RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore (Switch) Review
Interesting combat
Level themes change every couple of stages
Option to play the game without story mode
In game banter repeats too often
Random difficulty spikes
No good option to power up character
RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore is a new roguelite action RPG. The story takes place around a younger girl that is transported to a magical world that is powered by sweets, aka standard anime tropes. The title brings memories of other lesser entries in the genre, such as Sorcery Saga or Omega Labyrinth. The question then becomes, if it is aiming for the middle, will it at least leave a lasting impression.
From the start, RemiLore does some fun things with the interaction of the main character, Remi, and the book companion, Lore. Throughout the game the two of them will talk allowing the player to learn more about both via these interactions. The first time the dialog prompts on screen they are normally in the vein of amusing and enjoyable. The problem is that there doesn’t really seem to be any way to make it stop appearing when the trigger is flipped for its prompt, so it gets added to the bag of random dialog randomly drawn from every 90 or so seconds.
The main problem comes in the form of how the character is powered up doesn’t really impact how easy it is to play through the game again. Since death is always around the corner, permanent upgrades are highly coveted and make repeating levels a little easier each time. Here the upgrades feel more random, and at times almost non-impactful. Meaning that starting from the beginning isn’t a very good place to start.
The upgrades for the character themselves are also very limited, mainly consisting only of spells or the chance at better weapon drops during play. There is also the chance of a spell scroll either increasing or decreasing the health or mana pool of the player, but this also can contain a random spell which makes them almost entirely not worth the gamble if a good spell might be swapped.
RemiLore is a fine game, if there is a roguelite fan out there that is simply chomping at the bit to play something more traditional on the Switch this is the title. The problem becomes that everything in the game is simply a near miss. The balance of the player isn’t one sided enough to make it punishing like some of the Shiren titles, and not easy enough to make it like an Izuna title. Where it ended up landing was some place where it will probably be forgotten.
Also available on Xbox One, PS4, and PC.
