Rule of Rose

Most Dumbest Bitch said:
But we can't talk about RoR without talking about the god awful gameplay, because holy fuck. To my understanding, the game was rushed to port before the devs had the time to properly finish the gameplay heavy segments, making the movements janky as fuck, and adding a lot of really obnoxious bugs that made completing parts of the game damn near impossible.
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This is what's ultimately preventing me from playing the game. I can stomach shitty gameplay for a good story up to a certain point, but even I have my limits. There's no way in hell I'm going to suffer through that mermaid boss just to see the rest of the game.

That and the game is ungodly expensive. I ain't spending $300 on a game with jank-ass controls and infuriating bosses just to experience a good story.
 
Baldur's Gait said:
This is what's ultimately preventing me from playing the game. I can stomach shitty gameplay for a good story up to a certain point, but even I have my limits. There's no way in hell I'm going to suffer through that mermaid boss just to see the rest of the game.

That and the game is ungodly expensive. I ain't spending $300 on a game with jank-ass controls and infuriating bosses just to experience a good story.
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Yeah, whoever said it was worth the money was out of their minds. It's a fantastic game, but not $300 fantastic. I wouldn't even pay $60 for that game - $20 at best, if I found myself really entranced with the story. I played it with the ROM from emuparadise several years ago (RIP).

Even so, I'd recommend at least checking out a playthrough of it. You can experience the story full on without having to deal with the bullshit gameplay, although a lot of times the people who post playthrough end up having on-screen difficulties with the game just to make it apparent to the audience how horrendous the controls are. The Mermaid boss is one of the most tragic and horrific moments in the game, but holy FUCK is it annoying.

The game does have really interesting gameplay mechanics that do aid the story, but they were NOT well implemented. For example, certain characters will sometimes disappear and reappear at will because they're all dead except Jennifer, and it usually happens so quickly that you can't be sure if you really saw it. Even the janky combat is partially intentional, because Jennifer is a young girl who's clearly had no combat training, and hasn't been raised to defend herself - she often closes her eyes out of fear when swinging her weapon, which does explain why she misses so often. It's a good idea in theory, but it does not play out well in practice.

It just goes to show - a great story can't always save shitty gameplay. Even in a story-based game, a story that's 9/10 merged with gameplay that's 2/10 does not even out to a cool 7.
 
R.A.E.L. said:
Please, no. A remake would completely ruin it IMO. Sure the combat sucks ass, but I'd rather RoR stay the way it is. It's a hidden gem and I'm fine with that.
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I think I mainly agree, with the small caveat that I think the original game could really benefit from some kind of second look, a remaster at the very least - even just a small rework by the original devs to fix some of the most game destroying bugs would do wonders for its legacy. I know that's not as easy with console games, especially older ones, but it would be fascinating if they could restore some of the game's original intent and at least bump the gameplay up to 4/10. That's a high enough number that I could live with.
 
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My only experience with it was watching the Super Best Friends LP of it. WS super interesting though.
 
While the actual gameplay was a steaming turd the plot, characters, themes and unforgettable finale made it worthwhile (for me at least). The whole payoff was perfectly done from the revelation of just what happened and what's been going to to the final level reminiscing on the orphanage and everyone in it to the very last scene with puppy Brown which is one of the most depressing things I've ever seen in a game. The game did a fantastic job at portraying its characters (sans Jessica & Brown) as horrific people while still making them (sans Hoffman) sympathetic. In terms of plot, characters, and atmosphere it's some of the best I've ever seen in a game. It's just a shame almost everything else is a pile of garbage.

Honestly I think you're doing yourself a disservice by skipping it.

Baldur's Gait said:
This is what's ultimately preventing me from playing the game. I can stomach shitty gameplay for a good story up to a certain point, but even I have my limits. There's no way in hell I'm going to suffer through that mermaid boss just to see the rest of the game.

That and the game is ungodly expensive. I ain't spending $300 on a game with jank-ass controls and infuriating bosses just to experience a good story.
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Just play it on PCSX and use cheats and/or save states. The mermaid section is the only really challenging part in the game (having to search out and acquire the knife in the area right before the fight with its 2 million imps definitely added to the frustration) and I died the first couple times I fought her but once you know the basic strategy (use the meat cleaver, only attack her when close enough and can get around behind her and stand still when in the vomit until it dissipates) it's mainly just waiting for the right opportunity to get a hit or two in and bringing a shitton of healing items for when she falls on your head. Everything after that is a breeze.
 
Love this game, one of the most unique games ever made.

While it isn't very scary, it has a very lush atmosphere that remains fascinating throughout and although on the surface the game may not be very scary, there are some surprisingly dark elements to the story that aren't immediately apparent, so it actually becomes creepier when you think back on it.

There's no getting around the fact though that even by the standards of survival horror at the time the combat is pretty bad and can get pretty frustrating at times, but I personally didn't struggle too much with it, I got through it ok, but I'm pretty experienced with this era of survival horror games.

