Review | Hindsight 20/20 – Wrath of the Raakshasa

LifeisXbox’s Hindsight 20/20 – Wrath of the Raakshasa Review | Life is full of choices. Good and bad choices. Some of the choices we make we end up regretting and wish we could have another chance at life. Hindsight 20/20 addresses this very dilemma by putting the player in the shoes of a would-be-hero who proves that making these decisions is no easy task. Developed and published by Triple-I Games, Hindsight 20/20 tries its hand at the “every action reacts” theme found in some of the games from the Walking Dead series by Telltale Games. But does it live up to its roots of being an RPG where your decisions matter?

ℹ️ | We played Hindsight 20/20 – Wrath of the Raakshasa for Four Hours on Xbox Series S. This game is also available on Xbox One and S/X, PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, and Steam.

What we liked!

• Good or Bad Decisions | As mentioned above the game is all about making choices, seeing them play out, and then dealing with the consequences of your actions. The initial opening area of the game sees players deciding whether to stop their friend who has been infected, committing suicide, or if you want to play a more vengeful role, take on your father’s killer. There are regular conversation-based decisions to make like in most RPG’s and these decisions affect the missions you take on. Jehan has two weapons to choose from when engaging in combat that also act as decisions. The red sword kills enemies, while the blue stun baton acts as the merciful option. Hindsight 20/20 puts some consideration into showing how choice can lead to certain consequences and goes out of its way to show that humanity’s nature isn’t as idealistic as many stories try to paint it. 

• The Puzzles | The puzzles are interesting enough and are complimented well by the level designs. One of the earlier puzzles saw me go and rescue a villager’s children from a prison where I had to battle enemies, navigate my way past traps, and find coloured keys to open the appropriate doors. Once this had been accomplished I was greeted with a moral choice of saving them and destroying the lock or leaving them locked away so as not to, later on, ruin my chances with the village’s authority figures.

• The Music | The music is fairly good with an epic score by Tripple-I Games in-house. The game features music that compliments the battle scenes and the village traversing areas and makes the fight scenes feel very grounded and energetic.

• Graphics | The graphics are nice and use a stylised shader that in my opinion isn’t used enough these days. The game has moments of a cel-shaded look and it’s a great way of making the game stand out from the rest. As RPGs go, it’s a very bright game in places with the backdrops, skybox, and weapons taking a majority of the colour. The game will grab your attention this way and I like how they have designed the game’s aesthetics overall. 

Somewhere between

• The Combat | The combat in the game sadly falls short quite quickly. Whilst it is nice to have added in the game, the combat gets repetitive ever so quickly and you can learn enemy attack types pretty quickly to make the challenges in fights super easy. Combat can be summed up in three words. 3 hit combos. For many battles, combos require changing strikes between different enemies that spawn. Against certain foes and in boss fights, players can only do three-hit combos in the brief windows when the enemy has been stunned.  This ties into what I mentioned earlier about how easy it is to learn enemy attack types. Jehan comes equipped with the standard health bar, while the blue one indicates morale, and each is depleted by weapons or hazards of the corresponding colour. Regardless of which one is depleted, Jehan will fall in battle and you must restart. That is the extent of your worries though as death doesn’t affect you in any other way. Nothing is lost and all your items remain intact. Jehan is also able to launch special attacks when he has collected enough yellow Shakti dropped by enemies. A nice slight variation to the combat, but one that also isn’t necessary.

What we disliked

• An Empty World | The game considers itself an RPG of sorts, and whilst this might be the case based on genre, the game fails to dress it up as one. The world feels empty and shallow and there are very few interactions to be had in a world that is meant to be populous. There are hardly any people to talk to, lack of shops, side quests, hobbies, and sightseeing to be done. The list goes on. We may have been spoiled by the likes of Skyrim and KOTOR and some people may argue that comparing these may be unfair, but personally, this is what players have come to expect and I would say that if you are going to make an RPG for players to experience, there will need to be fundamental RPG areas and places to explore.

• Accessibility | I would have loved to have seen some more options in the game that allows for more customisable gameplay. Graphical options, difficulties of puzzles are all missing here and in this day and age, it should be a given that these things are included in games to allow more flexibility.

• The Mini Map | The mini-map in the game is a little awkward. There is no legend or key to tell you what the coloured dots on the screen are and can lead to some confusing situations. For new players, they may think they are heading to an objective but it might be a landmark or just an NPC to talk to. Objectives should have their colour but ideally, a simple UI widget that had a Key for players to understand would have been simple to implement.

How long to beat the story | 5 Hours
How long to achieve 1000G | 10 Hours
Similar with | The Spirit and Legends of Valhalla. Both are stylistic in nature and have RPG elements with underlying story elements being based around family and friends.

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