The Rangers In The South shows how simple gameplay can have a high level of fun

The Rangers In The South appears quietly as an action RPG with Roguelike elements. It has pixel art graphics and a simple gameplay that, although it seems shallow at first, is very addictive within the first few minutes.

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The game’s story serves more as a backdrop to the game’s objective: Defeat the Demon Lord. Simple and straightforward. As soon as you start the game, you have the choice between three initial classes, but don’t worry, if you want to, you can change equipment during the journey without any problems. The game has a system of levels and skills that as soon as you pass a level, you need to camp to choose the status you want to improve along with a choice of skills. There is no way to redo the choice during a journey. It may seem inconvenient to change class equipment during the journey in this way, but at the time of this review, the items at the end of the game are so strong that it doesn’t really matter if you have another status build.

But going back to the beginning, after choosing your class the player starts in the Rangers’ camp, who are people dedicated to saving the world from the Demon Lord. There’s a blacksmith where you can buy and sell equipment and an alchemist where you can make potions and buy resurrection scrolls. As you initially have no items, all you have to do is follow the signs and venture out into the world.

As I said before, the gameplay of The Rangers In The South is simple, but when you leave the camp, there are always enemies to defeat and it never gets tiring, after all you can quickly level up and get new skills. The game doesn’t have a huge progression curve, as the aim here is to have short campaigns with plenty of action so you can try out new builds. And a curious thing is that the game has a simple naming system, where each of your characters is like a generation, along the lines of Rogue Legacy. Of course, this doesn’t have the same influence as the aforementioned game, but it’s funny how you make a new character and he can be a fisherman or a farmer. It’s a nice little touch.

Here the game has a small survival system, where you have four levels of food and as this level decreases, your character becomes slower, but don’t worry because in addition to the abundant enemies, the creatures that provide the meat for the character to feed on are also quite numerous. Interestingly, the game also has an ability to turn your character into a vegetarian, where you feed on the plants and roots available in the game, which are also necessary items for making potions in the camp.

So as you venture out, the player gets to know the most diverse biomes. If at the start you’re on a plain and you move on to a forest, you’ll soon find yourself in a desert until you reach the top of a mountain with lava. Yes, it’s very cliché, but the map design is actually fun to progress through. It’s also important to unlock the teleport points available in each biome so that the player doesn’t rely solely on their ability to create a portal to the camp, which has a recharge time of 5 minutes with each use. In addition, there are many dungeons scattered around the game world, as well as altars and magic stones that grant permanent statuses to all your characters. The dungeons are very important in the game’s mechanics, as they’re where you’re guaranteed to get chests with equipment that can help improve your character. Interestingly, the dungeons are randomly generated so they always have a different layout, although they are still a bit predictable and repetitive. But they’re short, so it’s not something that will spoil the game experience.

Well, I don’t like to go into too much detail about the game’s mechanics so as not to spoil the surprise for players and streamers, but at the end of the game there’s a place where… Well, in the course of the game you start to defeat powerful enemies, and these enemies, as well as money and equipment, can also drop Divine Coins, which initially seem like a coin just to reallocate status and skill options as you level up, but they are important at the end of the game. And remember I said about the issue of generations every time you start with a new character?

All the map discovery, teleports and dungeon locations are permanent for the next playthroughs, so of course you start at level 1 and need to level up, but exploration becomes tedious. It would be interesting to have a randomly generated map, but I think it would be just as boring, as the game is short, so I don’t see the need for it. It’s important to say that the items you keep in your personal chest are also available for other characters to use. And once you’ve defeated the final boss, you earn points to upgrade your skills to help the next generations. You can also upgrade your inventory space and then customize your new character.

If there are one or two things I can complain about this game, it’s the camera angle in the dungeons, where sometimes you have to walk against the wall to find a door, because the angle is so aligned that it’s impossible to know how to explore normally, and the Portuguese translation, which is sometimes inaccurate. But The Ranges In The South is a lot of fun and the experience is very worthwhile with a very high replay value. It’s important to say that the game has a schedule of content that will be added to the game, so the fun doesn’t end here with the content I’ve presented in this review.

Katsutoshi