graphics are pretty for an earlier Xbone game, but nothing super outstanding. The previously mentioned corebot personality is definitely the strongest part of the game's presentation. The environments don't have a toooon of variety, as most are just the craggy desert that makes up the surface of Far Eden. Either that, or underground caverns or tech facilities. It's not allll the same, but it feels pretty samey. The music is also nothing to write home about, and sometimes the VA is pretty bad too. Especially for the tank-related new content they added for the definitive edition, Joule's VA sounds like she's really phoning it in for some bits of dialogue where her tone will be weirdly detached from the emotional content it seems the words she's saying should have.
Performance on my base-model Xbone was mostly fine. If you're looking over a huge vista with tons of stuff on-screen, you're gonna get some framerate dips, but the game never stuttered in a way that affected how I was playing it in a meaningful way. Loading times are generally pretty quick if not instant (for things like respawns after death or fast-travel within the same region), so that's nice. The only really noticeable problems are things like texture maps REALLY freaking out some times in the Shifting Sands area, or texture/model pop-in being pretty noticeable as well. Not stuff that bothered me at all, but if you're someone who would be bothered by that, you're probably better off getting Recore on PC or on an Xbone X.
Verdict: Recommended. The combat issues keep me from giving this the highly recommended I really wanna give it, but it's still a game I enjoyed a ton. I really had no idea what I was going in for, and I was very pleasantly surprised by the end of it. This game is easily worth its $20 digital price tag or going through if you happen to have Game Pass if you like action/adventure games and platformers. It's not Dad of War and it's not Breath of the Wild, but it's honestly close enough that I really hope Microsoft lets this team revist Recore someday. With some tightening up mechanically, this yet-to-be-a-series could be something really really special. Microsoft have a Nier on their hands with Recore, and if they were so inclined to give it another entry in the series, I think they could easily give it its Automata.
PS2 game trapped in 2017. The definitive edition is a good update that fixed most complaints people had with the original game. ReCore consists of different areas to explore, and you can find upgrades for your robot companions and search out other collectibles. Each area also has multiple dungeons. Combat consists of matching the color of the bullets you're firing to the color of the enemies; doing so boosts the damage done. The platforming is also really good, and exploring the world is rewarding yet fun enough on its own with many traversal options such as gliding, double jumping, boosts, and latching onto climable walls. The final dungeon is a bit lame and stretched out, but it's not as bad as people say. The biggest complaint I see is areas being blocked off for not having enough of a certain collectable; even the final boss will be if you don't have enough. Personally, getting them wasn't hard or tedious, but how many you needed also could have been lowered a bit. The plot sort of exists, but it serves more as a backdrop for the world around you. It took me 15 hours to beat the game, and it is definitely worth the playthrough.
ReCore é um jogo de ação e aventura em mundo aberto que se passa em um planeta desértico, onde você controla uma jovem chamada Joule e seus companheiros robóticos. O jogo foi lançado em 2016, como um exclusivo para Xbox One e PC, e foi desenvolvido pela Armature Studio e pela Comcept, com a colaboração de Keiji Inafune, criador de Mega Man.
Pontos positivos:
O jogo tem uma história interessante e cativante, que explora temas como amizade, lealdade e sobrevivência.
O jogo tem um sistema de combate dinâmico e divertido, que combina tiros, esquivas e ataques especiais dos robôs.
O jogo tem um sistema de exploração e plataforma bem elaborado, que permite que você se movimente pelo cenário com agilidade e estilo.
O jogo tem um sistema de personalização e evolução dos robôs, que permite que você troque suas partes, cores e habilidades.
O jogo tem um visual bonito e colorido, com cenários variados e detalhados.
Pontos negativos:
O jogo tem problemas técnicos, como tempos de carregamento longos e frequentes, quedas de desempenho e bugs.
O jogo tem problemas de design, como missões repetitivas, falta de variedade de inimigos e chefes, e dificuldade inconsistente.
O jogo tem problemas de estrutura, como áreas bloqueadas por colecionáveis, conteúdo cortado e final incompleto.
Jogos parecidos:
Mega Man: Um jogo de ação e plataforma que se passa em um mundo futurista, onde você controla um robô azul que pode usar armas e habilidades dos inimigos derrotados.
Horizon Zero Dawn: Um jogo de ação e RPG que se passa em um mundo pós-apocalíptico, onde você controla uma caçadora que pode usar armas e ferramentas para enfrentar criaturas mecânicas.
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West: Um jogo de ação e aventura que se passa em um mundo pós-apocalíptico, onde você controla um guerreiro que tem que proteger uma garota que pode controlar sua mente.
Vale a pena jogar?
Depende, ReCore é um jogo que tem boas ideias e uma essência retrô que cativa, mas também tem muitas falhas e limitações que atrapalham a experiência. Se você gosta de jogos de ação e aventura em mundo aberto, com muito humor, diversão e criatividade, você pode gostar de ReCore, mas também pode se frustrar com seus problemas. O jogo é uma exclusividade do Xbox One e do PC, mas também está disponível no Xbox Game Pass.
Tempo de campanha:
O tempo de campanha de ReCore é de cerca de 12 horas, mas pode variar de acordo com o estilo de jogo e o nível de dificuldade. O jogo também tem missões secundárias, colecionáveis e desafios que podem aumentar o tempo de jogo. Além disso, o jogo tem uma expansão gratuita chamada Eye of Obsidian, que adiciona novas áreas, inimigos, robôs e missões.
Pontos positivos:
O jogo tem uma história interessante e cativante, que explora temas como amizade, lealdade e sobrevivência.
