Raji: An Ancient Epic is an action-adventure game from Nodding Heads Games. This is a pretty ambitious title considering this is the studio’s first big game and is a love letter to Indian mythology, a criminally underused setting in gaming.
Disclaimer: The Review may contain spoilers.
The Story
Raji: An Ancient Epic follows the tale of siblings Raji and Golu, two circus performers at a village in Rajasthan. After a demonic invasion that involves Golu’s abduction, Raji sets out on a rescue mission. Blessed by Lord Durga and Vishnu, she embarks on a short but compelling quest to end Mahabalasura’s mischiefs and restore the balance of the order in the heavens.
The story itself remains pretty simple with masterful execution. The storytelling is done through string puppets which gives an insight into ancient Indian culture and immerses you into its world. Lord Vishnu and Durga shower you with Indian mythology as you explore the game’s world. I found the conversations to be quite captivating. Lord Durga keeps talking about being righteous while Lord Vishnu just cares about winning the battle at hand.
Solving puzzles and interacting with certain objects also reveal additional lore information. Mythology enthusiasts are sure to find a lot to love here.
The Visuals And Music
Raji remains a visual treat, thanks to a great art direction. The environment remains to be the focus here which is fitting for a game with an isometric perspective. You start off in the village outskirts which is one of the more bland areas. The following levels remain a visual treat. Lord Vishnu’s city wowed me with its serenity and majesty. Fine grains of sand sway majestically through the screen as you traverse through a sandstorm. Again, the art direction is the driving force behind these jaw-dropping spectacles rather than sheer polygonal brute-forcing.
The music is also fitting. Percussive instruments echo in your eardrums as you traverse its richly realized world. Sometimes, you would hear ancient chants in the background which give a mystical tone to the environments. Other times, you would hear a fun mix of electronic and traditional music to accompany high-intensity moments.
The overall presentation of the game remains very compelling and inviting, which is an achievement for such a small scale studio.
The Combat And Progression
Raji features a fairly robust combat system. You start off with a Trishul and get more weapons over the course of the game, capping off at a total of 4 diverse weapons. Each weapon has multiple attacks and the game does a good enough job teaching you these moves.
However, the depth in the mechanics doesn’t really translate into gameplay. Firstly, the combat loop doesn’t feel satisfying. There isn’t just enough feedback to really make it feel weighty and worthwhile. Secondly, the encounters are mostly tedious. This is a shame because the game has a great number of enemy types, but the encounters mostly feature the same types of enemies. Top that off with easy to cheese AI and you find yourself repeating what you know works which gets stale pretty quickly.
Progression in Raji is also lackluster with an uninteresting skill tree. Most skills come in the form of heavenly blessings such as a meteor strike, an ice freeze, or lighting which usually stun your enemies. This further complements the already spammy combat system that makes it even more unsatisfying.
The Platforming And Puzzles
The platforming sections of Raji feel very derivative of the earlier Prince Of Persia series, down to the same obstacles. But in practice, this is heavily automated with very simple layouts and no room for error that feels derivative of something like Knack. The isometric perspective can be a bit of pain in these sections as it makes gauging distance between platforms difficult. This is balanced by not being able to jump off other ledges that make the failure spectrum really narrow. This turns the platforming into an uninteresting breather rather than a meticulously crafted system.
The puzzles are also really simple. Most puzzles are just versions of jigsaw puzzles and feel uninspired with little in the name of variety. One level features puzzles involving cogs and levers. These puzzles are barely functional and very frustrating. You need to follow an exact path to arrange these levers in the correct order. If they get stuck during the process, you will need to exit out of the game completely and reload again. These frustrations can be seen at various other points in the game such as only being able to travel one way on the elevators and reaching areas before you are supposed to which breaks the game.
The Verdict
Despite the aforementioned flaws, we should keep in mind the troubled development history of Raji. The developers have created something worthwhile with some unique ideas that can very well stand head to head among its contemporaries. While this may not be a life-changer of a game, the folks over at Nodding Heads should really be proud of what they’ve achieved with Raji.
We hope to see them learn their lessons with this game and rectify these shortcomings in further projects.
