The Redress of Mira

When I first watched the trailer for The Redress of Mira, I was struck by what looked like an epic adventure full of beautiful landscapes, terrifying monsters, death-defying stunts, environmental puzzles, a fully narrated story and even a magical fight with swords and sorcery. Sadly, now that I’ve actually played The Redress of Mira, I’m here to throw some cold water on that trailer. While all of those so-called epic moments can be found in the game, the trailer leaves out one crucial piece of information – that this is a needlessly boring game where you slowly walk from point A to point B while waiting for something interesting to happen. Join me as I uncover what this game is really all about when I review The Redress of Mira on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

Mira is on an adventure. We don’t know why or exactly what happened, at least not at first, but one thing is clear – she’s determined to travel from one side of the fantasy world to the other in order to complete her mysterious quest. What makes this even more remarkable is that she’s traveling with little more than her father’s magical staff, a dog with incredibly shiny eyes and the will to never give up, no matter what stands in her way.

The Redress of Mira is a mash-up of a few different genres, but is primarily a narrative-driven first-person adventure game where we walk from one location to the next picking up bits and pieces of the larger story. This is doled out through a series of books found in locked treasure chests. Through text (and no spoken narration), we learn all about Mira’s father, the clan leader who is doing his best to pay his debts to a tyrannical Baron while simultaneously dealing with a potential famine. We also read about one of the kingdom’s mercenaries, as well as the Baron’s even more sadistic wife. All these characters and storylines seem disconnected at first, yet come together to create a tragic tale of misunderstanding and revenge.

While I’m sure that many will be quick to disparagingly call this a “walking simulator,” I feel like there’s more going on between the story bits than we normally see from that type of game. This isn’t simply a walk down a linear path, though, just to be clear, there is a lot of that. We’ll also be solving a few puzzles along the way, stealthing our way around scary monsters and even battling an aggressive swordsman. We’ll talk about him in a moment, but the point is that the game tries to be more than just walking and storytelling, which is one of the few genuinely good things I can say about the game.

Before we start picking apart Mira’s epic journey, I first want to compliment the general look of the game. This is clearly developed by a small team, and I feel like most of the fantasy world looks vibrant and gorgeous. It’s a little empty and lifeless, but looks good nonetheless. I also like how the levels are connected, making it feel like you really are on this massive adventure. It’s cool how things start out bright and cheerful, yet as we get closer to our destination (and know more about what happened to lead up to this quest), the world gets darker, scarier and more filled with dread. If nothing else, the developers do a good job of creating a compelling fantasy world.

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Unfortunately, it’s the rest of the game that doesn’t quite work. Part of the problem is that there are long stretches that are both repetitive and boring, even with the puzzles and stealth sections. Each section plays out largely the same, where Mira hunts around for a glowing rabbit and steals its mana in order to use the staff to open up the gate to the next section, where she’ll do this all over again. What’s funny is that the game initially does a good job of hiding the rabbits and forcing you to go out of your way exploring the fantasy world, and then they just forget about doing that in the final act. There was a rabbit towards the end of the game that is literally standing in front of the gate, almost as if even the developers were sick of this mechanic.

It doesn’t help that the things you’re doing between the walking and storytelling aren’t all that interesting. The puzzles, for example, often fall into the trial and error variety, which is the laziest way to construct a puzzle. You’ll also need to deal with Mira’s nightmares, where she sneaks around a cave trying to avoid a monster. The trailer makes it look like the game veers into the horror realm, but don’t get too excited. Outside of a jump scare you’ll see coming a mile away, there’s nothing especially terrifying about these nightmares.

While all that may be disappointing, it’s nothing compared to the awful boss fights. Here we see Mira go head-to-head with a swordsman, whose only attack is to rush right at you and swing his large sword. Because The Redress of Mira isn’t set up to be an action game, the developers had to come up with a work around. The problem is that the work around doesn’t solve the inherent problem. You see, Mira is going to take damage every time the swordsman rushes her. This cannot be avoided. She can’t dodge or fight back, so you have to expect to take damage every time the guy comes rushing. Realizing that this might be a problem, the developer decided to create a respawning item that replenished Mira’s health. They didn’t give her a way to dodge the attack or counter, but rather an item that solves the problem.

And that’s only the half of it. The other big problem is that we’re forced to suck the mana from three different rabbits before we can take a shot at the boss. Never mind that a single rabbit gave you enough mana to shoot three shots when it came to the puzzle solving, apparently now you need three for some reason. The issue is that collecting the mana from the bunnies is incredibly frustrating, because you need to hit the button at the exact right time, all while you have a crazy swordsman slicing you up. Nothing about these fights is fun, and all they do is highlight the game’s bigger problems.

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Then again, it’s not like they get the storytelling right, either. There’s a weird disconnect between the adventure we’re on and the story that’s being told through those books. I think part of the problem is that it makes no sense to have the chapters of a larger story conveniently locked away on the exact path we’re waking. Instead of running across books, it would make more sense to have some sort of narrator filling in the story as we walk through the forests and castles. The trailer certainly hints that we’ll get some sort of narration, but that’s not the case. This is the kind of game where everything stops dead in its tracks in order to read a full chapter of a book. None of this worked for me.

And even if you are fine with the way the narrative is dished out, I can’t imagine anybody being happy with one of the major threads of the story being completely abandoned. What’s especially frustrating is that it’s the single most compelling part of the book, and it is just never resolved. There’s a line at the very end that uses that thread to set up a sequel, but good luck with that. There’s barely enough story here for one game, let alone two.

There are other issues, many of which can probably be attributed to the game coming from a small development team. For example, there’s no animation when Mira pushes object around the levels. Her hair doesn’t even move. I also found that the custom settings I chose would reset every time I loaded the game. Obviously, these aren’t deal-breakers, but they suggest that perhaps this game needed a little more time in the oven.

If you’re the kind of person who uses the term “walking simulator” in a disparaging way, then the added boss fights and puzzling isn’t going to be enough to sway your opinion. What’s especially frustrating is that even fans of the genre will be annoyed by the clunky storytelling and bone-headed distractions. There are some good ideas here that could have added up to something special. But when it comes right down to it, Mira’s plight is ultimately not worth redressing.