O jogo tem um sistema de combate dinâmico e divertido, que combina tiros, esquivas e ataques especiais dos robôs.
O jogo tem um sistema de exploração e plataforma bem elaborado, que permite que você se movimente pelo cenário com agilidade e estilo.
O jogo tem um sistema de personalização e evolução dos robôs, que permite que você troque suas partes, cores e habilidades.
O jogo tem um visual bonito e colorido, com cenários variados e detalhados.
Pontos negativos:
O jogo tem problemas técnicos, como tempos de carregamento longos e frequentes, quedas de desempenho e bugs.
O jogo tem problemas de design, como missões repetitivas, falta de variedade de inimigos e chefes, e dificuldade inconsistente.
O jogo tem problemas de estrutura, como áreas bloqueadas por colecionáveis, conteúdo cortado e final incompleto.
Jogos parecidos:
Mega Man: Um jogo de ação e plataforma que se passa em um mundo futurista, onde você controla um robô azul que pode usar armas e habilidades dos inimigos derrotados.
Horizon Zero Dawn: Um jogo de ação e RPG que se passa em um mundo pós-apocalíptico, onde você controla uma caçadora que pode usar armas e ferramentas para enfrentar criaturas mecânicas.
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West: Um jogo de ação e aventura que se passa em um mundo pós-apocalíptico, onde você controla um guerreiro que tem que proteger uma garota que pode controlar sua mente.
Vale a pena jogar?
Depende, ReCore é um jogo que tem boas ideias e uma essência retrô que cativa, mas também tem muitas falhas e limitações que atrapalham a experiência. Se você gosta de jogos de ação e aventura em mundo aberto, com muito humor, diversão e criatividade, você pode gostar de ReCore, mas também pode se frustrar com seus problemas. O jogo é uma exclusividade do Xbox One e do PC, mas também está disponível no Xbox Game Pass.
Tempo de campanha:
O tempo de campanha de ReCore é de cerca de 12 horas, mas pode variar de acordo com o estilo de jogo e o nível de dificuldade. O jogo também tem missões secundárias, colecionáveis e desafios que podem aumentar o tempo de jogo. Além disso, o jogo tem uma expansão gratuita chamada Eye of Obsidian, que adiciona novas áreas, inimigos, robôs e missões.
It was fun but they managed to screw at final section with boring and unnecessary prolongs.
Boas ideias porém mal executadas, além dos gráficos serem horríveis.
Recore has some cool ideas, a metroid prime like where you have companions that allow you to transverse in interesting ways in the world and in its dungeuns, a fair combat system and a interesting start to it's narrative as well.
And then it comes, the executive, the "ceo" that goes into the dev room and says "this game HAS to be a open world, it's the current industry tendency, no matter what" and congrats, you ruined a potential good game, not only it's open world is boring, it also blocks your progress throughout the main path that was good and the consequence of this is making the game launch a total disaster.
In the end a good ideia, a good beginning destroyed by someone who clearly had no idea what the game was, a shame really.
And then it comes, the executive, the "ceo" that goes into the dev room and says "this game HAS to be a open world, it's the current industry tendency, no matter what" and congrats, you ruined a potential good game, not only it's open world is boring, it also blocks your progress throughout the main path that was good and the consequence of this is making the game launch a total disaster.
In the end a good ideia, a good beginning destroyed by someone who clearly had no idea what the game was, a shame really.
This game hates you. And do you know what? That's fine - the feeling is mutual. And if I wasn't so stubborn, I'd have binned this off. Maybe I should have done so - it would have saved me 15 hours of intense frustration and dissatisfaction over the really bad game design, crazy difficulty spikes, and general annoyance with the whole package.
I only started this to get the 500 MS reward points for unlocking 3 achievements. That didn't take me too long to do, and I got them all in the hand-holding opening section which is actually quite good. Combat seemed to be straightforward but reasonably fun, platforming sections were unoriginal but perfectly fine, so I thought what the hell, let's stick with it.
Unfortunately, Recore appears to age dreadfully the longer you play it. The world itself isn't particularly pretty or interesting, and if you're looking around for certain objects (more on this later) then respawning enemies seem to constantly get in your way which is a bit of a hassle. The story itself is not memorable, nor the characters you meet aside from your corebots - cute robot companions who have a specific skill you can use for both combat and platform traversals. You play as Joules, but even the protagonist isn't in any way memorable and you never feel connected to her mission.
As you learn new skills and the enemies scale with your skill levels, Recore starts to fall apart quite dramatically. I really liked the use of different colours for different enemies. Using the d-pad changes which colour you fire - if you're up against red enemies, use the red ammo, same for blue, yellow, white etc. All okay. Until you start facing a whole swarm of the bastards, with no easy way of seeing what's behind you. Combat is clunky in close quarters and totally ineffective at long range. When you get swamped by several different colours all at once, you'll be staggered back and probably hit again before you're able to recover. It takes a fair amount of skill to jump , dash, change fire colour, use your corebot as back up, ensure your weapon doesn't overheat etc but it's never fun to do it. It's frustrating, it's clunky and that's before the bugs that might take effect. Several times, my weapon stopped firing and only quitting the game back to the dashboard could stop that. Other times, poor Joules got stuck in the scenery meaning insta-death. And at once point, during a tense boss battle close to the end of the game, I lost firepower AND got stuck in the scenery.
Another stupid lack of foresight is the fact you can only take 2 out of your 3 corebots. Which is a pain because you'll come across some sections where you need the 1 you had to leave behind. So you have to find a fast travel station to switch round again. Then you'll find another section where you'll need the one you left behind, so you'll have to backtrack to the fast travel point and change around again. FFS, why?
