“Rainblood: Town of Death” Will Suck You In

I have very lit­tle time to write this post so let’s make it into a bul­let point based mini-review.

“Rainblood: Town of Death” is a sim­ple, short, won­der­ful RPG that has been finally trans­lated from Chinese. The story is set in so-called Central Land, an eso­teric ver­sion of China where ordi­nary folks are, well, ordi­nary but mar­tial artists are, con­versely, super-human ass-kicking killing machines belong­ing to numer­ous groups of assas­sins and spies for hire.

These groups work in shadow but at the same time are so pow­er­ful they can eas­ily manip­u­late the cur­rent bal­ance of polit­i­cal power in the Central Land. And they com­pete fiercely for power and influence.

What to like about the game:

• The story of a for­mer mas­ter assas­sin – Soul Darkrider and his quest for vengeance and honor. It offers every­thing a dra­matic plot has to bring to the table – friend­ship, betrayal, love, strug­gle for power, con­spir­acy and polit­i­cal machi­na­tions. And it is dead seri­ous. No humor inside.
• The focus on story-telling. This is not an explo­ration RPG. There is no big world for you to dis­cover. Everything is tightly wrapped around the plot which is under­stand­able since the game has been cre­ated by one person.
• Fabulous, hand drawn graph­ics. It is styl­ish and very ascetic. The game runs only in 640×480 but scales to big­ger screens with­out prob­lems, mine 24-inch LCD mon­i­tor included. Big pix­els are not an issue; with this type of aes­thet­ics, “Rainblood: Town of Death” can be played on both net­books and desk­top computers.
• Engaging, round based tac­ti­cal bat­tle sys­tem, requir­ing you to plan ahead and think about how much of the Killing Force (read: mana) you have left and which skills to use at the moment. Depending on the choices you make, the same bat­tle can be won in two rounds or lost in only one.
• Atmospheric music. It is licensed, not orig­i­nally com­posed for the game but this does not mat­ter. It sets the mood flaw­lessly in every sit­u­a­tion you encounter when playing.

What not to like:

• The game is trans­lated poorly in some places but these moments are rare. Otherwise, the English ver­sion is quite well written.
• There is no quest log of any sort but the num­ber of side quests (like, two?) does not make it necessary.
• Lack of vari­ety when it comes to ene­mies. Also, ran­dom encoun­ters get tedious if you play for too long in one session.
• The game is god damned too short! I want more and so will you. Despair not, how­ever, as the sequel, “Rainblood II: The City of Flame” is com­ing. It is going to use a com­pletely dif­fer­ent, side-scrolling sys­tem to show the action but it looks styl­ish enough.

Overall, “Rainblood: Town of Death” some­times fails a bit but is a remark­able, pol­ished gem nonethe­less. Now just go and buy it!