Maroc - 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 01/Feb 00:01

R.I.P. – Reincarnation Insurance Program – Preview

We have featured quite a few Survivors-like games over the last few years here on 3rd-strike.com, with Night Swarm being one of the most recent examples. Night Swarm proved to be an interesting new title in the genre, featuring a few original mechanics to deliver an original experience. Today, we have another one of those games: R.I.P. – Reincarnation Insurance Program, another Survivors-like game that promises an original experience. R.I.P.’s shtick is adding a loot-based system to the mix, making it a mix of Diablo and Vampire Survivors. The game is currently out in Early Access, and we were lucky enough to get a preview copy to check it out. There is a bit of story value in R.I.P., but we’re leaving that part for the full review when the story component perhaps feels a bit more fleshed out. In terms of presentation, however, R.I.P. – Reincarnation Insurance Program does look rather polished and detailed for a Survivors-like experience. The game reminded us a bit of a sci-fi version of Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel, meaning it looks very polished and next-gen. Other titles in the genre often choose more simplistic visuals, as it’s easier to process all the onscreen carnage. That being said, R.I.P. – Reincarnation Insurance Program has great character designs, cool (but limited) enemy designs, and a lot of nice attack animations. We did regret that for a loot-based experience, our characters didn’t change their appearance when equipping new items. We hope that this changes for the full version of the game. Luckily, the flashy visuals are supplemented with a decent sound design, where weapon impacts really pack a proper punch. The core gameplay loop is very similar to other Survivors-like games, as you pick a stage, a difficulty level, and a character, and you run around trying to survive and kill enemies for the duration of said level. R.I.P. offers the option to main manually or to perform your attack automatically. Some attacks will remain manual, as these are skills you need to activate and aim yourself. As you kill more enemies, you gain more experience, which levels you up. Upon leveling up, a level-up cache is shot down from space, which you need to pick up. In these caches, there will always be three options to choose from, with additional options if you choose to reroll. It’s all fairly standard fare for the genre. The twist here, however, is the loot that you can pick up. Enemies will drop gear, and you can equip this, making your chosen character stronger in the process. You can also store gear in your stash in the base, allowing other characters to equip items as well. This can already provide a nice boost to characters you hardly play or still need to level up. The higher ‘risk’ level you clear stages, the higher the tier of gear that will drop. It’s an engaging and satisfying gameplay loop. Outside of the actual levels, you can manage your gear, purchase or sell new gear, alter certain stats via crafting, and assign skill points to your characters. It’s fun to have some management in between, and it’s a nice change of pace to manage gear items, hopefully making your future runs easier. The skill tree mainly provides you with micro-upgrades for your character(s), but it does give an incentive to keep pressing onwards. We did notice that controller support is decent in the levels, but the management itself is better done with a mouse and keyboard. We hope controller support improves here with upcoming patches. While we quite enjoyed what R.I.P. currently already had to offer, this is still an Early Access project that is incomplete. We noticed a few hitbox issues, spelling mistakes, and a general lack of content. There are currently only three playable maps, with varying difficulty levels. This will already allow you to enjoy the game for quite a few hours, but it does tend to grow stale having to play the same maps with a lot of the same enemies over and over again. We are also missing some features, like actually having the UI show us the cooldowns of our additional skills, as they trigger automatically, but we don’t know when or if the timing is, in fact, accurate. We also found the end boss of the desert stage a bit too much, with constant attack spams that are nearly impossible to dodge, even with perfect dashes that don’t consume any of your dash charges. Conclusion R.I.P. – Reincarnation Insurance Program is a very promising entry in the Survivors-like genre that hopefully gets more content as the Early Access version gets polished. We very much enjoyed the action-packed gameplay loop, the gear system provided a fun new mechanic to delve into, and the different characters made sure there was enough variety to enjoy the game for several handfuls of hours. We only regretted that equipping new gear didn’t change our characters’ appearance, which we consider a key component of a loot-based experience. Nonetheless, as it currently stands, there is already a lot to like here, and if you’re a fan of the genre, this one is already worth checking out.