On top of this - the aim of the game is to collect Prismatic Cores - found as part of the main story but also side quests, where you need all 3 of your corebots. As I didn't really fancy trying to collect some of these tedious Prismatic Cores found perched atop seemingly unassailable ledges, I just stuck to the main campaign. Until I reached a point where I only had 17 of these cores, but needed 30 to progress. Fucking hell - nothing else for it, time to grind these dull, frustrating side quests.
I have to also moan about the final 1/3 of the game. It is shit. It's basically loads of incredibly dull, frustrating and annoying platform sections interspersed with the occasional 3 waves of very tough enemies. If you die on the last enemy of the final wave, you're right back to the start of wave 1. At close quarters. It looks rubbish, it's FAR too long and by the end of each section, I was so glad to have finished. Until there was another identical looking floor with the same mix of crap platforming and frustrating combat. And then you finish that..... only to be faced with yet another identical looking floor with the same mix of crap platforming and frustrating combat. And then you finish that.... etc etc.
Also, the final boss is way too difficult. I was delighted to finish this - not for any sense of achievement (aside from my own stubbornness winning over common sense) but because I never ever want to go back to such a frustrating, poorly designed, drab game like this.
I hated it, and coming from someone who always tends to see the positives in games, that's quite the accolade. Avoid - it's not worth 500 MS reward points.
I only started this to get the 500 MS reward points for unlocking 3 achievements. That didn't take me too long to do, and I got them all in the hand-holding opening section which is actually quite good. Combat seemed to be straightforward but reasonably fun, platforming sections were unoriginal but perfectly fine, so I thought what the hell, let's stick with it.
Unfortunately, Recore appears to age dreadfully the longer you play it. The world itself isn't particularly pretty or interesting, and if you're looking around for certain objects (more on this later) then respawning enemies seem to constantly get in your way which is a bit of a hassle. The story itself is not memorable, nor the characters you meet aside from your corebots - cute robot companions who have a specific skill you can use for both combat and platform traversals. You play as Joules, but even the protagonist isn't in any way memorable and you never feel connected to her mission.
As you learn new skills and the enemies scale with your skill levels, Recore starts to fall apart quite dramatically. I really liked the use of different colours for different enemies. Using the d-pad changes which colour you fire - if you're up against red enemies, use the red ammo, same for blue, yellow, white etc. All okay. Until you start facing a whole swarm of the bastards, with no easy way of seeing what's behind you. Combat is clunky in close quarters and totally ineffective at long range. When you get swamped by several different colours all at once, you'll be staggered back and probably hit again before you're able to recover. It takes a fair amount of skill to jump , dash, change fire colour, use your corebot as back up, ensure your weapon doesn't overheat etc but it's never fun to do it. It's frustrating, it's clunky and that's before the bugs that might take effect. Several times, my weapon stopped firing and only quitting the game back to the dashboard could stop that. Other times, poor Joules got stuck in the scenery meaning insta-death. And at once point, during a tense boss battle close to the end of the game, I lost firepower AND got stuck in the scenery.
Another stupid lack of foresight is the fact you can only take 2 out of your 3 corebots. Which is a pain because you'll come across some sections where you need the 1 you had to leave behind. So you have to find a fast travel station to switch round again. Then you'll find another section where you'll need the one you left behind, so you'll have to backtrack to the fast travel point and change around again. FFS, why?
On top of this - the aim of the game is to collect Prismatic Cores - found as part of the main story but also side quests, where you need all 3 of your corebots. As I didn't really fancy trying to collect some of these tedious Prismatic Cores found perched atop seemingly unassailable ledges, I just stuck to the main campaign. Until I reached a point where I only had 17 of these cores, but needed 30 to progress. Fucking hell - nothing else for it, time to grind these dull, frustrating side quests.
I have to also moan about the final 1/3 of the game. It is shit. It's basically loads of incredibly dull, frustrating and annoying platform sections interspersed with the occasional 3 waves of very tough enemies. If you die on the last enemy of the final wave, you're right back to the start of wave 1. At close quarters. It looks rubbish, it's FAR too long and by the end of each section, I was so glad to have finished. Until there was another identical looking floor with the same mix of crap platforming and frustrating combat. And then you finish that..... only to be faced with yet another identical looking floor with the same mix of crap platforming and frustrating combat. And then you finish that.... etc etc.
Also, the final boss is way too difficult. I was delighted to finish this - not for any sense of achievement (aside from my own stubbornness winning over common sense) but because I never ever want to go back to such a frustrating, poorly designed, drab game like this.
I hated it, and coming from someone who always tends to see the positives in games, that's quite the accolade. Avoid - it's not worth 500 MS reward points.
muito repetitivo, com muitos bugs e historia quase inexistente.
Game #28: ReCore
It starts pretty strong but after the first mission, the game just feels boring. Everything about this game is mediocre. Before playing ReCore I thought this was a hidden gem but looks like I was wrong.
5/10
It starts pretty strong but after the first mission, the game just feels boring. Everything about this game is mediocre. Before playing ReCore I thought this was a hidden gem but looks like I was wrong.
5/10
hm, definitely not my type of game, but i wont disagree that theres something special there that many ppl might enjoy. give it a try yourself!
