It's not often that I get hooked on a roguelike for the story, normally I get invested for the mechanics. Returnal is one of the few cases where both are so intriguing that I can't help but want to keep playing, which is an incredible feat given that a standard loop will take upwards of an hour.

Unraveling the mystery of Atropos, and Selene herself, is such a driving force that even when I wasn't playing the game I was thinking about it, theorising what there is to find, piecing together clues from Audio Logs and Xenoglyphs, and it finds a happy middle ground of giving you just enough to connect dots, but not enough to see the full picture.

It's important to note as well that the moment-to-moment gameplay is incredibly satisfying, so that when there are lulls in the story it doesn't matter as much because its still just a blast playing it. Admittedly a couple of the bosses (or at least the paths getting to them when you loop), are difficult for difficulties sake, and feel like they're there just to hold you back and extend game time, especially at the half-way mark. But when you get a good loop, with great gear, and you're riding that wave of Level 5 Adrenaline, it feels like an utter dream.

Returnal really is one of the best showcase of the PS5 so far, utilising it's SSD, GPU, and the amazing DualSense, to create a title that's up there with God of War and Spiderman in terms of Sony's first-party quality

though it's aesthetically and narratively immaculate, it pains me to say that i don't like this game that much. i love everything this game brings to the table except its gameplay, because it is a very shitty roguelike. it lacks so many QOL features that you really need to make the genre work. you could argue QOL features would make it too easy when it's obviously going for a "difficult game to emphasis the oppressive and hopeless nature of overcoming the adversity" type of design, but i would disagree. your runs will get dominated by how good your drops are. and god help you if you get stuck with that shitty starting pistol because the game just doesn't give you any guns.

a regular issue i'd run into with this game is that i'd have runs that went extremely well or extremely poorly with very little middleground. this was almost always determined by if i got a good gun early and/or other consumables that were useful (and not useless ones like shocking springs). during those good runs, i'd have a lot of fun and feel that rare kind of stress that video games evoke that makes you feel good. meanwhile, when i had my bad runs, i would think that this was a stupid game masquerading as a brilliant one. that's not even mentioning how boss runs can be egregious and require so much time and effort to invest in that gets wasted when the game decides to give you dogshit to work with. the derelict citadel in general has some of the worst shit to deal with because you have an excessively long boss run combined with enemies that actively punish you for killing them with melee (the broken mech guys) or ones that will suicidebomb you if you don't focus your entire attention on killing them. there's challenging, and then there's just frustrating. this game does not walk that line even close to well.

and i know it's easy to comment "skill issue" or whatever but even when i was doing clean-up runs at the end of the game for the trophies and ostensibly had beaten the game, i was still getting runs that i couldn't get going because of drops. i think a very quick and easy band-aid solution to this would be to add the option for the player to pick between the god awful starting pistol and another randomly picked base gun. there's still bad guns (the shotgun, the disc gun) but at least they're not death sentences like the pistol. if we're going deeper, i think the game would either have to do a lot of restructuring to accommodate how actively unfun it can be to play (retool and balance enemies, change what secret areas can give out, make guns more guaranteed to spawn at certain locations, etc.). or, fuck it, just don't make it a roguelike. i genuinely love so much of this game, but i simultaneously detested its gameplay, and i often just wished it had been any other genre besides roguelike. i can imagine this game playing 20x better as a metroidvania with slightly tweaked mechanics. hell, maybe just turn it into a more platform-y type of third-person shooter like what control was going for. just, something had to be better than this.

i hate to belabor this point but i need to stress that this game plays worse than almost everyone i know has implied and i felt like i was taking crazy pills playing this mid-at-best roguelike formula. i found the setting and the themes of this game captivating, and they were truthfully what kept me going when this game repeatedly burned me and my time. there's a great, fantastic game buried underneath a lot of dirt here. i just wish i could've played that one instead of the one i got.

Would it be wrong to consider this game a cult classic after only being 3 years out from its release?

Writing about Returnal is difficult for me because I don't think I have the skills to accurately describe just how brilliant it is. Housemarque crafted something special here, so instead of trying to decern whether or not you should play it by reading this, just give it a shot! If you're at all a fan of unraveling narratives and intrinsically motivated gameplay, this'll become one of your favorites.

I don't think I've ever played a psychologic-horror bullet-hell third-person rogue-like and I highly doubt I ever will again, but I am so happy to have had the experience. Returnal captivated me to such an extent that I beat it in 5 days. The gameplay is frenetic and addictive with just the right amount of difficulty. I've beaten many souls-like games in my life, but the boss battles in Returnal had my heart racing to an extent I've never felt before where I could actually feel it beating in my chest. The story is haunting and has moments that stick in my mind even after I've finished the game. After beating it I am left with a strange feeling of loss, like I've just had an experience that I'll never have again.

To summarize:

Gameplay: 10/10
Game world: 10/10
Boss Battles: 10/10
Music: 10/10
Story: WTF/10

If you have a PS5 or PC buy and experience this. If you don't have a PS5 or PC sell your organs so that you can buy one and experience this.

I enjoyed Returnal until the exact moment I didn't, which is the halfway point when the game pulls the rug out from under you and goes "Sorry, you lose for story reasons, start over from scratch." It's one thing if a roguelike/lite resets your progress when you die, if you aren't good enough this run - that's kinda the genre. But it's another when that element is taken out of your hands. I had such a good setup and was enjoying the tight gameplay and tension the game had to offer, but in that instance, Returnal killed all momentum it had going for it. Try as I might, I couldn't muster enough enthusiasm to continue. A shame.

Fantastic game. The boss fights and gameplay in this are top notch. I knew it was going to be hard, and it was, but eventually I "got good" enough to beat it.

