Relicta

 PC
User Score
5.8

Mixed or average reviews- based on 28 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 11 out of 28
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 28
  3. Negative: 8 out of 28

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  1. TitaniumDragon
    Jun 7, 2021
    5
    Relicta is a first person puzzle game that really wants to be Portal.

    Like all such games, it falls well short. But unfortunately, it doesn’t even manage to stand out particularly as its own thing. Despite its high graphical fidelity and production quality, it starts out promising but ends up falling apart about halfway through, both in terms of gameplay and story. Like all such    Relicta is a first person puzzle game that really wants to be Portal.

    Like all such games, it falls well short.

    But unfortunately, it doesn’t even manage to stand out particularly as its own thing. Despite its high graphical fidelity and production quality, it starts out promising but ends up falling apart about halfway through, both in terms of gameplay and story.

    Like all such games, it has a “core mechanic”. The core mechanic here is the ability to give blocks (and some pads that can hold charges) either a red charge or a blue charge. Opposite colored charges attract, same-colored charges repel.

    In addition, you can make blocks weightless, allowing them to fly through the air after having been given a push from a charge, or continuing on their momentum from a moving platform.

    That’s it. That’s all there is.

    The game is entirely centered around grabbing blocks and putting them on buttons to get rid of various force fields blocking your way, and sometimes toggling the odd switch. The force fields can either block everything, or only one thing – you, blocks, or drones.

    There are some platforms that you can move, along with some drones that remove all special effects on all nearby blocks and charge pads, and which can carry blocks.

    And… that’s all the mechanics there is.

    The problem is, this is a 15 hour long game, but it has fewer, and less interesting, mechanics than something like Portal 2.

    So how does it make the game last 15 hours?

    Unfortunately, the answer to that is by just making increasingly long puzzles in the back half of the game. Frequently, puzzles would either be multi-stage things, where you go through a series of mini-puzzles, or a puzzle where there was some sort of “hub” that you kept on having to solve mini-puzzles to unlock a central door. Only rarely were there big puzzles that actually felt like they integrated all the pieces.

    As a result, the entire second half of the game starts to end up feeling tedious rather than interesting. Some of the later game puzzles were okay, but never was there a puzzle in the game where I felt like it was particularly amazing to solve. A lot of the “harder” puzzles were harder because you couldn’t find a particular “puzzle piece”, so to speak; once you actually had the pieces in hand, what you were actually supposed to do was often fairly straightforward, if sometimes fiddly later in the game, as you had to line things up rather awkwardly to make some puzzles work, as the “snap-to” portions didn’t work in some areas due to them not sending you in quite the right direction or being aligned in the right way.

    The game ends up just kind of dragging on by the end, and I just wanted it to be over.

    Which brings up the other problem – the story.

    It starts out promisingly enough – there’s some sort of inciting incident with a weird purple crystal, you have a set of coworkers around and a daughter who is coming to the space station, ect.

    The problem is, this all ends up falling apart about halfway through the game. The central plot twist of the game isn’t very good and results in almost all of the characters you spent the first half of the game talking with never talking to you again throughout the rest of the game. As a result, the game's supporting cast dynamics end up being totally tossed out the window and not mattering at all for the rest of the game, as you end up interacting with a second, and less interesting, set of characters for the second half of the game.

    Indeed, if you spend any time thinking about the plot twist, it both feels unnecessarily convoluted and makes no physical sense, nor sense with the other characters in the story, who act like no time has passed at all. The loss of contact with their former colleagues gets short shrift and the story itself seems to forget about what happened to them, as the characters don’t seem to care despite supposedly being emotionally invested. Only at the very end of one of the game’s two multiple endings (which are chosen at the last minute for… some reason? I don’t even know why it has multiple endings…) does the game remember “Oh, these people existed” and actually follow up on it at all, and then only in a stinger thing that is not very satisfying (though there’s more from a title update I have yet to play).