Mais um que fazia anos que tinha interesse em jogar. Comecei bem despretensiosamente, esperando um game bem simples que fosse interessante para passar o tempo, mas acabei encontrando uma gameplay divertida com muitos elementos de plataforma. O mundo aberto dele é na proporção certa, sem muitos locais vazios e grandes sem motivos, você consegue andar por todo o mapa e sempre encontrar um item ou inimigos diferentes. Há várias mecânicas que achei até viciantes, como as de combo e uso dos companions nas batalhas;
Decent. Still had some bugs, even in the Definitive Edition, but nothing game-breaking. Abandoned the game in the tower at the end, once it became clear what it took to finish the game. Apparently, I'm not the only one looking at the small 2.5% of players who got the achievement for finishing the game.
un atentado contra el jugador. el 11-s de los juegos de la xbox. es que es malísimo joder.
Fui como quem não quer nada e fiquei apaixonado. Sei que vou contra a maioria, mas é um jogo simpático, com um pouco dos criadores de Metroid e uma boa plataforma. Queria tanto uma sequência.
Me encantó el concepto y la historia que presenta, aunque en la recta final empieza a sentirse repetitivo, una lastima que lo más probable es que no reciba una continuación
As much as it pains me to talk poorly on a unique game, this is one of those times.
Recore reeks of "next gen transitional hot mess with good concepts". It has a lot of neat ideas, a neat concept, a pretty cool story, but on the whole, the game fails simply because of either quality of life necessities that are bizarrely absent or the fact that it just...isn't that good to begin with. It's an ambitious title, for sure, especially only a few years into the Xbox One's lifespan, and yet somehow it fails at almost every aspect it sets it sights on.
First off, you inexplicably cannot set waypoints on the map. It's an open world game, with a billion Ubisoft type markers dotting the span of it, and yet you can't set waypoints to help you find things easier. Secondly, the fact that you have to travel back to a Crawler every single time to switch cores is absurd. That simply adds far too much backtracking in a game that's, let's face it, extremely empty and not interesting to look at. I don't mind backtracking, but good lord even I have my limits.
Recore is a prime example of a game that simply couldn't live up to what it wanted, primarily because it seemed the people who made it didn't know what to do with it or how to do it. And the worst part of it all is that everything that's wrong with it isn't even mechnical. It could've easily been avoided. Because for all intents and purposes, the game plays like butter. It's fun to control, easy to handle, everything makes sense in that scheme. The crafting is uninspired, sure, but rarely is crafting not uninspired, so that isn't really fair to criticize. Some folks say the combat is repetitive without realizing that that's what video games inherently are to begin with. It's biggest detriment isn't its UI or its controls or anything mechanical. In fact, it's biggest detriment is its setting, and its utter inability to utilize it in any meaningful or interesting way.
But the party system, and lack of ability to change core frames outside of the Crawler, is, in my opinion, the outright biggest mechanical sin the game offers. You can travel across two large swaths of map, only to reach your destination and find out, guess what, you don't have the right frame for the core you need to use. Then you have to go all the way back to the Crawler just to switch it, and then walk all the way because the only fast travel are specific points, and rarely are they nearby your actual destinations. This lack of thought towards a gamers time is, quite frankly, the kind of thing that makes someone stop playing altogether.
It was said to be somewhat inspired by games like Metroid and Mega Man, which makes sense in terms of the robotic overtones and the general worldbuilding, but not in the gameplay. At all. Those are not what a game like this should be like. They just don't mesh well. Recore is, at its core, tonally inconsistant, and unsure of what it's trying to do or what it's trying to be. If it had just been a rather linear adventure action game, it would've succeeded. If it had been an open world game but with the proper tools to achieve it, it would've succeeded. Instead, what we get is a game that doesn't know its ass from a hole in the ground because conceptually it's all over the damn place.
I really don't like being this critical of something that I, on the surface, appreciate, because I love things that think outside the box and try to do something totally different than the rest of the industry. But this is one of those times where it simply didn't work, and that's what's disappointing is realizing what Recore could've been instead of what we got. The game isn't by any means unplayable, and I'm sure some will find fun in the never ending grind and backtracking (things that, again, I don't always have a problem with until they make me have a problem with them), but Recore is one of those very rare examples of a game that, frankly, should've been approached entirely differently gameplay wise than the way it was.
It's like they got so much right, then stuck it in the wrong genre. It's quite baffling, honestly.
That being said, I appreciate what they tried to do, I really do. I just wish they had managed to make what the game could've been instead of what it turned out to be. But I applaud their ambition, their inventiveness, their unique ideas nonetheless. Even in the biggest letdowns, there are aspects to appreciate. Recore is cool, that's for sure. It just isn't fun. And when it comes to gaming, fun is the most important aspect.
Recore reeks of "next gen transitional hot mess with good concepts". It has a lot of neat ideas, a neat concept, a pretty cool story, but on the whole, the game fails simply because of either quality of life necessities that are bizarrely absent or the fact that it just...isn't that good to begin with. It's an ambitious title, for sure, especially only a few years into the Xbox One's lifespan, and yet somehow it fails at almost every aspect it sets it sights on.
First off, you inexplicably cannot set waypoints on the map. It's an open world game, with a billion Ubisoft type markers dotting the span of it, and yet you can't set waypoints to help you find things easier. Secondly, the fact that you have to travel back to a Crawler every single time to switch cores is absurd. That simply adds far too much backtracking in a game that's, let's face it, extremely empty and not interesting to look at. I don't mind backtracking, but good lord even I have my limits.
Recore is a prime example of a game that simply couldn't live up to what it wanted, primarily because it seemed the people who made it didn't know what to do with it or how to do it. And the worst part of it all is that everything that's wrong with it isn't even mechnical. It could've easily been avoided. Because for all intents and purposes, the game plays like butter. It's fun to control, easy to handle, everything makes sense in that scheme. The crafting is uninspired, sure, but rarely is crafting not uninspired, so that isn't really fair to criticize. Some folks say the combat is repetitive without realizing that that's what video games inherently are to begin with. It's biggest detriment isn't its UI or its controls or anything mechanical. In fact, it's biggest detriment is its setting, and its utter inability to utilize it in any meaningful or interesting way.