Co-op is pretty fun but can be buggy at times. Although enemies didn't feel that much harder, I wouldn't say co-op was necessarily easier as you have to split resources like health. I like how you can still earn your own collectibles, ether, and weapon traits while joining another player's game. Ultimately it was the co-op mode that made me pick this one up to play with a friend, and I'm super glad I finally tried it.

Do you see the White Shadow?

Have you ever played a game you are not sure if you are even going to like it, but still give it a go? Not only this was me with this one, but it also happened to my brother. The idea to play it was his, as he had downloaded it to try it out himself but saw it had co-op, and since we share a PS+ Extra subscription, might as well join him!

Returnal begins in a very peculiar manner. One of the first things you see after starting to play, is the corpse of your own character, Selene, and shortly after, you are probably going to get killed by an enemy that is 5 times your size. Start getting used to this, it's going to happen a LOT, that difficulty warning when you first boot up the game isn't just for show

As a Roguelike, Returnal shares a lot of things that you have probably seen in other games of the genre, every run will not play like the previous one unless you really try to, all while you quickly fall in love with the amazing gunplay (Hollowseekers, Full Auto Thermogenics and Leech Rounds Carbines are the best weapons by the way don't fucking fight me over this), snappy movement (I mean, hell, you even get a grappling hook as you progress, who doesn't like those?), great boss fights and mechanics that reward you heavily as you improve and become better at surviving and dominating the high skill-high rewards aspects of it

I never considered myself a big fan of it, unless it was either extremely fun (like Risk of Rain 2, Slay the Spire) or it was trying to tell a great story (like Hades). Returnal does both, by telling one that uses its cosmic horror aspects to invoke a feel of helplessness and dread that keeps you wanting to know more, and the same time having yourself realize that the more you learn, the worse the situation gets. And like in most of my reviews, that's as far as I can go without getting into spoilers.

However, it's hard to pitch someone a $70 game of a genre that is niche on its own, but if you really enjoy this kind of game or just difficult ones in general, consider picking this one up (or if you have a PS5, try it out in PS+ Extra)

Oh, by the way, if you decide to play this in Co-op, be aware that there are some game breaking bugs on it that were never patched so you might need to do some workarounds with them, some of them would cost the runs I had with my brother on its entirey

No other game I've played rewards perfect play (avoiding getting hit) as much as this one. And for this reason, it is incredibly difficult and frustrating at times being absolutely brutally punishing when you fail.

That said, the environments, presentation and moments when you do actually progress feel more empowering then anything. This is still worth checking out in my opinion for people that like roguelike gameplay and this is closer to what I wished Risk of Rain 2 was. Given it's utter difficulty and punishment, I may never finish this game completely but I still respect it for what it is.

Returnal had a weird effect on me.

While I did have a fantastic time with it, it was also one of my most frustrating experiences of the year.

And while it may seem like I'm fighting against the game's own nature (which I kind of am), I have to say that this very good game would've been even better if it wasn't a roguelike.

One thing that I have to highly praise Returnal is its gameplay. It's just superb. Probably one of the main reasons you'll keep going back to it, even if it annoys you're brains out. Shooting, running, dashing, traversing through areas feels fast and great thanks to the game's sleek mobility. Control scheme is also perfection, which helps to boost fun-factor. And I won't even go into details about how well the dualsense enriches Selene's journey.

Oh and the boss fights... They'll keep your adrenaline high, but they're incredible! Graphics are also stunning. The amount of (beautiful) things on screen is crazy and marvelous. It's basically bullet hell shooter orgasm. The whole presentation is done well. It might seem a bit too much at first, but once you get it, it stays with you. Even the environments, which at first seemed repetitive, but they grew on me.

As for the story, I do admit that the ending sucks (both of them), but up until that point, it managed to keep me interested. Sure, it's minimalistic and very cryptic, but the atmosphere created by the whole 'death and ressurection in Atropos' thing was interesting. The mystery is there and pulls you in, even if your anger is telling you to stop playing.

Ok, now I have to say this: This game shouldn't be a roguelike.

Although I loved playing it, I didn't exactly have a great time experiencing it. I blame it on how Returnal approached the genre.

Each run took too long, even if you were lucky. Enemies did MAJOR damage out of nowhere and without any reason. Shortcuts were necessary, but they're almost nonexistent here. Weapon variety is good, but not all of them are actually useful. Every single item HAVE to be huge gambit. And all that packed with a very bad ending that just ruins the terrific sense of accomplishment given by the gameplay.

Returnal just feels overly unbalanced, most of the time. It's as if the RNG hates you 24/7. Mechanics are more often trying to frustate you instead of helping. You can see that in the amount of permanent power ups or skills you get - almost nothing! Just a few concerning traversing each level!

This game could've been so much better than it is.

Returnal is by no means a bad game. I did love playing it. But I'm not sure if I'd recommend it to anyone, even if you're a fan of the genre.

I had a great time, but also a major headache.

Gameplay is annoying sometimes but this is the most effective psychological horror has ever been on me since Silent Hill 2 which i played nearly a decade ago. The sheer fact that this game had a big budget/sony backing it made for the BEST liscensed music in a video game maybe ever. This game's story twists and turns so many times it's insane. Sure the idea of "haha wow wouldnt a character go crazy if they were in a roguelike scenario actually??" is simple! But the execution is all that matters and this game stretches it into Lovecraft, Alien, Mind Breakingly beautiful terror. There wasnt a moment where i was seeing something new and not completely locked in staring at the screen. The game avoids the "breaking the game with certain item combos" thing a lot of my favorite roguelikes have, which is unfortunate, and the difficulty is annoying sometimes, but really that's all that stops this from being a 10 for me. Gotta play thru the free DLC now because i need MORE