Ravenbound Review

Ravenbound is a title that mixes the roguelike and soulslike genres set in a gorgeous land inspired by Scandinavian folklore. Now, I'm going to be honest with you — I couldn't wrap my head around how the two playstyles would mix; in fact, I had very little hope for it. And despite my love for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, I wasn't looking forward to getting "pwn'd" for hours on end due to a bad mix, as the old phrase went. Regardless, I went into the game hopeful.

Surprisingly, it wasn't actually the amalgamation of the two genres that made my experience with Ravenbound underwhelming; I quite enjoyed the roguelike element. I just think it was implemented a bit clunkily, and a lot of the “soulslike” parts of the game boiled down to no information, cumbersome combat, no proper healing mechanic, and odd power scaling. 

But before we get ahead of ourselves, let me explain what the game is about. Ravenbound's story is based on Scandinavian folklore, and it revolves around six gods who used to reign the world together; under their watch and love, no one was left wanting. However, that all changed when the sixth goddess turned to darkness and tried to corrupt the lands and all its people. This ultimately led to the others having to come together to craft a weapon against her — The Raven.

This weapon is what guides you through all of your lives, as in Ravenbound, you won't play a singular hero — every time you die, you have to choose a new Vessel because, canonically, the previous one perished and failed to help the gods defeat "The Betrayer".

This is where part of the roguelike comes into play: every time you die, you get points for completing milestones during your last run, and you can use them to unlock additional perks for your future Vessels. I quite enjoyed this aspect of the game because it made each round feel rewarding due to accumulating points for goals, such as exploration.

Unfortunately, many of Ravenbound’s features sound good at first but, due to bad design choices and poor polishing, most of them become tedious. As an example, the open-world aspect feels more like a nightmare than an actual adventure, as every time you kill enemies and take their energy or plunder their chests, you get punished through the Hatred system — a feature that causes enemies (including bosses) to become stronger the more cards you get.

This meant that if I explored the land and beat enemies up to take their loot, I would only empower them more, so I ended up resorting to just doing what the game told me to and getting out quickly... except this was also pretty bad. Maybe not in the sense of bosses becoming stronger, but definitely incredibly repetitive and boring. It was always the same loop: head for the first Tear of Hatred to cleanse part of the world and get mana; move on to the side quest, which was always a quick and — unfortunately — meaningless "kill x target" mission; and then strengthen five fragments so I could enter the fight with The Warden, who is essentially the boss of the area. 

Perhaps this wouldn't have been so taxing had I not died multiple times due to lack of knowledge. Unfortunately, Ravenbound gives you very little information outside of the basics and then drops you into an open world with a ton of markers that you don't understand and very little knowledge about your deck. By the time you get the hang of everything, you'll already be tired of it all, and this is quite sad because it could have been avoided with a bit more effort on the tutorial.

Although it may not sound too bad on paper, there are many features that got incredibly tiresome due to repetition and misunderstanding. I didn't know what the markers meant, I didn't know how to fly The Raven, it took me a crazy amount of time to find out I didn't have fall damage, and I had to figure everything to do with the roguelike deck of cards on my own through multiple deaths and plenty of trial and error. And, unfortunately, that’s just what I can remember off the top of my head.

The enjoyable deckbuilding mechanic that is meant to tie in with the roguelike elements quickly becomes cumbersome as you inevitably unlock new cards that you cannot filter. Without a deck to build, you are stuck getting three random cards from an assortment of everything, meaning that once enjoyable and common cards become a rare wonder, as you quickly grow a deck that is far too vast to add any skill behind this system, and instead becomes an RNG fest of hoping you get a good enough build to defeat The Warden before the Hatred mechanic stacks too much.

And if you don’t get killed because of bad luck, then you will perish to the game’s unforgiving nature, as recovering health is basically a pipe dream, as it’ll mostly fall on RNG. Whilst the game is labelled soulslike, even the DARK SOULS franchise offers the refillable vials to provide you a chance at bouncing back from some difficult encounters; it became discouraging to fight due to the constant grim odds.

Additionally, aside from the somewhat fun fighting and the stunning landscapes, the game has nothing else — there's no voice acting, there aren't any scenes, and the story's too straightforward. Although I wasn't expecting a narrative-heavy title, I felt that at least the one sidequest you get per world could have gotten a bit more love than a quick slapped-together text before you go off and kill a random target. Not to mention that it’s the same quest every time, just a different story.

Don't get me wrong — Ravenbound isn't all bad; the fighting was sometimes quite fun (albeit a bit brainless, as you can spam dodge without repercussions and the enemies were easy to read), the graphics were breathtaking, and I absolutely loved flying as The Raven, but every positive comes with a negative, and they can be as big as extreme vagueness to as small as the targeting system being an incredible nuisance. 

It really is too bad that it feels like the game was released so unpolished. Many of the features feel like they were implemented without any actual testing, as they were incredibly punishing or empty, and the game is a complete mess when it comes to bugs and crashes. With a little bit of love, Ravenbound's mix of soulslike and roguelike could be something amazing; it just, unfortunately, got stuck in the "could be" stage.