But the party system, and lack of ability to change core frames outside of the Crawler, is, in my opinion, the outright biggest mechanical sin the game offers. You can travel across two large swaths of map, only to reach your destination and find out, guess what, you don't have the right frame for the core you need to use. Then you have to go all the way back to the Crawler just to switch it, and then walk all the way because the only fast travel are specific points, and rarely are they nearby your actual destinations. This lack of thought towards a gamers time is, quite frankly, the kind of thing that makes someone stop playing altogether.
It was said to be somewhat inspired by games like Metroid and Mega Man, which makes sense in terms of the robotic overtones and the general worldbuilding, but not in the gameplay. At all. Those are not what a game like this should be like. They just don't mesh well. Recore is, at its core, tonally inconsistant, and unsure of what it's trying to do or what it's trying to be. If it had just been a rather linear adventure action game, it would've succeeded. If it had been an open world game but with the proper tools to achieve it, it would've succeeded. Instead, what we get is a game that doesn't know its ass from a hole in the ground because conceptually it's all over the damn place.
I really don't like being this critical of something that I, on the surface, appreciate, because I love things that think outside the box and try to do something totally different than the rest of the industry. But this is one of those times where it simply didn't work, and that's what's disappointing is realizing what Recore could've been instead of what we got. The game isn't by any means unplayable, and I'm sure some will find fun in the never ending grind and backtracking (things that, again, I don't always have a problem with until they make me have a problem with them), but Recore is one of those very rare examples of a game that, frankly, should've been approached entirely differently gameplay wise than the way it was.
It's like they got so much right, then stuck it in the wrong genre. It's quite baffling, honestly.
That being said, I appreciate what they tried to do, I really do. I just wish they had managed to make what the game could've been instead of what it turned out to be. But I applaud their ambition, their inventiveness, their unique ideas nonetheless. Even in the biggest letdowns, there are aspects to appreciate. Recore is cool, that's for sure. It just isn't fun. And when it comes to gaming, fun is the most important aspect.
Pues me ha encantado. Es justo lo que me apetecía jugar en estos momentos y me ha sentado genial, el gameplay es súper fresco y las peleas muy divertidas y dinámicas.
La estética me flipa, lo postapocaliptico debe ser una de mis debilidades. La historia no está mal aunque podría haberse desarrollado más y habría estado bastante mejor.
Ojalá hicieran la secuela en algún momento, lo necesita.
La estética me flipa, lo postapocaliptico debe ser una de mis debilidades. La historia no está mal aunque podría haberse desarrollado más y habría estado bastante mejor.
Ojalá hicieran la secuela en algún momento, lo necesita.
A pity that it's just too unpolished and simply "meh", I loved the reveal and wanted to play it a lot, but the end result, at least on its Steam release, is bleh. An enjoyable time, but I wanted to end like 4 or 5 hours before it actually ended; bad sign.
I didn't finished the game because it bugged on the final stage and I'm trapped on a box and cannot get out of it. I liked it until that part though
yeah.. no, there's absolutely no way to save this one, I really gave it a try and trusted things would get better, it's just the same thing over and over again, the same game enviorment, same combat techniques, and overall the story sucks ass
i bought it really cheap tho
i bought it really cheap tho
I so badly wanted this game to be good, but it was just too bland and forgettable. Felt like it lacked a hook for me.
feio, generico, repetitivo e chato
yesterday i ate cake for dinner and i think it made me ill
Feels a little dated these days but when you consider that the Xbox 360 launched back in 2005-- Huh? What's that?
Cuando empezas el juego te parece que va a estar buenísimo, una mezcla de megaman con Metroid prime, las mecánicas están re buenas y el gameplay también.
Le doy un dos por los aspectos malos, la historia es muy mala, está lleno de Bugs, faltan personajes, a las quest le faltan propósito, la historia es malísima(merece que lo vuelva a repetir).
No me termina de convencer, capaz si fuera por stages el juego estaría mucho mejor, pero así de mundo abierto como está planteado no me convenció.
La dificultad si no farmeas está muy bien, a menos claro que se te buguee y el enemigo se quede quieto esperando como baja su energía.
Le doy un dos por los aspectos malos, la historia es muy mala, está lleno de Bugs, faltan personajes, a las quest le faltan propósito, la historia es malísima(merece que lo vuelva a repetir).
No me termina de convencer, capaz si fuera por stages el juego estaría mucho mejor, pero así de mundo abierto como está planteado no me convenció.
La dificultad si no farmeas está muy bien, a menos claro que se te buguee y el enemigo se quede quieto esperando como baja su energía.
Un juego que para mi opinión paso desapercibido y esta simpático no inventa la rueda pero lo que hace lo hace bien y otras cosas lo hace bastante mal. Artísticamente me parece muy bonito y es una pena que no hubiese segunda porque tenia pontencial.
hidden gem on xbox catalog, really fun
Recore is a game that I regret not playing sooner, maybe more than any other game, though perhaps it's a good thing I didn't.
Recore came out in 2016, but it may as well not existed until late 2018. It performs terribly on Xbox, even the One X experiences crashes. It launched with less content and missing features (which have since been added into the Definitive Edition). For the first two years, the PC version was only available by way of jumping through the hoops of the Windows store.
I will say, flat out, I can only recommend playing this game on PC, through Steam, using a controller. You should not play this on Xbox, you should not buy this through the Windows store, and while M+KB is playable it isn't ideal.
