Red Goddess: Inner World (PlayStation 4) Review

Nearly immediately, players will be introduced to a swath of intensely lit neon backdrops and accompanied by a know-it-all narrator. He's not so bad, but how does this guy know everything!? Literally 100% of the exposition will be delivered via this voice in the sky, detailing all of the nuanced thoughts and actions of the protagonist, Divine. What are her motives? Where is she off to? What's the deal with her long lost sister? Every bit of it… And with such basic platforming and puzzle elements, one could almost just listen to him narrate and skip over the gameplay all together, but that isn't suggested. That would make for an incredibly dull listen.

Red Goddess: Inner World is, as previously mentioned, a 2D action platformer. It should first be noted that the platforming is decent, but nothing to write home about. Prepare to leap to ledges, wall jump, and eventually even climb! Yeah, that part comes later via upgrades… strange. There's nothing here that feels simply bad, but in a world where games such as this are churned out on digital storefronts by the dozen, there are certainly better.

Aside from a wholly mediocre system of platforming mechanics, Red Goddess: Inner World attempts to force some level of intrigue by introducing new and varied character modes. Transforming into various elemental versions of herself, Divine's fire and ice modes are pretty well suited for combat, while her standard allows her to telekinetically manipulate her surroundings. These different modes should be where the game gets interesting, but, really, it's just a convoluted layer in an otherwise stale game experience.

The real kicker in Red Goddess: Inner World is that, for such a simple little game, it has some really unforgiving moments and some game-breaking bugs. Aside from some prevalent frame rate dropping issues, there are moments in this game where textures, or occasionally whole pieces of levels, refuse to load in. Sometimes this can even span over multiple attempts to reload saves. This could literally result in an area being unnavigable. Mix in the fact that many areas are just punishing in a way that doesn't feel intentional, but rather just poorly designed, and this is a winning recipe for frustration.