Computer Game - Ronin (2015) [/]
Apr 12 2021
Ronin is a modern day side-scrolling stealth ninja game with turn-based combat. You have a katana, have to hack computer terminals, kill all the guards, don't kill innocents, and eventually kill the five people that (I'm guessing) betrayed your father.
Controls are WASD for movement. Left mouse lets you choose where to jump with an arcing path animation so you know your exact path (and I think it's red towards the end if the jump is going to take longer than a turn). Right mouse + scroll to pan the camera and see the rest of the level.
Combat starts as soon as the bad guys are aware of you, so sneaking around in the dark and killing people stealthily is kind of doable but most of the time you have to alert the guards (i.e. there is no way to enter a room without them seeing you). A lot of times it's jump on a guard to knock them down then a second move to kill them. Meanwhile you can see red lines where each guard is shooting next turn (they're all aiming at you) so sometimes you can't kill a knocked down guard and have to go knock over someone else (it takes a guard 3 turns to get up).
As you get deeper into the game there are different bad guys. Armored samurai that does a straight line to you (covering a distance far more than you can move in a turn), though sometimes you can get him to charge right out a high rise window (normal bad guys for the most part don't move once a fight starts). I also saw a submachine gunner bad guy but effectively seems about the same as a normal bad guy.
In combat control is a bit fiddly. I got stuck in a level because it's hard to swing into a building through a window. Also the game crashed if a samurai killed you and there are no saves. When you start the game and continue it's at the start of a level. It does checkpoint as you do a level so if you die you go back to the end of the last fight or other significant event (and out of combat mode).
It's a Windows game and I couldn't get it to run on CrossOver with Steam installed. The GOG version is 32-bit but ran ok on my Mac mini (except the aforementioned crashing bug).
Overall it's a nice action game though perhaps trying to be a bit too cute with the turn-based combat.
Controls are WASD for movement. Left mouse lets you choose where to jump with an arcing path animation so you know your exact path (and I think it's red towards the end if the jump is going to take longer than a turn). Right mouse + scroll to pan the camera and see the rest of the level.
Combat starts as soon as the bad guys are aware of you, so sneaking around in the dark and killing people stealthily is kind of doable but most of the time you have to alert the guards (i.e. there is no way to enter a room without them seeing you). A lot of times it's jump on a guard to knock them down then a second move to kill them. Meanwhile you can see red lines where each guard is shooting next turn (they're all aiming at you) so sometimes you can't kill a knocked down guard and have to go knock over someone else (it takes a guard 3 turns to get up).
As you get deeper into the game there are different bad guys. Armored samurai that does a straight line to you (covering a distance far more than you can move in a turn), though sometimes you can get him to charge right out a high rise window (normal bad guys for the most part don't move once a fight starts). I also saw a submachine gunner bad guy but effectively seems about the same as a normal bad guy.
In combat control is a bit fiddly. I got stuck in a level because it's hard to swing into a building through a window. Also the game crashed if a samurai killed you and there are no saves. When you start the game and continue it's at the start of a level. It does checkpoint as you do a level so if you die you go back to the end of the last fight or other significant event (and out of combat mode).
It's a Windows game and I couldn't get it to run on CrossOver with Steam installed. The GOG version is 32-bit but ran ok on my Mac mini (except the aforementioned crashing bug).
Overall it's a nice action game though perhaps trying to be a bit too cute with the turn-based combat.