RemiLore is my fifth Switch game in a row, which is kind of an unusual streak.  Finishing Klonoa a few days ago led me to actually look at other games I own for the system, and it turned out I had quite a few and several of them were quite short and could be experienced in a few hours.

RemiLore continues that trend.  With occasional breaks to do things like eat lunch and feed the cat, I went from title screen to end credits in the space of, mmm, four hours?  five?  Not very long anyway.  That’s not a lot for a game with a $40 price tag, so hopefully I got it on sale.

Since I am super cheap, that’s almost certain.  I am very weak to cute girls with glasses, but not $40 weak.

Anyway, I’m not very well-versed in the ways of rogue and rogue-like games, so I’m not sure I’m qualified to say whether it’s a good one or a bad one, but it feels a little thin on content.  I think the appeal boils down to having a cute main character and some goofy humor, so let’s talk about that.

Like any good buddy comedy, you have a pair of characters who don’t necessarily LIKE each other but have to put up with each other because (reasons).  In this case, (reasons) are that Remi – the human of the duo – accidentally wakes up Lore – the book – and Lore panics and warps them both to another dimension.  I’ll let Remi sum up the plot from there:

Complicating her return home is the unfortunate presence of one pissed-off loli.

Choux – the girl on the right – has been stuck in this dimension for a very long time and sees Lore as her ride out and Remi as an unwelcome obstacle.  Fortunately they sit down and talk things out in a reasonable fashion and reach a compromise… oh, who am I kidding.  Choux has had a long time to build an army of murder robots and now they have someone to murder, so why let them go to waste?

The game is split into four worlds, with four acts each, each of which is further split into four combat rooms and some random side areas full of crates and bookshelves and all sorts of extremely breakable items.  When you break things or kill robots, desserts fly out which can be collected to buy character upgrades.

Oh, right, desserts.  More on that in a second.

At the end of every act, you’re scored on your performance, get between one and four chests to smash open for random loot, and then move on to the next act.

So, desserts.  RemiLore is not a terribly serious game, so rather than collecting gold or precious gems you are hovering up shortcakes and ice cream.  Many of the weapons you get are similarly silly and cute.

While you’re running around trying not to get murdered by robots and collecting desserts, Remi and Lore carry on a pretty constant stream of banter, mostly revolving around how much of an idiot the other is being at any given moment.

One of my two complaints with the game is that some of these exchanges repeat far too often.  My other complaint is that, since it’s a rogue-like game, dying comes with the penalty of (a) losing half your desserts and (b) being sent back to Act 1 of your current world.  Since I died twice fighting the boss of 1-4, I had to repeat the entirety of world 1 twice over.  I was giving myself permission to shelve the game if I died a third time, but fortunately I seemed to get gud, or at least get adequate, by my third time facing off with the guy.

Once I got over that hump, it was a pretty smooth run through the remainder of the game.  It popped up a nice summary screen and let me know that New Game+ was now available, followed by a cute ending credit scroll and some post-adventure musings from Remi.

Anyway, overall it wasn’t entirely my thing but I had a decent time with it.  Not enough to get me to jump into that NG+ right away, but knowing that it’s unlocked may bring me back when I have a couple of hours to kill.