ReCore

Recore is a refreshing mix of platformer and shooter at heart, but also an action adventure that suffers from too much slack.

The biggest obstacle on ReCore’s path to greatness is the uneven pacing of the campaign. First couple of hours, when the game gradually unveils its secrets, are almost perfect, but then it becomes unnecessarily hard and the story gets watered down too much. [12/2016, p.44]

You can feel all the effort, care and originality they put into the ReCore game. We don’t see many platformers like this and most things in the game work just fine. But a couple of bad design decisions and technical issues ruin that good feeling unfortunately.

ReCore is unexpectedly big and its modest amount of content turns this huge world into an empty one. It has solid action gameplay but after some time, it turns into an annoying grindfest. The company could have made a better game if they hadn't focused on Mighty No 9.

ReCore is an interesting robotic Frankenstein of various game parts. They don’t always work well together, but when they do the collective whole is a rather wonderful creation. However as not all parts were created equal expect some frustration and the occasional fumble.

As you run along the main questline, building robocompanions and navigating platforms, it feels like Inafune had finally made a top-quality game. But then you hit a literal roadblock: to open a door and advance the story, you have to turn back and collect cores that are hidden all over the world or awarded for completion of dungeons that up until now were optional. That’s when ReCore’s shortcomings, like lifeless world and repetitive combat with respawning enemies, become really annoying. [Issue#213, p.62]

For all of its missteps, it's hard to get too angry at ReCore. The platforming and combat are so good that it's hard not wishing a better game surrounded them. For those with a fair amount of patience, it's worth playing just to see the strongest aspects. For everyone else, it's best to just shake your head, move on, and wonder what could have been.

ReCore is an interesting game with a solid combat system, but affected by a boring open-world structure and a lot of technical issues.

Like a robot that's been cobbled together from spare parts, ReCore has a complicated identity. It's often a platformer and a third-person shooter, but it sometimes feels like a shoot 'em up or a character action game, and it's all underpinned by RPG systems...Because of this muddled personality, it never fully delivers on anything, leaving us with an enjoyable experience, albeit one with a few issues at its core.

ReCore is a style of game we haven't seen in a while. Part Mega Man Legends, part Metroid Prime, ReCore puts exploration and platforming at the forefront. With your trusty corebot pals, you'll double jump and dash through an open world and some damned fiendish dungeons. While ReCore trips up a bit with some odd combat and gating mechanics, it's still worth your time if you remember how platforming was in the old days.

ReCore is a poster child for wasted potential. At its heart is a good (though not great) game, marred by long load times, technical problems (including frame rates dips and the occasional crash), and bad pacing. The infuriating and frivolous road blocks may have doubled the length of the 20-hour game, but they also halved my fun.

By the game’s end, I found I didn’t care about any of the characters. Instead, I was fed up, hunting down the rest of the prismatic cores in order to reach the end. The game had done a full 180. It’s a major disappointment, given the promise ReCore shows at its beginning, when it’s just Joule and Mack.

Somehow, I started a new game over my save file, so I lost all my progress. Naturally, I was distraught. Then I went for a walk and got over it.