I wish actual copies of the game didn't sell for hundreds of dollars these days, I'm actually veeeeeeery lucky because I bought mine in early 2014 for only 50$ used but in good condition and with the manual, I just wish there was a better way for people to officially be able to play it because I feel like this is a game everyone should play at least once.

I saw a vendor selling this game at a con recently and I asked him how much and he said "250$" which I was wondering if he was overcharging, but looking it up on Ebay I see that's just around what the game sells for now, sometimes even more.
 
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I think anyone who hates Rule Of Rose and not for gameplay reasons, is probably triggered by their own memories of what awful little shits unsupervised children can be.

Amanda was such a junior lolcow. If only...

There was a blog that went into the story and hidden meanings of things in the game but it's long gone. Luckily there's archive.org, so I present Rule Of Rose Mysteries - https://web.archive.org/web/20131229023304/http://ruleofrosemysteries.com/
 
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I don't love the game, but it's definitely a unique title with a setting and story all it's own. Combat aside, my only major gripe with the game was that I found the constant need of having the dog lead you around to be on the tedious side, and needing him to even see items on the ground.
 
Dom Cruise said:
Love this game, one of the most unique games ever made.

While it isn't very scary, it has a very lush atmosphere that remains fascinating throughout and although on the surface the game may not be very scary, there are some surprisingly dark elements to the story that aren't immediately apparent, so it actually becomes creepier when you think back on it.

There's no getting around the fact though that even by the standards of survival horror at the time the combat is pretty bad and can get pretty frustrating at times, but I personally didn't struggle too much with it, I got through it ok, but I'm pretty experienced with this era of survival horror games.

I wish actual copies of the game didn't sell for hundreds of dollars these days, I'm actually veeeeeeery lucky because I bought mine in early 2014 for only 50$ used but in good condition and with the manual, I just wish there was a better way for people to officially be able to play it because I feel like this is a game everyone should play at least once.

I saw a vendor selling this game at a con recently and I asked him how much and he said "250$" which I was wondering if he was overcharging, but looking it up on Ebay I see that's just around what the game sells for now, sometimes even more.
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Fuck the mermaid, fuck the teacher and fuuuuuuuuck the fat kid enemys
 
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Also, the first time I saw this game was in early 2006 on G4's Cinematech, it was clips from the intro cutscene with the song "Love Suicide"

Right away it blew my mind and I was fascinated, it was like no other game I had seen, despite my heavy initial interest though I procrastinated because when it came out in the US my PS2 at the time was on it's last legs, I didn't actually get around to finally playing it until 2014, which is quite a while but I'm glad I didn't wait any longer considering how much more expensive the game has gotten.
 
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One of the first youtubers I followed was a female Let's player who likes horror games (I don't remember her screenname cause I unfollowed her ages ago) and she introduced this game to me and I was really fascinated by it. I love that type of atmosphere that's dark and foreboding but doesn't go overboard to become edgy. Like Nitro rad mentioned in his review it's one of those niche passion project horror games that you mostly saw during the PS2 era that most publishers probably wouldn't want to bother with these days and that's a shame.
 
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Vapewizard said:
One of the first youtubers I followed was a female Let's player who likes horror games (I don't remember her screenname cause I unfollowed her ages ago) and she introduced this game to me and I was really fascinated by it. I love that type of atmosphere that's dark and foreboding but doesn't go overboard to become edgy. Like Nitro rad mentioned in his review it's one of those niche passion project horror games that you mostly saw during the PS2 era that most publishers probably wouldn't want to bother with these days and that's a shame.
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Katrinonus? I first discovered Rule of Rose though the Let's Play she made for Penny Arcade.
 
Been thinking about this game a lot here lately for some reason, I should give it another playthrough.

A question came to my mind that I think is really intriguing though, let's imagine an alternate universe where Sony didn't pass on publishing the game in the US and gave it a pretty good advertising push and the game was actually a pretty sizable hit.

The question is, could there have been a sequel to the game? Because the story really doesn't seem to leave things open enough for a sequel, it's got to be one of the more standalone stories I've ever seen in a game.

I'd love an interview with the game's creator where he could share if he had anything in mind as to what a sequel may have been like.
 
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Dom Cruise said:
Been thinking about this game a lot here lately for some reason, I should give it another playthrough.

A question came to my mind that I think is really intriguing though, let's imagine an alternate universe where Sony didn't pass on publishing the game in the US and gave it a pretty good advertising push and the game was actually a pretty sizable hit.

The question is, could there have been a sequel to the game? Because the story really doesn't seem to leave things open enough for a sequel, it's got to be one of the more standalone stories I've ever seen in a game.

I'd love an interview with the game's creator where he could share if he had anything in mind as to what a sequel may have been like.
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If there had been a sequel, I could see a story similar to Alice: Madness Returns, with Jen seeing a therapist etc. Either that or side stories from the points of view of the other girls.
 
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the situation with this game reminds me of drakengard. another dark ps2 game with underbaked gameplay but an overall experience that's so unique you have to slog through it to the end.
 
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