    Overall, then, the game fails to deliver in terms of story, character, or gameplay. The story doesn’t even make a ton of sense in terms of characterization, and the gameplay is too simple for a game as long as Relicta is. Despite a potentially promising start, it just doesn’t hold up, and it never really does anything particularly good, let alone great.    … Expand
  2. guitarfred
    Jan 21, 2022
    0
    I'll keep it short. graphics are not that important to me in puzzle games and this one is fine, except for the flora. The gameplay would actually also go decently, if it would fit LOGICALLY in the story. Without wanting to spoil...Would you fix anything in such a way? That makes me laugh. That tears me out of any immersion. And then all the F+++ screaming.... only psychopaths in the game.I'll keep it short. graphics are not that important to me in puzzle games and this one is fine, except for the flora. The gameplay would actually also go decently, if it would fit LOGICALLY in the story. Without wanting to spoil...Would you fix anything in such a way? That makes me laugh. That tears me out of any immersion. And then all the F+++ screaming.... only psychopaths in the game. that also tears me out of the therefore non-existent athmosphere....

    Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)    … Expand
  3. danield80
    Apr 15, 2022
    6
    Relicta a pretty challenging puzzle game heavily weighed down with enormous amount of cringe writing.

    The puzzles get really tough midgame which is alright but the unintuitive magnetism mechanics together with timing-requiring puzzles make the game frustrating.

    The cringy dialogues where the f word is so prevalent are the final nail in the coffin. I stopped playing halfway through.
  4. WayTooBad
    Jan 23, 2022
    0
    This is the biggest blow to the patriarchy. Well done, you showed em girls. The Voice over is also terrible.

    Would be much better if you could remove voice over and story.
  5. dotrem
    May 3, 2021
    4
    Generic UT4 game with worse graphics that Portal 2.
    I played 5 hours and now can not remember nothing special in gameplay. There are already houndreds of Portal clones without any mention gameplay features.
    What i really noticed in the game - dialoges. So freaking bad. Literally every dialoge in the game is a who-say-more-times-fuk-word contest. And yes, they have a computer interface    Generic UT4 game with worse graphics that Portal 2.
    I played 5 hours and now can not remember nothing special in gameplay. There are already houndreds of Portal clones without any mention gameplay features.
    What i really noticed in the game - dialoges. So freaking bad. Literally every dialoge in the game is a who-say-more-times-fuk-word contest.

    And yes, they have a computer interface with male voice and call it 'sis' or 'princess'. What a jokers.    … Expand
  6. catholicbatman
    Aug 15, 2020
    9
    This game is a breath of fresh air. It's very much in the style of puzzle games, and it hits it out of the park on that front. I've had a lot of experience with these types of games, having played Portal, Portal 2, The Talos Principle, The Witness, The Turing Test, Steamroll, Lightmatter, Q.U.B.E, The Swapper, Chromagun, The Spectrum Retreat, MIND: Path to Thalmos, Etherborn, Polarity, andThis game is a breath of fresh air. It's very much in the style of puzzle games, and it hits it out of the park on that front. I've had a lot of experience with these types of games, having played Portal, Portal 2, The Talos Principle, The Witness, The Turing Test, Steamroll, Lightmatter, Q.U.B.E, The Swapper, Chromagun, The Spectrum Retreat, MIND: Path to Thalmos, Etherborn, Polarity, and Magrunner: Dark Pulse so I feel like I can speak with some leverage in the this particular niche (which happens to be my favorite!)

    You play as a female scientist on a base on the moon. You are trying to get everyone in your crew together but things just don't seem to be going the way you want them to and in order to press forward you have to complete various puzzles. These puzzles typically involve cubes, pressure plates, switches, gravity, anti-gravity and magnetism and you have to use all of them to your advantage to move forward. Early on as the game introduces concepts through puzzles, they easier and quicker to move through. As you progress the puzzles in Relicta become challenging almost, at times, to the point of frustration, but very satisfying to solve and totally reasonable when you realize what you are supposed to do. The breadth of some of the levels makes them take quite a bit of time to both analyze, set up a plan, and implement it. Occasionally the implementation of your ideas does not function right and you have to try repeatedly to accomplish what you want to do (or give up on that method), but the game does a good job of allowing easy ways to get your cubes back as well as an easy way to restart a particular puzzle if you need to. I was particularly impressed with some of the really unique ways that Relicta has you solve parts of puzzles. When I made the discovery of how to do these particular things, it felt so incredible. You have to really think outside the box! Since I would describe this game as a puzzler, I wanted this to be the first thing I discussed.