Because of the game's reputation, I felt compelled to check out reviews of Recore, to find out why people didn't like it even after the Definitive Edition on Steam addressed a lot of problems I had heard of in the past. Part of the answer is, for critics at least, the Definitive Edition was too little too late, and the game's reputation was set in stone. The Definitive Edition doesn't even have a Metacritic score.
As for analyses by average users and amateur games journalists (fancy talk for "youtubers") I'm surprised by two things:
1: People compare Recore to other games a lot, which is not a problem on its own, but...
2: I've seen almost nobody Recore to the previous games from its leading creatives.
Recore is probably the phoenix that rose from the ashes of Keiji Inafune and Armature's prototype for a Mega Man X/Maverick Hunter first person shooter. After Inafune left Capcom, they probably still wanted to work together, but needed to find a way to actually get the money. Recore being a Microsoft Studios game was probably the only way that it was going to happen, but I feel like in a lot of ways this held the game back. I'll get back to this later, but what I'm trying to address right now is that, well...
I don't mean this in a condescending way, because it's mostly the fault of how the game was marketed and who it was available to during its launch window, but I honestly kind of think that the average Xbox fan probably lacks the "gaming vocabulary" to even parse what this game is. This game has a lot going on, it's a third person, action adventure, looter shooter, character action, open world, collectathon platformer, and that probably doesn't even cover everything. If someone doesn't even have the baseline "oh its third person Metroid Prime with a Mega Man X air-dash" the first time they boot up the game, they are going to be completely lost. A lot of the negativity surrounding the game is rooted in not even realizing that it's a collectathon until the very end, but I digress.
This is very much a game made by the people who made Metroid Prime. I swear, some of the UI and Menu sound effects are just straight up ripped from that game. Playing this right after finishing Metroid Prime was very natural, for a number of reasons.
My main problem with Metroid Prime was the combat encounters toward the end, which relied mostly on multiplying enemies that could only be defeated by color-coded weapons. Recore's entire combat system is built around this same color-matching mechanic, but there are a number of ways that they make it work for the length of an entire game. They also have streamlined things in a number of ways: switching beam colors no longer requires waiting through an animation, it's instant. Using the wrong color of beam won't completely negate damage, only result in weaker attacks.
In Metroid Prime, rapid fire, charged attacks, jumping, and dodging were all done with only 2 buttons, the resulting action being context dependent on whether A was being tapped or held, and on whether the control stick was being tilted. Here, all four actions have their own separate button. One of the most frustrating things about fighting the multi-colored fission metroids (and, to a lesser extent, the game's combat in general) was changing lock-on targets; in Recore, you just point the right stick in the direction of the enemy you want to switch to.
This is very much a game from Keiji Inafune. The technology of the game's setting, especially things like the E-Tower and Pylon 512 definitely evoke the same kind of feeling as Model W or any number of structures and machines from the Inti Creates Mega Man games. The game's platforming and movement are based primarily on dashes and air-dashes. Honestly, one of my biggest complaints about the game is that when you jump out of a dash you don't keep your momentum, something characteristic of Mega Man dashing physics as far back as the SNES. Dashing is even on the rightmost face button, just like in Mega Man X on SNES. The main character is named Joule, a name she shares with a major supporting character from Inti Creates' 2014 game Azure Striker Gunvolt.
Some people complain that the story of this game is too serious, too existentially threatening for a game featuring a girl and her robot dog fighting an evil Bionicle, but this is Keiji Inafune. Mega Man Zero 2 is the only video game I am aware of that is (well, was, I think they raised it for the Legacy Collection) rated E for Everyone, and also contains the phrase "concentration camps". This is expected from the kinds of settings Comcept conceptualizes.
If an enemy is low on health, they can be killed with a deathblow mini-game that will yield both a special kind of XP for your robot buddies, and a health refill. If you can kill small enemies or deplete segments of larger enemies fast enough, you can rack up a combo. If you have a combo of 10 or higher, you can expend 10 combo points to deathblow the enemy instantly, bypassing the mini-game. The final dungeon of the game has some really interesting uses of these mechanics: there are areas where you will constantly lose health, but there will either be small bug enemies that you can use to make your combo meter skyrocket, or landmine enemies that can be instantly deathblowed at any time.
Some players don't like that the final area of the game requires them to use the mechanics of the game in such advanced ways, but most people who play this game seemingly can't even get the basics down. From the beginning of the game, the player can use their robot dog to dig for items; the main story even requires it at multiple points. The achievement for digging 20 times is more rare than the achievement for entering the final level. The achievement for gliding for 20 seconds, something which will definitely happen if a player glides in the overworld at all, is more rare than the achievement for finishing the main story.
This final area, the E-Tower, is important to the story because its part of a terraforming system. Once you start progressing through the tower, a previously visited area of the game, Shifting Sands, now has a dynamic weather system because of the E-Tower's antics. Storms will periodically occur and (as the name of the area implies) shift the sand around, making new areas accessible. Only about 1 in 5 players who enters the final level finds this content at all.
Anyway, I feel like this is becoming a ramble, even by my standards, so let me try to boil it down.
What do I like about this game?
I like the exploration, I like using the different robots to traverse new areas, to find new dungeons. It's similar to finding shrines in Breath of the Wild, the FL1R and T8NK robots are even comparable to the sail-cloth and motorcycle from that game. Climbing up rock formations gathering crafting materials reminds me a lot of gathering items in a game like Xenoblade X, but without the demoralizing intimidation of that game's sheer scale.
