Whenever I start a new game, I always keep the story in mind, which is usually my favorite aspect of playing one for the first time. Sometimes, a game I wasn’t feeling just clicks when the story hooks me in. In other situations, if I find the plot dragging on, I lose interest even if the gameplay is top-notch.
Regions of Ruin: Runegate was a game that immediately took my interest. Not only did the developers at Gameclaw Studio blend a fantastic score and beautiful pixel art style, but they also crafted a story that I quickly got lost in. Unfortunately, as the game progressed, I found myself more and more underwhelmed to the point that the ending left me more confused than anything else.
An Unexpected Journey
The story of Regions of Ruin begins as a small tribe of dwarves escapes from a goblin army destroying their home. During their attempt to flee the carnage, they end up finding a mysterious runegate and escape into it right before they’re overwhelmed. Once inside the game teleported me to a ruined stronghold, and when I was sent through the gate again, this time I found myself in a whole different world. Initially, the plot hooked me in immediately because of how interesting the characters were. The fact that they were just trying to survive an attack that took most of their people, and being forced to enter an unfamiliar new world, was genuinely compelling.
As the story continued, I quickly learned that the world known as Otam is plagued by an evil tribe with a leader who seems to never age. At first, I thought it was a fine enough story premise, since the game needed some antagonist that served as a foil to the protagonist. However, I quickly found out it was some evil presence that takes over people, which made the overarching threat pretty lackluster. It feels like a subpar way of creating an overarching villain for future adventures instead of creating one for the current one. Some of my favorite pieces of fiction always have a villain that is not only unique but memorable, and those that I end up disliking do what Regions of Ruin did. My disappointment only grew once I was able to unlock the world of Ealam, which had the same thing happen; their ruler just made the fight against him feel hollow because I was fighting a husk instead of a well-written and complex villain.
Scattered across the game are smaller side stories to get you more invested in both worlds, with most giving you either gold or a new villager for the stronghold. A few quests test your morality, with my absolute favorite being the mammoth side quest, which was just a beautiful story that I wish the game had more of. There are also longer side quests that had me visiting different areas, which at the beginning was quite fun as I got more involved in the world. After a while, though, it became “go here, kill this thing there.” Fortunately, they had ended up giving me either some incredible armor or gear to make combat way easier. In certain cases, I even received new companions to journey with. They would also assist me in battle.
Slayer of Evil
The gameplay of Regions of Ruin is simple but also incredibly complex. I started the adventure staring at a blank world map. This new world, filled with new locations to visit and people to fight, was expansive. In order to move around the world to these blank places, I needed food, which is where the home base came in. Villagers of my base are able to be sent out across the world to gather resources such as food, wood, and stone. The more that I cleared out new areas, I was able to not only recruit more villagers but also create new areas for them to gather material for me. The game starts with a few small areas, but eventually becomes a large list that can feel overwhelming, but is actually pretty manageable.
The resource gathering system is a complex one, which required me to always come back home to check if I maxed out a resource or if I needed to send workers to another one. This was because upgrading and repairing the base can be costly but very worth it, as I could fix areas that contained infinite resources instead of waiting for my workers to drain a region of its own before moving on to the next. As well as creating places for my villagers to trade or create things for me, such as healing potions, which were a lifesaver during moments of combat.
The combat, on the other hand, is a different story altogether. In the beginning, I found it to be very challenging, as I had to learn which weapon complemented my playstyle the best. I also needed to move my mouse around, as the way it moved dictated which way I attacked. I even had to deal with goblins or humans as a lone dwarf, which made me resourceful in knowing when to fall back or when to strike. It paired well with the skill tree that, as you upgrade, grants powerful new abilities like a dash or even making each slash of mine give a slight poison damage.
Unfortunately, that all changed when I gained companions. At first, it felt nice to have another person to help me fight, standing by my side to make hard challenges easier. However, I later found out that the combat that I found challenging became trivial once I let my companions distract the opponents. The enemies on screen would entirely focus on them, letting me run back to heal or, better yet, jump over them and attack them from the back. Most enemies often put up no resistance, as they were too distracted by the companions in front of them. Even the final boss suffers from this, as the monsters they summon to attack me actually start trying to attack them, making it easy for me to kill them all and move on to the next phase.
A Tale Half Written
The biggest issue I have with Regions of Ruin is the narrative, which turned out to be a major letdown despite the compelling first few hours. As stated earlier, once you defeat the evil leader that’s been terrorizing Otam, it turns out he was being manipulated and controlled by a dark evil presence scattered across the universe, and once I removed the evil from Ealam, the game just ended. Right as I thought the game was just starting to ramp up, the credits started, leaving me genuinely confused and disappointed. The game states that there will be more worlds to explore after, with a traveler in the stronghold stated to sell keys to new worlds in the future, both moderated and created by users. I wouldn’t mind the promise of more to do if the main campaign didn’t end on such a halfhearted note. Especially when the game had me going around the world killing and platforming instead of writing a compelling villain.
There are small moments of platforming scattered across the world, most of the time spent in these sections was falling from the slippery controls from having to jump, and also moving my mouse to determine which way I faced to make my landings better. There is also a lot of downtime that made me sit in my chair bored, from having to earn enough food in early game to explore the world faster, to the near endgame as I had to travel around Ealam trying to find certain rare material needed to “protect the world,” and instead of finding it on my own and just receiving the amount needed, I had to send my workers out to farm it. I had enough people to max out the amount, so it wouldn’t take so long, but the fact that I just had to sit there and watch the number go up was really mind-numbing.
Journey’s End
I wanted to love Regions of Ruin; the gameplay is mostly a solid experience, and the storytelling at the start is compelling. I even found myself excited to see how much more my base evolved from a ruined stronghold to a place filled with people I saved, who now live peacefully under our shared home. However, the more I played, the more I found myself breezing through combat. Said combat sadly only continued to devolve once one or two more people joined my group.
While I initially found the story rich and compelling, I felt like it ended right as things were starting to get interesting. Further, the choice to emphasize an amorphous “dark presence” rather than two equally compelling villains was deeply disappointing. Overall, Regions of Ruin: Runegate is a lackluster experience to such an extent that, when the credits rolled, I felt more confused than anything else.
Disclaimer: Raw Fury provided a PC (Steam) copy of Regions of Ruin: Runegate for review purposes.
