Returnalgrants you the chance to live out your wild space dreams if the planet you dreamt of landing on is filled with beings that only want to murder you. Selene, quite appropriately, not wanting to die, fights with everything she has through every time loop thrown her way to escape this dream-turned-hellish nightmare.
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Making your way through each biome, learning attack patterns, and new ways to survive is what Returnal does best, and there’s a real focus on combat. However, there are hypothetical features that would add quality of life to the game if included.
6An Improved Roguelike System
Returnal’s gameplay calls for difficulty, but sometimes things feel way too unforgiving. While it isn’t a roguelike that has ever been marketed to newcomers of the genre, it’s one many roguelike newbies will have tried out since it was one of the few games releasedin the early days of the PS5. Each run goes a little like this; you start up, progress pretty far through a level, all the while shooting enemies around you, take damage, shoot some more enemies, then take too much damage and die, resulting in your progress being set back around an hour.
Ideas like this arecommon in roguelikes, although not all are quite as ruthless as Returnal. There’s also a heavy reliance on RNG (random number generator), which makes things even more unfair, deterring a good amount of players away from the game. Adding in some options for newcomers would make it an overall better experience for more people.
5More In-Game Guidance For How To Play
You have a lot to learn before getting anywhere near the standard level of play required to become familiar with the combat, and Returnal won’t be doing any handholding. Some people will prefer this approach because you must learn from your mistakes and change how you play the game, while others will see this as a make-or-break factor.
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To open it up, you wouldn’t necessarily need an hour-long tutorial to go over everything, but just have the option to play through additional tutorials if needed. This way, it wouldn’t affect those who enjoy the challenge, but would also grant those who want more help some tips.
4An Option To Save Mid-Run
Dying after progressing through a considerable chunk of the mission is a common theme of roguelikes, and it’s part of what fits a game under the genre term. However, with how much valuable time you’ll waste on each run, it would greatly help to have the ability to save midway through. Not everyone has to use this save button, but it can be a choice added to make things easier rather than adding an easy difficulty mode.
Returnal gets to keep its one difficulty system, and casual players get to experience the game with this implementation. It’s a win-win scenario.
3RNG That Doesn’t Doom All Your Runs
RNG is a core mechanic at play that will determine how each of your runs turns out, which is different for everyone. In the beginning, you might get fortunate with the RNG and spend hours getting the best outcome possible, but then after this, you can go hours switching between doomed runs that never had a chance and ones that are decent at best.
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This RNG is meant to be uneven, it’s intended to give you difficulty at random points, and you need a sense of struggle for things to flow, but having to deal with this for hours of real-time without getting anywhere isn’t fun for anybody. Many agree this is one of the worst aspects as it removes the incentive to continue because of how annoying it becomes.
2An Easier Biome One
Biome One throws a lot at you, as it’s your first introduction to how everything works in the game. And much like everything else in Returnal, there won’t be any handholding to get you through. You’ll need your wits and a quick eye to get through this first stage if you want to continue playing and make it to the end of the game.
While trial and error is the point of a roguelike, again, Returnal feels unfair in how frustrating Biome One quickly becomes. We understand the significance of letting players know what they’re in for, but they could’ve shown this and made the first stage easier to give people time to practice.
1A Less Ambiguous Story, Even If It’s Intentional
The story is one of the game’s highlights,glowing in its ambiguous naturewhere nothing ever makes much sense, which is excellent for the majority of the game. However, things eventually get muddled up toward the end. There are three endings, including a secret one you unlock if you pick up some car keys earlier in the game. Knowing you must pick up these keys is all about hindsight and will give you the most finalized ending to Selene’s story.
While Returnal is meant to have a confusing tone throughout, you can still have an ending that makes more sense, so events get wrapped up a little cleaner. Returnal should retain its allure, but it also doesn’t need a story that never properly feels concluded once your time playing it is done.
