Rule of Rose Game Review

Rule of Rose
PS2
Release Date: September 12th, 2006
Survival Horror / Action/Adventure
Review by Sirus

 Rule of Rose is a survival horror game localized by Atlus. The story doesn’t really make much sense to me. Throughout most of the game you are running through dark corridors looking for one item which leads you to the next item etc all to get you to the next chapter. It is very helpful that the game lets you save between chapters because a lot of the time, there is one save point in the room you start a chapter in and if you are lucky, you can find another save point or two.

The biggest letdown with the game is the combat. The controls aren’t completely horrible but the combat is so clunky that you will be glad the game lets you ignore a lot of the combat. Healing items are scarce unless you spend hours sending your dog to find items and take those to the Aristocrat Club as gifts. The biggest problem with the combat is how slow everything goes. Jennifer who you will be controlling the entire game doesn’t really want to fight so she always swings her weapons quite awkward.

The annoying part is when you are fighting any more then two or three enemies at a time, they will constantly jump at you and grab on to you. They then hurt you until you can shake them off by shaking the left analog stick. Shaking them off is always slow and usually leads to another enemy jumping on you as soon as you shake the first one off. Enemies can also knock you over, something that Jennifer takes a long time to recover from and leaves herself voulerable when she finally stands up.

With such annoying enemies and rare healing items its always good that you get fully healed at the end of a chapter but when you die you go back to the last save point which isn’t usually very close by. Bosses aren’t much better and do much more damage to you. Thankfully there are only 3 bosses in the game.

Graphically the game looks good and has some very impressive cut-scenes that can get quite disturbing. The music in the game is very good and fits the mood with some well done violins. Overall though, the story wasn’t all that solid or clear and the game-play is far too frustrating such that you pretty much have to force your way through to beat the game. While the game is about 10 hours long, it feels even longer because much of the game is very slow paced. Players who are fans of survival horror games and need a new game to play might want to check this out but only if they can put up with the really bad combat.

Graphics: 8
Gameplay: 4
Sound: 8
Value: 6
Story: 7
Final Score: 6 (not an average)