There’s a surprisingly competent action-adventure game contained within Oraia Rift (Free). There are lots of abilities to collect, most of which will be used to solve puzzles here and there throughout the game. The puzzles themselves are engaging enough, though fans of games like Legend Of Zelda will find very few new ideas among them. Lots of block-pushing, torch-lighting, switch-pulling, and that sort of thing. There are plenty of enemies to fight, including some bosses, though the combat isn’t terribly satisfying on the whole. The world itself is a big, semi-connected maze that will have you backtracking to use keys or new-found abilities to open the way forward. It’s a reasonably attractive game, too, particularly considering it’s an indie effort. There are a few hours of solid enjoyment to be found here.
The problem is that Oraia Rift is longer than a few hours, by a good measure. Guiding your chosen character through their quest to stave off the invasion of the Rift Dwellers takes around 10 hours, give or take, and a whole lot of that time is spent backtracking through empty areas and fighting banal battles against largely non-threatening yet maddeningly durable enemies. The developer, COMPASSGAMES, cites early PlayStation 1 games as a source of inspiration for the visuals, but I can feel a lot of that era in the game’s design as well, for better or worse. There’s a real feeling of a developer trying to learn how to create a game in a 3D space, making many of the same mistakes everyone else did back in the day.
Each of the game’s areas consists of a bunch of platforms connected together by bridges and such. Occasionally, you’ll be jumped by enemies as you step onto one of these platforms, and you’ll have to deal with them before you can do anything else. There’s only ever one way to move forward, but you might have to double back to find it. The game provides a pointer arrow to let you know the direction as the crow flies to your next goal. It’s helpful, but you’ll want to be careful about depending on it too heavily, since it doesn’t take things like locked doors or winding paths into account. Unfortunately, the main path frequently requires you to retrace your steps, and with all the puzzles solved and the enemies killed on your way through the first time, it feels like completely pointless filler. It’s a big world, to be sure, but big worlds are only a good thing if they’re interesting to traverse, and the land of Oraia is for the most part not.
Making things worse, there’s no map available. The developer did a pretty good job on the graphics, and there’s more variety than one would expect in terms of visual themes, but within each theme, the individual platforms start blending in with each other really quickly. With how large some of the areas tend to be, it’s easy to get lost even when doing something as simple as trying to make your way back to a town. Provided you’ve been thorough, and indeed you must be, there won’t even be enemies or items to mark your path. I’m not going to lie, there were times during the game when I completely lost where I was going and just about ran out of patience trying to find my way out. Yes, even with the pointer.
The other big issue in Oraia Rift is the combat. With a huge selection of abilities at your disposal, you would think battles would be varied and fun. You’ll encounter a reasonable mix of foes, some of which with the ability to use magic themselves. Sadly, all the battles tend to come down to swinging your weapon as quickly as you can, while your opponents do the same. The enemies are stupid enough that you can easily lead them around the environment until they get stuck somewhere, which is a good strategy against groups. If you have magic power left, you might want to burn it on spells, but otherwise it’s just button-mashing. A lot of button mashing, too, since even weak enemies can absorb a lot of damage before going down. While your character has a roll move that you can activate by pressing the button while moving, it doesn’t function well for anything other than moving distances quickly. During battle, it’ll move you out of a pack, but you’ll end up too far away to counter-attack, even if you could get the attack going promptly. That’s tricky in and of itself. Since the same button does everything, with context determining the outcome, you have to make sure you are completely stationary before you try to attack, lest you simply roll around like a fool.
This is all probably sounding very negative, but I want to be very clear about Oraia Rift‘s faults. Ultimately, I think I like the game more than I don’t, and it’s possible you will, too. You’ll have to deal with all the things I’ve mentioned, along with stiff animations, odd clipping, a sometimes uncooperative camera, and all sorts of other obvious signs of a game’s reach more than exceeding its grasp. If that’s something you can handle, you’ll find a lot of fun moments in Oraia Rift, too. The puzzles are spread out enough that they’re always a welcome sight, even if few of them offer any real challenge. That little thrill you get in a Metroid or Zelda game where you get a new item and instantly think back to some places where you can use it is present in this game as well, albeit to a lesser extent. The occasional graphical oddity aside, the game is quite pretty, and I can even kind of appreciate its level designs. When it sends you to a ship area, it doesn’t even try to make a coherent ship. Instead, it just ship-flavors a twisty labyrinth. It doesn’t hide it in the least, either, since you can see much of the layout from certain points. There’s something kind of nostalgic about that.
Controlling your character is simple, perhaps to a fault. One stick moves your character around, while a button acts as a sort of catch-all for performing actions like talking, fighting, and unlocking doors. You can have up to four different abilities readied on a tray at the bottom of the screen, where you can use them with the tap of a button. When moving around, you’ll frequently get snagged on bits of the environment, so you’ll have to be patient. In battles, the roll move comes out a little too easily. You really have to stand perfectly still when swinging your weapon. You can switch the roll off either just in combat or completely in the options menu, but since it has its uses even in battles sometimes, it doesn’t feel like an ideal solution. A separate button would have been nice. Those with MFi controllers can at least take advantage of the game’s support, but you’ll still have the rolling problem.
Oraia Rift is an ambitious game that suffers from a handful of technical flaws and a fair few questionable design choices. It’s one of those games that is probably too big for its own good, making for a terribly uneven experience over the course of the game. The parts of it that work are a lot of fun, enough that they slightly edge out the parts that don’t, but never mind having a huge sack filled with magic: it’s a bag full of patience that you’ll truly need if you mean to enjoy this game.
