Returnal is a roguelike game, so it’s supposed to be frustrating – but reality can be frustrating too, and maybe we can come up with some sort of compromise.
The game launched on Friday, and perhaps inevitably, its difficulty is now a subject of some controversy. Genre fans expect to fail and start over – that’s, like, the defining feature of roguelike games – but a single run in Returnal can take several hours to finish, and progress isn’t saved until the end.
For people who don’t have that kind of time to play games without interruption, it’s a problem. Wobbly support for suspending and resuming the game on some PS5 consoles, and glitches and system crashes, even more so. And even if you expect to fail and start over, some consistent progression is necessary.
“Returnal is, at its heart, a roguelike. More rogue-“lite” than roguelike in truth, since along with the temporary power-ups that are entirely random, every run also unlocks permanent upgrades, making subsequent runs easier than the first,” Cavie writes in his review. “The game leans into this by slowly unlocking more of Selene’s story per death, and making subsequent areas easier to reach after you have progressed to them the first time.”
The option to manually save mid-run or even more frequent auto-saves would solve this, as Reddit user AbUndMax explains on the Returnal subreddit, but also inevitably, that’s controversial too because you casuals can GIT GUD or go play Roblox instead or whatever, I dunno, but some people are mad. Linking to the same discussion on Twitter, Housemarque has acknowledged that “we hear the community”, but isn’t making promises just yet.
We hear the community and we love you all. Nothing to announce now, but keep playing and enjoying the challenge as you can!#Returnal #PS5
https://t.co/WA1tPzY1hZ— Housemarque (@Housemarque) April 30, 2021
Much like the cycle of failing and starting over, limited save options is an important feature of roguelike games, but runs that take up to two or three hours to complete? Not so much. I think the longest runs I’ve completed in Hades and Dead Cells were, at most, about an hour. And both of those games let you save and quit, and continue from there when you get back.