A multicoloured metroidvania with divine domestic problems
Developed by indie team Space Fox Games and published by Salient Games—the company behind titles like Deep Diving Simulator and Flashout 2—comes a one-of-a-kind, multicoloured metroidvania titled Rin: The Last Child. The plot is very slow to begin with. As the narrative sets the scene, it is articulated by what can only be described as a holy voice informing you that you have been created to save the world from destruction. That is where you come in. Playing as Rin, a platinum-haired entity who seems to have as many family issues as the Kardashians, you are tasked with slapping some sense into your siblings one by one. Each has been slowly corrupted by the power they were given. It is just short of biblical, if you ask me. It’s a heavy story packed into as many hours as it would take to endure the first stages of labour.
The gameplay of Rin: The Last Child consists of magical Metroidvania platforming overlaid with a dark, macabre fairytale narrative. If you are new to the Metroidvania genre, get ready for a lot of exploration. You will find yourself backtracking constantly, unlocking new areas of the map as you upgrade your character. The more abilities you unlock, the more locations you can reach, making this one of the most satisfying game loops to emerge since the mid-90s. For me, Metroidvanias are an absolute favourite. The feeling you get from scrupulously checking the map for the thousandth time—staring at every little nook and cranny, only to discover a brand-new, neglected crevice that opens up a whole unexplored area—never gets old.
However, dear reader, if you have never played this type of game before, get ready to feel lost. You will be feeling it a hell of a lot. The best way I can describe it is that it feels exactly like being a kid in aisle seven of Sainsbury’s. You are frantically checking every single row, trying to find your long-lost mother while simultaneously hoping you can convince her to buy you some Billy Bear novelty ham. But try as you might, she is nowhere to be found—until eventually, she appears, and wouldn’t you know it, she says no anyway. You are forced to put the ham back. But I digress; that exact feeling of desperate, wandering confusion is remarkably similar to being lost in a Metroidvania game.
As you traverse this magical landscape, you will come across respawn points called Fountains of Youth, which exist solely to bring you back to life after an inevitable demise. Throughout this journey, you will gather aspects of mighty magic—useful ingredients for conjuring powerful spells. However, you also need to find spell patterns, which are essentially blueprints. Once you have both, Rin can create new spells to upgrade her arsenal. While there are many individual spells to discover, they are broken down into just three main types: offensive, defensive, and utility.
Offensive Spells: Used for slaughtering annoying enemies, these boast radical names like Phantom Blades and Spectral Spears. With every merciless killing, you gather souls to further enhance your spell-crafting.
Defensive Spells: Used for protecting yourself from incoming damage.
Utility Spells: Mainly used for making exploration a little easier—essentially acting as a Zimmer frame for an OAP.
The combat itself is pretty basic. You hack and slash your way through watercolour warriors, slaying them willy-nilly. Truthfully, these insidious creatures are beautiful; you will encounter everything from mischievous mosaic mosquitoes to pink pincushion hedgehogs. None of them pose much of a threat early on. While the enemies understandably get tougher as the game progresses, fear not! You can collect runes to enchant your Phantom Blades, increasing your damage and taking you from the punching power of the Milkybar Kid to the slapping stance of Iron Mike Tyson.
Controlling Rin is very simple and lacks much combat depth, though I don’t think complex combat is necessarily needed for a title like this. What is desperately needed, however, is solid platforming.
Unfortunately, I noticed the platforming here is a little clunky. I experienced several frustrating issues, most notably that Rin gets caught on ledges quite often. This creates infuriating moments where you will either fall down or take an unintentional hit from an enemy. If you are going to create a Metroidvania, the platforming absolutely has to be on point—the majority, if not all, of the game consists of it. Getting caught on geometry and battling the controls is far from ideal, and it genuinely takes away from the overall gameplay experience. Honestly, I don’t understand how the development team didn’t pick up on this during testing, as I noticed it within the first ten minutes.
Enough of the negatives—let’s talk about where the game really shines: the art style. It is gorgeous using beautiful, vivid backgrounds contrasted with a harsh black foreground overlay. This creates a perfect balance between soothing and striking. It is fair to say that the developers, Space Fox Games, have been heavily influenced by Microsoft’s marvellous masterpiece, Ori and the Blind Forest. To be truthful, I found a lot of similarities between both of these Metroidvanias, but let’s get back to the art style.
The luscious landscape is picturesque, featuring violet meadows with autumnal leaves cascading from a lilac canopy, alongside water-filled lagoons that look as inviting as an all-you-can-eat Sunday roast at Toby Carvery. However, don’t be fooled by these stupendous springs; our girl Rin is incredibly sensitive when it comes to the glorious H2O, meaning she takes damage when she falls in—and quite a lot of it, if I’m being honest.
These striking graphics, paired with the soundtrack, create a highly relaxing experience. While we are on the subject of the tunes, let me tell you about the soundtrack itself. It mainly consists of relaxing, Oriental-style pan flutes that instantly reminded me of one of those quirky crystal shops you’d find in Camden Town. You know the ones—where you walk in and are immediately hit by the scented smoke fumes of a blazing incense stick, and there is literally thousands of pieces of pewter silver jewellery everywhere, and that’s just on the happy hippy cashier, let alone what’s actually for sale! But anyway, I’m getting lost in my own thoughts. The soundtrack is super relaxing, and it adds a wonderful dimension to the overall experience.
Where does all of this leave us? I would be lying if I said this was a solid Metroidvania that could go toe-to-toe with modern classics like Hollow Knight or Blasphemous, or even older gems like Super Metroid or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. However, those titles all have one thing in common: their price. They are all full-priced games, whereas Rin: The Last Child comes in at £15.99. That is roughly half the price of the others I just mentioned.
For that price, it is a very reasonable game with plenty of enjoyment to be had—provided you can overlook some of the sloppy platforming aspects. That being said, I think I would feel more comfortable spending around the £13 mark. I know it’s only a few quid less, but at that price point, it would be much easier to overlook the game’s flaws. If you are a keen Metroidvania enthusiast like myself, it is definitely worth picking up—just maybe wait until it goes on sale. So with everything I’ve listed above, I score this game…….
7.3
(Reviewed on PS5)
+ beautiful landscapes
+ relaxing soundtrack
+ affordable
-Clunky platforming
-fairly short
