Official Review PlayStation 4 Updated

Redeemer Enhanced Edition (PlayStation 4)
Official GBAtemp Review

Name: Redeemer Enhanced Edition
Item: Redeemer Enhanced Edition
Rating: 5.5
Author: KiiWii

Product Information:

Release Date (NA): July 19, 2019
Release Date (EU): July 19, 2019
Release Date (JP): July 19, 2019
Publisher: Buka Enternainment
Developer: Sobaka Studio
Genres: Action
Also For: Xbox One

Game Features:

Single player

Local Multiplayer

Online Multiplayer

Co-operative

Review Approach:

Looked intriguing, no game store near me has ever had stock of this game, I wondered why.

Originally debuting for Windows back in 2017, Redeemer is back! Enhanced and beefed up for consoles, how does it fare two years later?

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Top-down isometric beat-em-ups have been a mainstay of the majority of consoles and arcades for generations now with their enjoyable but often convoluted storylines, impressive combat, and frantic pace. In a world with near photo-realistic HDR 4K graphics to treat our eyes and fully surround atmospheric sound beaming into our ears, I always find pleasure in stylised games that don't take themselves too seriously and adpot an alternative art direction. Games such as Zelda The Wind Waker, XIII, and Jet Grind Radio stand out to me as incredible examples of games that didn't need to look ultra-realistic, and as a result, often stand the test of time better.

Upon receiving the code for Redeemer, I slammed it into PSN and was met with the information screen for the download. Weighing in at just 2.2 GB I thought to myself just how "enhanced" this game could possibly be. Modern games pride themselves on super high-resolution textures, high polygon models, and other lavish assets thanks to the vast capacity that Blu-Ray brought to the table back when it was announced. No longer did games have to be optimised to oblivion and shoehorned into cramped tiny containers, they could flourish with in excess of 50 GB of physical space and downloadable patches to lay on additional content further down the line, should they want to, after the initial release. Perhaps Redeemer has been enhanced to perfection and the developers simply felt no need to pad it out with pointless files and data that would cause slowdown or issues; I mean it's the best edition of this game to date, and they know what they're doing right? Regardless I hit download and within mere minutes the game was downloaded, installed and as I struck the X button on the freshly obtained game icon I was met with a juddery intro video, stuttery sound, and some seriously baffling lag within the menus; this review was not off to a good start.

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Offering single player, cooperative two player, an arena mode, and extras such as galleries to view character art, there's a simplicity to this game that I find appealing, however it's punctuated by incredibly long wait times between button presses in these menus. While this could sound like an insignificant issue, it was to such an extent that I thought I hadn't pressed the button, and went to press it again to be sure, only to then accidentally get into the next lag cycle, as it had clicked another menu item on my second click. I cannot for the life of me understand why though. According to the PSN description, this is actually enhanced by playing on PS4 Pro, which I was, and therefore it had to be a setting or something making the menu's slow down. In the settings, you can nerf the graphics and everything down from "epic" too low, removing antialiasing, depth of field, post-processing, shadows, motion blur and chromatic aberration, which had little to no effect on the menus but made the game run a little faster in item-heavy or character-heavy areas. As a last-ditch effort to figure out if this was normal I even tried disabling boost mode which I know can sometimes have adverse effects on some games performance, but alas there was no notable positive effect.

Redeemer sees you take up the role of an ex-elite operative, Vasily, who seeks personal solace and an end to the violence he has witnessed while working for the biggest cybernetic weapons manufacturers in the world. By moving to an isolated monastery in the mountains, however, some 20 years later, and what was supposed to be his 1000th morning of peace (which doesn't add up), Vasily is tracked down by the evil corporation, who wanted to turn him into their ultimate cyborg soldier, and as a result you get one last chance to thwart them into oblivion and redeem yourself. The introductory movies are all heavily stylised comic-book looking animations that set the scene and really get you geared up to smash some baddies; it's a nice alternative to in-game engine cut-scenes or pre-rendered "FMV" which makes it all the more interesting, with brilliantly digitally drawn panels and subtle effects building drama and tensions nicely before battle. Proceeding these cutscenes you are met with a loading bar that honestly reminded me of old school flash games. It takes around 30-40 seconds to load, which doesn't sound a great deal of time, but it really breaks the pace of this game. Perhaps it is a relic of how the developers loaded assets in the PC edition of this game, but with only 2.2 GB of total files spanning 16 stages surely that isn't a heck of a lot of files to load, and why wasn't the cut scene used to mask the loading times? Perhaps I'm asking too much, perhaps it will redeem itself shortly, let's get into gameplay!

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My first impressions of this game are, to say the least, mixed. You begin outside in an atmospheric and rainy environment, shrouded in darkness, to "a rude awakening" from your evil adversaries who are storming your monastery. Your goal is to infiltrate by any means necessary, be it via stealth or ultra-violent force, gaining access back into your spiritual home and protect your brethren. You can choose to fight in two separate and distinct styles, firstly as a monk by utilising martial arts to unleash brutal combinations of punches and kicks, or as a soldier by obtaining and carrying up to one melee weapon and one ballistic weapon at a time. Each fighting category is upgradable via scrolls and tablets scattered throughout the game, meaning you can upgrade your overall combat styles and each subcategory within it such as punches, kicks, pistol, or rifle skill points and add perks. For example on the soldier style options you can add laser sight to your guns, increase magazine size and fire rate, or you can add lightening to your punches and enhance your melee combat prowess on the monk style of combat. Within 30 seconds of starting the game, I veered out of bounds, failed to die, and found my way underneath the map. I can understand glitch hunters searching for these sort of things, but as a player, I didn't appreciate the fact that this was my first foray into this game. Perhaps it was a one in a million double boundary break, perhaps it was an oversight during playtesting, but I found it odd that with little to no effort I had a pretty bad first few minutes having finally gotten past those menus and loading screens.

