[h1] THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS [/h1]
[b] OVERALL RATING: 9/10 [/b]
[b] STORY REVIEW: [/b]
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On my journey to experience all of the Project Moon games, I found myself hesitant to play Ruina. I've already played Lob Corp in 2020 completely, but never knew of any other games Project Moon would be making at that time. The story was good in Lob Corp, but I thought it was an above average story compared to really great games.
However, Ruina completely changes the game. At first, it was slow to pick up everything and there were little stories in each reception that pointed to a theme, and that is something I typically like in video games. After Star of the City, all of the themes condensed and the story became much grander than I expected. The world was already fleshed out a ton, and they brought it out even more. I feel like I can see myself in this world, living a life (albeit, a horrible life) where things typically make sense within the rules the world sets for itself. If there is one thing this world does amazingly, it is existing.
Aside from the world, I really loved the characters. They were written well, but that's not the only thing I enjoyed about them. I genuinely liked them. Even the side characters were people I felt horrible for when I killed them. Philip's breakdown felt real. I felt the love of Tomerry. I always read the dialogue during the reception fights because of how much they gave an extra layer to the characters. My favorite character is probably Angela, with Xiao and then Philip afterwards
As if that wasn't enough, the story gets even BETTER after Star of the City. All the themes combine into one to fit a grander theme, and then through the realizations, we get not only Angela's story, but Roland's as well. The parallels Angela and Roland share are also so clever. Roland hates himself for his imperfections, and Angela hates herself for her perfections. It's so amazing how they wrote their relationship without Roland outright hating her. While he says he hates her, he forgives her (in the true ending) and moves on, telling her his deepest secret.
Roland literally has a mask that blocks people's perception of him, and even after taking it off, he doesn't tell people what he's feeling. There's so much clever writing everywhere in this game. ESPECIALLY when fighting the Black Silence, all his combat pages in the 4th phase, there's nothing to say but it's amazing
[b] GAMEPLAY REVIEW: [/b]
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I can say that the gameplay is probably some of the best I've experienced. This game will make you feel stupid for not seeing the solution, and instead of you going "I hate this game", you go "Oh my god I'm so stupid how did I not see that".
This game is decently difficult, I had to look up guides a lot of the time. One of the flaws this game has is that a lot of fights can be beaten extremely easily, because at the end of the day it's basically a puzzle with some RNG elements. Some fights are also much harder than others for no reason. The entire 3rd row of Star of the City felt like the difficulty was going all over the place. Distorted Yan wasn't too difficult, but then you fight Purple Tear and all of a sudden the game got harder. You then fight Xiao and it becomes one of the hardest receptions ever. Then you fight R-Corp and you just breeze through it. The difficulty fluctuates so much that the difficulty doesn't really scale upwards like how you would think
Some fights are also really unfun. Despite winning giving you an amazing feeling, winning some fights will give you a feeling of relief, not because you did it, but because you don't have to go through that fight anymore. Multiple fights also are unfun until you win, and even figuring out the strategy to beat the reception or abnormality fight, you still feel horrible throughout the entire fight.
Despite those flaws, I still enjoyed a good 90% of the gameplay. I did play with NoGrind, which I think is necessary, at least for me.
The aspect of deck building feels awesome, especially with passive attributions. You can build an entire archetype and still win most fights as long as your deck is good. I love that you actually have to spend time building a deck instead of just putting in all the best pages. If you want a Singleton, you can put the best pages for it, but depending on your reception, you might have to change stuff to clash well or avoid resistances. #SmokeTrutherBtw
Some passives aren't ever used for attribution, but I don't think that's a negative. There's so much powerful stuff you wanna make for your build, and those passives worked for the time you got them, but not anymore. That's just how getting stronger works. However, some older passives are still used for a while, especially Fervor, both Hauler passives, and Keeping in stride.
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Besides the gameplay and story, the artwork is very, VERY good. I love the style of it a LOT. The CG's are well drawn, especially on the pages themselves. The VFX is a little shoddy, but that's comparing it to Limbus. On it's own, it stands enough.
The voice acting is also pretty good. You can really feel the emotion come out of a ton of characters, and the voices really fit each character. Very impressed.
And of course, the music. I am usually picky on music, but the Ruina OST is pretty damn good, even excluding the Mili songs. Including the Mili songs, this OST goes from a 7.5/10 to a 9/10. My favorite song in the OST is either Iron Lotus or Children of the City.
