Recompile Review

All it takes sometimes is some eye catching colours to hook me in. As you can see from the screens below, Recompile has that in spades. Luckily, it also happens to be a bloody excellent game too, and one that I couldn’t put down once I started it.

Playing as a sentient AI construct, we’re tasked with finding out what happened to the digital world around us and bringing it back online. What started out as a fairly opaque set of text logs eventually had me hooked on finding out the who’s, what’s, why’s and where’s. I was surprised how much the tale hooked me in, and whenever I found a new text log it was a genuine joy to read as the tapestry of the tale slowly unfolded in front of me. Not to spoil things at all, but it’s worth hunting them all down as not only does it affect how much of the tale we get, but also the final outcome. In fact, I enjoyed it so much I just spent half an hour after beating it the first time going back and finding all the extra ones to get the ‘true’ ending – something I very rarely do. The difference in the two outcomes was stark, and well worth seeing.

But how do we get to this point? By playing a solidly made Metroidvania style adventure. After a short introduction where we’re taught the basics, we’re set free in a small hub world from which we can venture into four different biomes in search of the text logs, new power ups, and puzzle to solve. The art style did make initally finding my way around a little difficult, but thankfully each of the four biomes are colour coded to help with getting our bearings.

Once in a biome, there are various platforming puzzles to traverse, as well as stints of combat and logic puzzles. The combat is undoubtedly the weakest aspect in Recompile; it’s just too awkward to fight more than one Dragonfly – the game’s enemies – at a time, and even just one can be a pain thanks to them hovering just above where we’re able to aim. There are at least some lovely looking explosions when we do best them though, which almost makes the effort to kill them worth it. Boss battles are another beast though, and the four here are ultra tough.

Now, I’m no elite player, but the first two were especially tough. The speed at which they move, and the damage they can inflict, felt borderline unfair.

However.

When cleaning up the text logs after I’d finished the game I found a power in the VERY FIRST AREA that I’d missed that slows down time… this would have made things so much easier, as it’s effectively unlimited but means we also move slower so the one hit kills would still mess us up. That’s kinda part and parcel of Metroidvania titles, but to miss such an important one – especially as most others are almost unmissable – felt like a real kick in the teeth.

Outside of combat upgrades we get access to hacking and traversal ones that thankfully were much easier to find. It’s fairly standard fare for traversal – a double/triple jump, dash, and later a really cool jet pack – but each make the world open up in that classic Metroidvania way. There are some biomes that we can’t get into before unlocking certain abilities, helping funnel us the right way, but later returning to grab more text logs is very easy and rewarding to do. In fact, exploring the biomes was by far the most enjoyable aspect of Recompile. The platforming early on can be tricky to gauge thanks to some odd shaped platforms to land on, but it always feels like we’re making progress, even when the way forward might not be super obvious. Once the upgrades come into it the game opens up a bit more, and those huge looking levels suddenly feel very manageable.

Hacking upgrades come early on, but outside of one biome they are somewhat underused. It’s also not super intuitive – at least to me – so the few puzzles that required this had me stuck for a little longer than I would have liked. I’ll admit that guess work got me through most of them, and by the time I’d started getting the hang of it there were no puzzles left, which was a bit of shame.

My only other point of contention really is in the UI menu. There’s no real mission reminder to be found outside of scrolling through the chat log, and there were a few times I got stuck as to where to go next because it wasn’t clear if what I had just done was finished fully. The UI is presented in an old school ASCII format, and while it looks neat, it can make reading the information difficult at times, with a lot of aesthetic filler almost muddying up what is useful information.

Conclusion

Slight niggles about missed power-ups and underutilised mechanics aside, I still very much enjoyed Recompile. It looks utterly gorgeous, has an oddly stirring soundtrack, and the core gameplay loop is simply fun to engage with. Traversing the digital landscapes as they fill in and focus in front of us is a treat, and even though they may look initially daunting in size, there’s a smart logic to how they unfold every time. Each new power up comes along at just the right time (well, mostly) and clocking in at around 8-10 hours it’s not an overly long title to get through. Plus, there’s a genuinely interesting story to weave together throughout, and as noted above it’s well worth going back and hunting any missed logs to get the ‘true’ ending. Some weak combat and fiddly UI are the only real blemishes on an other great title, and I can confidently recommend this as something to check out.

This game was tested and reviewed on Xbox Series X/S. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.