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.