I wish I had realized sooner that the map icons show you what kind of dungeon each one is, because I would have tackled more of the Traversal Dungeons (the platforming focused ones) sooner if I had known how to distinguish them (they're the ones with the triangular hazard icon). This is no Bowser's Fury by any stretch but the platforming is really fun and fluid. It's especially fun with the spider robot, grappling onto a rail, clanking around on it, air-dashing to reach the next one.
The combat takes a little while to really get going, but once you get used to it, and especially once you get the different firing modes in the DLC area, it's a really engaging loop. Some of the encounters are a little tough, but there isn't really anything that gets ridiculous, outside of maybe the final boss. It's a really busy encounter, but I still got through it on my first try.
I really like the setting, it reminds me of the Lego Mindstorms Stormrunner flash game. A desert planet, industrial robots, it's just neat.
What don't I like?
The presentation in general is a bit off, but the soundtrack is the most glaring. There may as well only be two types of song in the game. The first is droning orchestral swells, boring film score type tracks to let you know the things that are happening are very important and dramatic. The second is rhythmic bass heavy tracks, sometimes in an unusual time signature, to let you know that things are tense. Mega Man and Metroid are both known for their incredible soundtracks; I played Recore for almost 20 hours these past few weeks and don't remember a single melody, though I will admit that around the 15 hour mark I started playing with a podcast in the background, because the game audio just wasn't that important to my experience. The soundtrack was composed by a guy who mostly has worked on the sound of FPS games and movie tie-ins. I don't mean to say that this music is bad, or even that this was the result of his individual creative choice, but I do think that this music was a poor fit for this game, and I have a hard time imagining that it was anything other than a Microsoft decision.
And as much as I love the setting, I do wish there was more variety. If there was a sequel I'd hope that it would be set either on a different planet, or after enough terraforming has happened to give Far Eden some different climates, biomes, etc. But of course, a sequel to this game will probably not happen, and if it did, it probably wouldn't be made by Armature and Comcept.
In conclusion:
Recore is the best thing Keiji Inafune has been attached to since leaving Capcom, and I hope that's not in spite of his involvement.
Recore is basically the only real video game Armature has even made (everything else is ports, VR shit, and a now defunct online shooter), and that's a shame, I'd love to see more.
Recore is probably the best Microsoft Studios game that isn't a 2D platformer.
Recore is not in my top ten games of the past decade, but if I listed my top fifty, it might be somewhere in the thirties or so.
Recore isn't great, at one point it probably wasn't even good, but it is now. I'd say give it a chance. I went in out of morbid curiosity, I expected to hate it, but if you can play it on its own terms its genuinely a great time.
Recore came out in 2016, but it may as well not existed until late 2018. It performs terribly on Xbox, even the One X experiences crashes. It launched with less content and missing features (which have since been added into the Definitive Edition). For the first two years, the PC version was only available by way of jumping through the hoops of the Windows store.
I will say, flat out, I can only recommend playing this game on PC, through Steam, using a controller. You should not play this on Xbox, you should not buy this through the Windows store, and while M+KB is playable it isn't ideal.
Because of the game's reputation, I felt compelled to check out reviews of Recore, to find out why people didn't like it even after the Definitive Edition on Steam addressed a lot of problems I had heard of in the past. Part of the answer is, for critics at least, the Definitive Edition was too little too late, and the game's reputation was set in stone. The Definitive Edition doesn't even have a Metacritic score.
As for analyses by average users and amateur games journalists (fancy talk for "youtubers") I'm surprised by two things:
1: People compare Recore to other games a lot, which is not a problem on its own, but...
2: I've seen almost nobody Recore to the previous games from its leading creatives.
Recore is probably the phoenix that rose from the ashes of Keiji Inafune and Armature's prototype for a Mega Man X/Maverick Hunter first person shooter. After Inafune left Capcom, they probably still wanted to work together, but needed to find a way to actually get the money. Recore being a Microsoft Studios game was probably the only way that it was going to happen, but I feel like in a lot of ways this held the game back. I'll get back to this later, but what I'm trying to address right now is that, well...
I don't mean this in a condescending way, because it's mostly the fault of how the game was marketed and who it was available to during its launch window, but I honestly kind of think that the average Xbox fan probably lacks the "gaming vocabulary" to even parse what this game is. This game has a lot going on, it's a third person, action adventure, looter shooter, character action, open world, collectathon platformer, and that probably doesn't even cover everything. If someone doesn't even have the baseline "oh its third person Metroid Prime with a Mega Man X air-dash" the first time they boot up the game, they are going to be completely lost. A lot of the negativity surrounding the game is rooted in not even realizing that it's a collectathon until the very end, but I digress.
This is very much a game made by the people who made Metroid Prime. I swear, some of the UI and Menu sound effects are just straight up ripped from that game. Playing this right after finishing Metroid Prime was very natural, for a number of reasons.
My main problem with Metroid Prime was the combat encounters toward the end, which relied mostly on multiplying enemies that could only be defeated by color-coded weapons. Recore's entire combat system is built around this same color-matching mechanic, but there are a number of ways that they make it work for the length of an entire game. They also have streamlined things in a number of ways: switching beam colors no longer requires waiting through an animation, it's instant. Using the wrong color of beam won't completely negate damage, only result in weaker attacks.
In Metroid Prime, rapid fire, charged attacks, jumping, and dodging were all done with only 2 buttons, the resulting action being context dependent on whether A was being tapped or held, and on whether the control stick was being tilted. Here, all four actions have their own separate button. One of the most frustrating things about fighting the multi-colored fission metroids (and, to a lesser extent, the game's combat in general) was changing lock-on targets; in Recore, you just point the right stick in the direction of the enemy you want to switch to.
