Rule of Rose | The Forbidden Cult Game On Playstation 2

This is considered by far one of the most interesting cult games that Playstation 2 has ever had, Rule of Rose, which leaves no one indifferent, and the reason why it's understandable. This game is particular within the genre, and also one that is worth a lot when it comes to a game from more than a decade ago. Although it is also understandable that many people do not play it due to its excessive price, which is around $100.

It is a somewhat questionable purchase, since we are not talking about a masterpiece either, but rather a title with incredible potential but somewhat lost, and its price is very high.

First of all, it is necessary to emphasize its negative points, which unfortunately are serious for the experience. Its combat system is lousy. It is slow, imprecise, rough, etc. There are bosses with whom the combat is very imprecise, because on the part of the enemy, he can even hit you with a blow while you are behind him, and this happens very often. Is very annoying.

This does not end there, because it is not only the problem that you receive an unjustified blow, but there are times when you will not be able to hit an enemy even if it seems that you are doing it. It is not necessary to have a fixing system, although for those years they were already used in this type of games.

The worst is in the hands of the final bosses, who have problems beyond what I said. Some of the fights are usually slow, boring, and unnecessarily long. Not to mention that the difficulty is somewhat complicated, for example, the first boss can be even more difficult than the last.

Innocence can be the mindspring from which absurd rules and cruel behaviors are born

It is as if they realize that they are doing it wrong and do not care about anything. As a positive point of this factor, I must say that, on the one hand, the amount of weapons available is quite correct and they do not have to eat their heads too much. Each episode has a hidden weapon and it is quite entertaining to find them and improve your attack power.

That system is involved in another controversial aspect, its playable structure. And with that, it's time to explain what your argument is like. In Rule of Rose, we are introduced to the life of Jennifer, a young woman of about 19 who must deal with fate by giving gifts to an aristocratic elite. His story takes place in two places: an airship and an orphanage, although most of the game will be on the airship. The point is that the aristocratic elite, which bases its rules on the so-called "Rule of Rose", which gives its name to the game, is very classy and quite hierarchical. But it gets to the point where more than one case is close to intimidation.

Then I go back to the theme of the story, but this is enough to explain the problem with this game. In each level you are presented with quite macabre stories, for example The sister goats or The Mermaid, and that obviously do not end well. The gifts I talked about earlier are directly related to these stories. For example, in The Bird of Happiness you have to get a bird to give as a gift.

How do we do this?. Well, the locations we are in are not exactly big, so we have to come and go constantly and to help us in our task we have Brown, the dog that is in the game's images. This dog is an interesting mechanic, and would have been perfect if it had been executed well.

In each episode they always give us a clue of what we are looking for. A feather, a scale ... And, of course, the dog is essential for this, to smell and track them. At first it's interesting, but as you go along you realize that 90% is based just on following the dog. And aside from two episodes that focus more on narrative purposes, the rest is based on two parts of each episode. There are parts where we only follow the dog, and others where we do exactly the same but fighting.

I have to say that the term "survival horror" is a bit big, since the maximum survival we can find is to recover life. But there are other options too, like the dog can search for food for you, and when an episode ends, it is restored, resulting in a completely complete inventory.

Not everything is bad, it also has its positive things and very well carried. For example, if you give the dog a box of cookies, it will find you cookies, and food is what serves to regain life. I gave this as an example because the idea of ​​using the dog to find objects that you would not otherwise see seems great to me. Of course, the game makes too much use of the dog, so it is tiring after a while.

Returning to the story, in case I haven't said it, it is complete paranoia. I will not spoil because there will be people who will be interested in the game, and it is sad to ruin someone's experience. The game constantly suggests what is happening, and gradually shows you clues so that you can form your own conclusions. It is at the end of the game, in case you get the good ending and if you give the extra scene time, you will understand everything you saw in the story. However, if you get the bad end, it goes directly to another path and loses coherence to tell the truth.

This is something that I personally don't like very much. I understand that they want to make a story where the player is the one who is thinking about what is going to happen. But it doesn't seem fair to me that they present you with such an explicit story introducing you to both the plot and the characters and then at the moment of truth, all the player's answers are ruined.

Of course, it has other positive points. The most striking thing is, without a doubt, its soundtrack. The compositions of this game are incredible. Sometimes they can be repetitive, but it is a fact that they are very well made and memorable.

Ultimately, Rule of Rose is not the game that players want. It is a game that has a lot of potential and that is not denied. It has the story, it has the atmosphere, the characters, it has everything to shine like the greats of the genre. But as a video game it fails in many ways. The enemies are somewhat repetitive, their combat system is rough and their gameplay ends up tiring. And the truth is a real shame. On the one hand I also think that this game came out sooner than it should have. And I'm not just referring to its time in development, but also that, this game several years later would have been much better after various features have been laid for the seventh generation, but this is something that unfortunately we will never know. It is an interesting game with potential, that whoever is interested in it will not be disappointed, it has serious errors, partly due to the time, but it is recommended if you really like the genre and stories of this style.