Things looked up from there on in with Redeemer's levels getting more interesting and more puzzle-oriented in places than I had initially imagined. I think the more realistic the level was trying to be, the less enjoyable it was visually. Later in the game, the industrial and laboratory levels reminded me a little of Doom 3 with the heavy shadows, neon laser lights, and galloping enemy brutes. The sci-fy feel definitely made for the most enjoyable portions to play as it transitioned from the real world locations to cyborg-riddled test facilities. Combat within these areas also altered my play style. Initially I began with a stealthy tactical approach, sneaking up behind enemies and snapping necks, but eventually, I was fluidly combining gunplay with martial arts mastery, reversing an enemies incoming attack with L1 and then switching to a pistol for a single well placed headshot to finish each of my foes. A nice addition to the combat is the ability to unlock disarming of gun-wielding enemies, which makes for fast-paced close-quarter combat even with your bare unarmed hands; it gets frantic when you run out of ammo and as a result it gets you hyped up like you're Neo from The Matrix or something, somehow gracefully foreseeing situations unfold and pummeling the hoards of enemies intricately and succinctly.

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Some of the biggest letdowns of Redeemer stems from how some of the game mechanics work, or rather don't work, as you would expect them to. For example, you have to unlock the perk of faster plasma bullets for your bullets to fly as fast as the previous enemy was dispatching them. Let's be clear, it isn't the discharge rate, it's the unexpectedly dawdling bullet velocity. Even taking time out and thinking about it now, I still do not understand why this is a perk—it should just be how the gun fires, else it's pretty damned useless. I found it very weird to use the Circle button to pick up objects, but the R1 button to pick up weapons; surely the control scheme could have been streamlined to have one button that deals with picking up items, regardless of the purpose of the item. Another other oddity is how the disarm mechanic tells you to use the wrong R trigger and Right Stick to disarm an enemy, however, that combo wouldn't perform this manoeuvre. Perhaps an incorrect icon was left in from a previous built that did use a different button, but the final build uses R1 to pick up or disarm and R2 to fire. Along with this I also noticed quite a few spelling and grammatical mistakes within the game's text too, which suggests that very little quality assurance was done before the game hit the shelves. Stealth kills are ten a penny thanks to every character being completely oblivious to the sound of your footsteps, though they react to gunfire and explosions perfectly fine. It's a strange feeling being able to run full pelt into the back of an enemy and perform an execution—it doesn't quite feel like it was truly worked for and earned. Boss battles are comprised of overpowered characters with bespoke weaponry or gimmicks that only they sport in the game. This means that you have a short window of pondering how to deal with said gimmick before resorting to hammering the kick and punch buttons and avoiding with a crafty roll out of the path of danger to compose yourself and get back into grinding them down. Usually, there is an overly obvious Achilles heel that you have to leverage to defeat them quicker. These moments are far too infrequent and could have been used throughout to make the levels more interesting.

Redeemer does somewhat redeem itself as an overall package with its enjoyable yet flawed ways. As you whizz through the 16 levels you find yourself both glad it's over so fast and disappointed that it could have been so much more of a well-rounded experience with just another layer of polish, and perhaps some more interesting level design. As a fan of games like Smash TV and the like I managed to get around halfway through the game before I lost my first life, and for me that means that the game is far too easy, so I would recommend playing it on its upper difficulty settings rather than the middle or lower options if you're game to give it a go, to really give yourself a challenging run through.

Verdict

What We Liked ...

Satisfyingly brutal gameplay
Plenty of upgrades to find

What We Didn't Like ...

Way too simple to smash through
Laggy, glitchy, with an unfinished feel to it

Gameplay

Enjoyable combat system with a slew of upgrades, environmental kills and very few boss battles or difficulty spikes throughout makes it really easy to play without having to think at all.

Presentation

The comic book vibe is nice and clean, some levels are visually superb, but overall the game lacks a little more finessing to really be called an enhanced edition. Perhaps if they had combined some of the loading times into the cutscenes, and made the menu system more snappy and responsive it would feel more finished and refined for players to enjoy.

Lasting Appeal

I obtained all but one perk on my first playthrough, so there isn't much for me to go back to unless I want to go for trophies. Arena mode is a nice addition, but it never really feels like anything more than a chore to fight wave after wave of repetitive enemies.

5.5

out of 10

Overall

An enjoyable game but not something that you have to play, it's disappointingly short and has a definite unfinished feel in places. I finished the game in three sittings, in well under five hours combined without really even trying to hammer through it on a moderate difficulty, so seasoned gamers will have this smashed in no time.

Reactions: Xzi and T-hug

Lazyboss
Sep 27, 2019

There are tons of good games out there, but the reviewers in Gbatemp choose garbage games instead.

Scarlet
Sep 27, 2019

Lazyboss said:
There are tons of good games out there, but the reviewers in Gbatemp choose garbage games instead.

lol what, we review a load of different games and you can't expect every one to be a 10/10. is fire emblem a garbage game? monster hunter? i just dont see where youre coming from here friend

Reactions: D34DL1N3R, Xzi and KiiWii

Chary
Sep 27, 2019

There are a ton of good things to say, but the commenters in GBAtemp choose garbage replies instead.

What are you even insulting? Variety? Heck, picking indies and games that aren't AAA first-party titles makes for a more interesting spread of games. You'll almost obviously know from the outset whether you want to play something like BOTW or FE:3H, but weird games like these might pique someone's attention, and they'd be curious in trying it, but might be afraid it's not worth their time.

Reactions: D34DL1N3R, Xzi, KiiWii and 1 other person

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