This is very much a game from Keiji Inafune. The technology of the game's setting, especially things like the E-Tower and Pylon 512 definitely evoke the same kind of feeling as Model W or any number of structures and machines from the Inti Creates Mega Man games. The game's platforming and movement are based primarily on dashes and air-dashes. Honestly, one of my biggest complaints about the game is that when you jump out of a dash you don't keep your momentum, something characteristic of Mega Man dashing physics as far back as the SNES. Dashing is even on the rightmost face button, just like in Mega Man X on SNES. The main character is named Joule, a name she shares with a major supporting character from Inti Creates' 2014 game Azure Striker Gunvolt.
Some people complain that the story of this game is too serious, too existentially threatening for a game featuring a girl and her robot dog fighting an evil Bionicle, but this is Keiji Inafune. Mega Man Zero 2 is the only video game I am aware of that is (well, was, I think they raised it for the Legacy Collection) rated E for Everyone, and also contains the phrase "concentration camps". This is expected from the kinds of settings Comcept conceptualizes.
If an enemy is low on health, they can be killed with a deathblow mini-game that will yield both a special kind of XP for your robot buddies, and a health refill. If you can kill small enemies or deplete segments of larger enemies fast enough, you can rack up a combo. If you have a combo of 10 or higher, you can expend 10 combo points to deathblow the enemy instantly, bypassing the mini-game. The final dungeon of the game has some really interesting uses of these mechanics: there are areas where you will constantly lose health, but there will either be small bug enemies that you can use to make your combo meter skyrocket, or landmine enemies that can be instantly deathblowed at any time.
Some players don't like that the final area of the game requires them to use the mechanics of the game in such advanced ways, but most people who play this game seemingly can't even get the basics down. From the beginning of the game, the player can use their robot dog to dig for items; the main story even requires it at multiple points. The achievement for digging 20 times is more rare than the achievement for entering the final level. The achievement for gliding for 20 seconds, something which will definitely happen if a player glides in the overworld at all, is more rare than the achievement for finishing the main story.
This final area, the E-Tower, is important to the story because its part of a terraforming system. Once you start progressing through the tower, a previously visited area of the game, Shifting Sands, now has a dynamic weather system because of the E-Tower's antics. Storms will periodically occur and (as the name of the area implies) shift the sand around, making new areas accessible. Only about 1 in 5 players who enters the final level finds this content at all.
Anyway, I feel like this is becoming a ramble, even by my standards, so let me try to boil it down.
What do I like about this game?
I like the exploration, I like using the different robots to traverse new areas, to find new dungeons. It's similar to finding shrines in Breath of the Wild, the FL1R and T8NK robots are even comparable to the sail-cloth and motorcycle from that game. Climbing up rock formations gathering crafting materials reminds me a lot of gathering items in a game like Xenoblade X, but without the demoralizing intimidation of that game's sheer scale.
I wish I had realized sooner that the map icons show you what kind of dungeon each one is, because I would have tackled more of the Traversal Dungeons (the platforming focused ones) sooner if I had known how to distinguish them (they're the ones with the triangular hazard icon). This is no Bowser's Fury by any stretch but the platforming is really fun and fluid. It's especially fun with the spider robot, grappling onto a rail, clanking around on it, air-dashing to reach the next one.
The combat takes a little while to really get going, but once you get used to it, and especially once you get the different firing modes in the DLC area, it's a really engaging loop. Some of the encounters are a little tough, but there isn't really anything that gets ridiculous, outside of maybe the final boss. It's a really busy encounter, but I still got through it on my first try.
I really like the setting, it reminds me of the Lego Mindstorms Stormrunner flash game. A desert planet, industrial robots, it's just neat.
What don't I like?
The presentation in general is a bit off, but the soundtrack is the most glaring. There may as well only be two types of song in the game. The first is droning orchestral swells, boring film score type tracks to let you know the things that are happening are very important and dramatic. The second is rhythmic bass heavy tracks, sometimes in an unusual time signature, to let you know that things are tense. Mega Man and Metroid are both known for their incredible soundtracks; I played Recore for almost 20 hours these past few weeks and don't remember a single melody, though I will admit that around the 15 hour mark I started playing with a podcast in the background, because the game audio just wasn't that important to my experience. The soundtrack was composed by a guy who mostly has worked on the sound of FPS games and movie tie-ins. I don't mean to say that this music is bad, or even that this was the result of his individual creative choice, but I do think that this music was a poor fit for this game, and I have a hard time imagining that it was anything other than a Microsoft decision.
And as much as I love the setting, I do wish there was more variety. If there was a sequel I'd hope that it would be set either on a different planet, or after enough terraforming has happened to give Far Eden some different climates, biomes, etc. But of course, a sequel to this game will probably not happen, and if it did, it probably wouldn't be made by Armature and Comcept.
In conclusion:
Recore is the best thing Keiji Inafune has been attached to since leaving Capcom, and I hope that's not in spite of his involvement.
Recore is basically the only real video game Armature has even made (everything else is ports, VR shit, and a now defunct online shooter), and that's a shame, I'd love to see more.
Recore is probably the best Microsoft Studios game that isn't a 2D platformer.
Recore is not in my top ten games of the past decade, but if I listed my top fifty, it might be somewhere in the thirties or so.
Recore isn't great, at one point it probably wasn't even good, but it is now. I'd say give it a chance. I went in out of morbid curiosity, I expected to hate it, but if you can play it on its own terms its genuinely a great time.
Fun game with some rough edges up until the cheap-ass Bolt Cutter boss