Returnal has been a bit of a... divisive game, to say the least. It's not everyone's cup of tea, and it's not like a lot of other roguelikes. Marketing it mainly as a roguelike bullet hell is something that I think does the game a disservice.

See, if I list out everything that Returnal does, it becomes a third-person shooter character action bullet hell Metroidvania horror roguelike, and... frankly, that's a mouthful. And it's also completely unhelpful. How do you even begin to describe how putting all of that in one game results in something even close to coherent?

Returnal is something best experienced firsthand or at least watched. Not a bit of written media I've seen captures the essence of what Returnal really is, and I doubt I'll even be able to do it myself. That said, I'm hoping that my review encourages people to look up footage of the game past the trailers or play it if a friend has a copy

Before I go any further, however, I need to iterate a point. If you do not have a powerful rig, you will not have a good time with this game. There is a "potato PC" mod on Nexus[www.nexusmods.com] that strips away quite a bit of the graphical fidelity of the game that will make it run stably on older or less powerful hardware, but know that you will be getting an inferior experience. You have been warned.

Trying to put all labels aside, Returnal is a game about repeating a neverending cycle, which is where it gets the "roguelike" moniker. A lot of people go into it expecting to get exactly what that word connotes, but the depth of its roguelike systems is one of the least interesting things about it, and actually probably the weakest link in the game.

Those mechanics are solid, and they make a stable foundation, but that's all they are. They're not there to be in your face. The game doesn't try to make its gameplay completely about those mechanics, so they're tied directly to the story and the flow of the game, not the minute-to-minute minutiae.

Instead, the game focuses a lot more on its combat and, perhaps more interestingly, its traversal, permanent upgrades, and one of the most robust risk/reward systems I've had the pleasure of playing with.

The combat, which I'll speak about first, may feel like your standard third-person shooter fare at first, even with the bullet hell mechanics. The first few enemies you encounter, the Kerberos and Strixera, aren't too much of a challenge, and you'll likely dodge around them with ease if you've played any spectacle fighters like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta.

And then you hit your first big brick wall: the Titanops. Many people reach the Titanops and lose, thinking it's a failing on their part. It is brutal, to be fair. It will likely smack you down and reset your cycle, but the first Titanops fight is meant to show you that you have to master the game's systems to have any hope of making it through subsequent cycles.

So instead of focusing on making it the furthest every time, you ideally focus on refining your skills in the first area, becoming familiar with the weapons and the enemies. You learn how to dodge the Titanops' attacks and maybe even beat it without taking any damage.

To be honest, none of this had really hooked me by this point. I was beginning to think that it might be another game I just pick up every once in a while and whittle away at, but then I beat the first boss. Phrike is another large difficulty spike, and it really shows you what the rest of the game will be like. Bullets will fly everywhere while you try desperately to stay alive, but if you hold on and learn everything Phrike has at its disposal, you will come out triumphant.

And then you'll move onto the other biomes, where the traversal really has its moment. I don't see many roguelikes go out of their way to make traversal so dangerous and risky, but it works so well for Returnal.

When I speak of traversal, I don't just mean platforming, though there is some of that. No, I mean running around each area, gathering pickups and finding secrets, because that's where most of Returnal's depth comes from.

Returnal has a mechanic called malignancy, and it's easily the most important mechanic in the game. The idea is simple: items and chests have a chance to be malignant, and that malignancy then has a chance of being passed onto Selene's spacesuit. If the suit becomes infected with malignancy, it gets a malfunction, which can be anywhere from nearly benign to almost run-ruining. In order to remove a malfunction, you either have to use a rare item or, much more likely, fulfill an arbitrary task such as killing a certain number of enemies or collecting a certain amount of the game's currency, Obolites.

While you can rarely go through a run without interacting with malignancy, there's also another risk/reward factor in the form of parasites, which can be attached to Selene for both a positive and negative effect. However, the player has to decide whether it's worth it and whether to even attach them.

This risk/reward system also presents itself in the upgrade mechanics in the form of a kind of FOMO. This is the most traditionally roguelike system in the game, and it plays very nicely into the way Returnal has been built. You can spend Obolites on temporary upgrades that last only for your current cycle, as well as items and consumables that can give you a boost in combat. Sometimes, you're even given a choice between two upgrades and can only pick one, or you have the chance to spend Obolites on a random item or upgrade.

One way that the game flips a traditional roguelike system on its head is the weapon system. Rather than choosing a weapon at the start of your run, you're given only a standard pistol, and you have to find weapons around Atropos as you get stronger and earn more proficiency. The FOMO I was speaking about with the upgrades and items extends to the weapons as well. Do you exchange your weapon for something more powerful, even if you aren't as comfortable with it?

Then the permanent upgrades are where the Metroidvania aspects I was speaking of earlier come into play. In most roguelikes, your permanent upgrades affect your stats, but here, they affect your traversal. Areas which were once physically inaccessible or too dangerous to cross can be returned to on a new cycle after obtaining these. Suddenly, you have access to more areas than before, able to strengthen Selene or even take shortcuts.

Speaking of shortcuts, the game goes to great lengths to ensure you don't have to repeat anything you don't want to. Once you beat each boss, you permanently have access to the next biome. All you have to do is make it to the gateway. This, however, plays yet again into the risk/reward system. You'll get through it all faster and safer, but you'll likely miss things that would make the game easier. Once again, you as the player have to decide whether this is worth it.

But wait, there's more! The game also has an interesting, if sometimes odd, story. It leans heavily into psychological horror, though it slows down a bit during the second act.

All in all, Returnal is a package of many elements from many different kinds of games, and that's likely where it goes wrong with a lot of gamers who didn't like it. It's something that doesn't fall squarely into one or two genres, charting its own path with amazingly deep combat and exploration. The risk/reward system is something I've never seen implemented so seemlessly and so integrally.

I would wholeheartedly recommend this if you're into any of the genres I listed at the beginning of the review. Just don't expect it to fit snuggly into any of them, and you'll likely come away liking this game.