    The graphics of the game are good. Each area of puzzles has it's own beautiful biome style and they are impressive. I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't explore as much as I'd like due to the invisible walls. I particularly liked the jungle biome and I liked the sounds for it too.

    The game runs smooth at about 80-100 fps with my GTX 980. I have not had any bugs and the game seems well polished.

    The voice acting is good, but I wouldn't call it outstanding.

    I was not too happy about all the crude language in this game so, fair warning, you're not going to want to play it around kids at least during the times you are travelling because that's when the dialogue happens. Every game I've played in this style has managed to do it with little to no cussing from what I remember, but this game excessively uses it in my opinion.

    The one other gripe I have is with the travelling. Travelling from place to place through the main area and the other world areas was really kind of difficult. Half the time I didn't seem to know exactly where to go and had to just stumble around. It would be nice to have some sort of arrow to direct you where it wants you to go so you can get there - there are just so many ways to go. That said, the game does have hidden PDA notes and some collectibles hidden throughout the worlds, which is nice.

    I forget where I made the discovery of Relicta initially, but I am glad I decided to pick it up. Typically I don't buy a game at full price, but I did with this one knowing the style of game it was and I have to say it had totally been worth that amount of money. Based on what I know about the game, I'm guessing I am a little over halfway through it at the time of this review and have put in 12 hours. The story has kept me interested in what is yet to come, and I can't wait to know what the ending is going to be. For very few people working on this game, I am very impressed with the quality of it. It's hard to find a good game in this vein, but this is definitely one of them.    … Expand
  7. PassionalGamer
    Aug 6, 2020
    9
    Nice! Challenging physics game with a funny gameplay and nice graphics.

    Recommended!
  8. xcava86x
    Sep 4, 2022
    0
    This game could be okay if they didn't try so hard to make a feminist game, or didn't even try at all. The game is full of male figures who get either mocked or are a villian, while the girls keep saying the F word every other sentence.

    In the first hour I had already cringed more than I could bare, but I kept playing hoping it would have gotten better... no luck. The dialogues are so    This game could be okay if they didn't try so hard to make a feminist game, or didn't even try at all. The game is full of male figures who get either mocked or are a villian, while the girls keep saying the F word every other sentence.

    In the first hour I had already cringed more than I could bare, but I kept playing hoping it would have gotten better... no luck. The dialogues are so terrible that I had to uninstall it. I even paid for this ****!

    Never again!    … Expand
  9. StIwY
    Jul 23, 2022
    6
    This game is pure feminism propaganda. Every male character is portraited as "bad". Also too much swear words, and the plot is a mess. A failed attempt to mix up puzzle and and adventure. At some point i just skipped every cutscene and stupid dialogues. The good thing is the longevity, easily more than 25+ hours to complete every puzzle, dlc including.

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
74

Mixed or average reviews - based on 16 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 16
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 16
  3. Negative: 0 out of 16
  1. DarkZero
    Dec 15, 2021
    70
    It’s a good time and a fantastic brain-burner, but perhaps by trimming some of the weaker areas and focusing on what makes it special, Relicta could have stood a little taller next to some of the giants in its category.
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  2. CD-Action
    Oct 15, 2020
    85
    If you love Portal, The Witness, or The Talos Principle, you’re gonna enjoy Relicta. Its puzzles might get a little tedious in the long run (they are all based on magnetic gloves), but I really enjoyed them throughout most of the campaign. What’s important (to me at least), the story is not just a quick, half-baked addition to the puzzles, but a valuable element of the game. [10/2020, p.90]
  3. Adventure Gamers
    Sep 28, 2020
    90
    From simple magnetism and gravity mechanics springs the fiendishly challenging Relicta, a highly polished environmental puzzler through a lunar space station with your every move being watched.
    Read full review
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