RiME for Nintendo Switch

UPDATE: The developers who made the game have been great! They saw the negative reviews and worked to get the game updated and looking 100% better. There are still some frame-rate drops, but the visuals are tremendous now and the game is SO much more playable, enjoyable and immersive. I love it now. Love it.I downloaded the game through the Nintendo shop as well as preordered it through Amazon. I was blown away by how poorly the game runs. Both on the cartridge as well as on the system. Terrible. For a system that runs Skyrim, Breath of the Wild and Mario Odessey this is a joke. The game is SUCH an appealing concept, but it looks like it belongs on the 3DS (minus the frame rate issues, then this would be fantastic), but it was a rush job, laziness and poor planning. What a waste. I hope they try to develop a fix [they did!], but it looks like they will have to redo the entire port.

This is a really beautiful game, and I am happy to have played it.I waited till the update was available before trying this game. I'm still at the beginning, but so far, so good; I haven't had any performance issues. Update, 3/15: I finished the game, with no performance issues, though a few glitches.It's a beautiful game.Me: Adventure/puzzle gamer, e.g.,: BOTW/Zelda, Dragon Quest Builders, Oxenfree. I don't love the battle parts of the first two, and am more of a fan of the wandering around and puzzling. So Rime is totally in the right spot for me. (And of the three, yes, this most resembles Oxenfree in terms of wandering around and puzzling.)Sort of "open world", but not really. The game is very linear in terms of completing the tasks.Hmmm. This is rated 10+, but it might not be appropriate for your kid. A lot of the game has a "scary" theme, including black ghost figures that are reminiscent of those in Spirited Away, except that in places, they're trying to grab you. Also a big birdlike thing that grabs you. You don't "fight" in this game, you just evade (or get taken and released). The music is dark and feeds the scary mood during these times.Frustrations:1. Figuring out the controls, and some of the paradigms for what you can and can't do (e.g., the cliff jumping, which is inconsistent in terms of when it will work and when you will fall to your death).2. The camera/perspective swings wildly in many situations, which takes some getting used to3. Sometimes, the camera angle is fixed, leaving you to move awkwardly (e.g., you can't see where you're going, or the perspective is at an angle, but you're trying to run straight ahead.)4. The game "autosaves" for you, but it turns out that this is at specific points. I lost a bit of progress. (You can't explicitly save yourself.)5. Overly dark scenes that are too hard to play during the day (silly me, without blackout curtains in my living room). On computer games like this, I adjust my monitor, but it seems more of a pain to mess with my TV settings. (Oh, look at that. You can adjust brightness to some extent in the game controls... but I still ended up adjusting my TV. Urgh.)6. I got lost at the end of Chapter 2, and couldn't find my way to the finale. I think this happened because I took a break for a few days in the middle of it, and could no longer remember how things were connected. The fox is supposed to help you out of a bind like this, but he didn't kick in, and I ended up having to resort to an internet walkthrough. (And then of course, once I was where I knew I needed to be, the fox showed up. Thanks, pal.)7. In Chapter 3, I hit a spot where my companion got stuck in a wall. This sort of thing can happen with any game, of course... it hadn't been long since a checkpoint, so I just reloaded back to that point.In general, I feel like the controls don't always work the way they should. I sometimes would try, try, again to do something and decide that wasn't what I was supposed to be doing right there only to come back later and have that move work. (E.g., there was a jump at the end that was "too high"... until finally it worked.) So I would say in some places the game is overly finicky about the controls. Jumping is just pressing the B button and I was just doing a vertical leap. No skill involved, so it should have worked.The hardcopy comes with a little glossy stapled booklet that explains the controls (I hadn't noticed the booklet at first), and a free download of the soundtrack (via greybox) by David García Díaz (also on Amazon, for $8.99) -- 40 tracks, but of course, some are quite short.Anyway, I waited to get this until they addressed the performance issues on the Switch, and I'm glad I did. I really enjoyed this game.

It is a very different game in today's gaming world, but it was a really visual and deep experience with a semi-predictable twist at the end. It is a puzzler that could have done better at acclimating the gamer to the game, but it was still a beautiful journey.

Yes, there are frame rate issues. But don't let that overshadow what is otherwise a wonderful experience. Understand it is not supposed to be an unlimited exploration game like BotW. The game has a specific narrative and you have to figure out how to get to where it wants you to go. Think Journey with a little more exploration type puzzle solving and not as strong on the seamless push to the finish which is what made Journey excel. Loved my time playing this game. Gorgeous music with delightful environments. Wish there were more games like this and Journey out there.

 Really good game, amazing music and places is short but full of feelings.