REVIEW: Hindsight 20/20 – Wrath of the Raakshasa

REVIEW: Hindsight 20/20 – Wrath of the Raakshasa

As a game that promotes replayability, the lack of accessibility options hit the game hard.

Released: Steam
Type: Single-player
Genre: Action Adventure
Developer: Triple-I Games
Publisher: Triple-I Games
Release date: 9 Sep, 2021

Intro

Hindsight 20/20 – Wrath of the Raakshasa is an action-adventure game with various story branching. You’ll be given decisions every time you act, which leads to 6+ unique endings.

Visuals

The game uses low poly models with filters on the main character to make him look glowing. The color palette doesn’t match sometimes, especially when there are a lot of actions going on. However, the interior designs are decent. Everything looks similar to the theme, although the design of the area can be odd sometimes if you realize where you are going. There are a lot of outdoor areas in a castle, along with traps, and dungeon-like rooms. I could understand that there might be some clash between the aesthetic and in-game decision as to what the building is used for, but it just doesn’t make sense most of the time.

Story

Despite having numerous endings, the story feels bland to me. I couldn’t relate to any NPCs since there isn’t much to talk about – talking to them feels as if I’m just talking just for the sake of receiving quests. Although it might be true to some extent, the game clearly wants to go beyond that. There might be some events that shake my emotion sometimes, but that only occurred once or twice throughout my playthrough.

The ending helps to make you curious about the other endings. It always gives you a slight hint of the other ending by letting you know about what’s happening in the main character’s thoughts and regrets. I found the approach to work best for these kinds of games, and I admit that I couldn’t predict some of the endings. However, some endings are just way too similar to each other. The same video will be played again and again, and there is no way to skip these at all. It was boring to watch the same scene several times since it can take a few minutes to finish.

The Game

Gameplay

The game provides a vast area where you need to do a very long walk to reach an objective, even in dungeons. This forces you to use your stamina to dash, although there is a limit on how many times you can do it in a short time. To make it worse, you’ll walk slower whenever you run out of stamina. The story mode, the easiest difficulty that is accessible from the options, might eliminate the stamina bar, but that only happens in combat. I couldn’t think of any reason not to implement unlimited stamina outside battle except to eat up your playtime walking between places.

Once you’re out of vast maps, there will be narrow paths that can lead you to death. The second area is full of these and the thing is, it’s easy to fall if you are not walking carefully. Moreover, you also need to wait for a very long time until you respawn if you die.

Dying from a slight misstep feels cheap to me.

Weapons

There are 2 weapons with slightly different mechanics that you can use. You need to chain a combo of 3 to deal damage to the enemies with both weapons, although the sword can also damage the enemies on the sixth combo. To be honest, I don’t understand why I couldn’t deal any damage with the 6 combos using my stun baton, even though it is harder to execute compared to the 3 combo ones. It defeats any reason to chain longer combos, especially since the 6 combo hit doesn’t give any benefit apart from a knockback and health packs, which are not needed most of the time.

Despite having 2 weapons with different mechanics, the stun baton is way better compared to the sword. You might need to learn how to chain combos with the stun baton at first, especially since you need to attack different enemies to initiate a combo, but it will be easier and faster to defeat the enemies that way. The sword deals less damage than the stun baton, and although it might work better in one vs many situations, you mostly have to deal with two enemies at the same time. Furthermore, most endings are tied with the use of stun baton, lessening your reason to use the sword.

Dealing a 6 combo with a stun baton might look satisfying at first, but you won’t deal any damage with it.

Dungeons

Dungeons are way too similar to each other. The rooms will have either enemies, block-pushing puzzles, or obstacle courses where you need to walk slowly to avoid getting hit by hazards. The puzzles are usually easy enough to figure out and can be brute-forced if needed, although the obstacles are way too annoying. Some obstacles are just way too close to each other and you have to walk very carefully to go through them.

Combat

Combat feels dragging out. Although you will be in a one vs many situations at first, enemies will respawn slowly later on, to the point that you’ll be in a one vs two. I don’t get why they are not putting the same amount of enemies until the end of a battle or making it more difficult by putting more enemies on the screen. On the other side, enemies have different attack patterns, forcing you to prioritize the more dangerous one first.

Boss fights are all about waiting until they expose their weak points. There isn’t any sense of danger from fighting bosses, and they can be defeated the same way despite their different attack patterns. You just need to bait them to attack, and by that, I meant to walk to their attack range and walk back leisurely, and the bosses will foolishly do an attack that will stun them for a brief amount of time. There are no additional phases either, and it was too boring to wait for them to expose their weak points.

Some bosses might allow you to knock back their projectiles, but you still have to wait for them to expose their weak points to get hit in.

Length and Replayability

I finished the game in 5.1h in the normal difficulty. I switched my difficulty to the easiest mode afterwards to unlock the remaining endings. However, as a game that offers replayability value, it lacks too many features that are commonly available for such games.

Most endings only differ at the very end of the game, and you are forced to replay the game from the beginning to experience the other endings. Moreover, there is no option to skip cutscenes or speed up the playtime either, forcing you to spend as much time as your first playthrough to finish your following playthroughs. Everything that slows down the game starts to irk me at the end, including the slow-motion that happens after you kill the last enemy, simply because it eats too much time for something that I have experienced before.

Problems

The game never tells you when it saves the game, and it only saves at certain checkpoints. It also doesn’t give clear instructions on keyboard control in both the manual and in-game tutorial.

Specs

Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650

Verdict

As a game that relies on replayability, the game doesn’t seem to have accessibility options for the subsequent playthroughs. It wasn’t fun to replay the whole game again from the beginning just to see a slight change towards the decision that you make at the very end of the game, and the story isn’t that interesting either to justify another playthrough.

The gameplay is also boring and redundant since enemies spawn one by one, forcing you to fight in one vs two most of the time. I feel like wasting my time being in battle because I have to wait for the enemies to spawn and walk towards me instead of dealing with all of them at the same time, and there are just way too many enemies that spawn before the whole battle ends. A lot of design choices don’t suit me at all, and I couldn’t feel like recommending this game because of it.

Written by
aquatorrent
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