WRATH: Aeon of Ruin

WRATH: Aeon of Ruin is a game that excels at moments and kinda did not manage to keep it's quality to the end. The artstyle, visuals and sounds are really nice. This is peak retro. Enemy design is good as it has a lot of mechanically different enemies. The damage splattering on death is a bit overused through. Weapons work well and are nice to use and a good selection. First, a word on the save system. The game has a rather special save system which can be avoided with a menu setting. The player can only save on a limited number of shrines and with save items that can be found. The menu setting allows to save without using one of these items. So the game can be played both as a classic quicksave-everywhere game as well as a game with more rare save points. And that becomes important. The levels. The levels <3 The levels aren't just linear corridors and arenas, there quite a bit of exploration involved. That leveldesign with the limited save system creates a lot of tension, and it feels really good to carefully explore the nicely crafted levels. The levels, especially in act 1 are almost Arcane Dimensions level of quality. With the later levels, this sadly changes a bit and it is less of the careful exploration and more monster closet, spawning enemies arenafights. That kind of design where you walk into a trap, bad ♥♥♥♥ happens, you either survive or get smacked and learn from it, that works well with savepoints where you get stomped, and get reset and then you try again until you perform well enough for that setpiece. With the given save system, being able to get a little advantage by carefully exploring feels so much better to play, it creates a different relationship to the level. The later levels still have that, but not as much as the first act levels imo. It had a bit of that "survive to checkpoint" you get in metroidvanias and soulslikes and while i generally prefer free saving in FPS games, i think this was special. For me, WRATH: Aeon of Ruin is a game that i will remember a lot more than a lot of other retro FPS games. For it's highlights and great moments, also for how i felt disappointed at moments. General state: i did not have issues like crashes or bugs. Considering this was released by Slipgate Ironworks, 3D-Realms around the time where they shoved out a not exactly flawless Phantom Fury, a kinda messy Graven and a Kingpin:Reloaded that was later removed from stores, i think a lot of players feared that it would be another "whoops, ran out of money, release as it is"-moment. It is not and that's nice. Conclusion: Finished game, had fun.