Survival horror is a fairly self explanatory genre -- it puts players into frightening situations, and surviving them is the key objective. Of course, as the genre has progressed, other elements have made their way into the formula. Action, for example, is a big part of survival horror games these days -- just look at Resident Evil 4, scary, yet exciting. That’s not to say there isn’t room in the genre these days for a straight-up creepfest, which is what Atlus’ Rule of Rose attempts. The problem is, the game isn’t really all that creepy, and with nothing else to fall back on besides tired and broken gameplay, it’s obvious that this rose is wilted.
"... this rose is wilted."
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Rule of Rose is aptly titled, because playing it feels like watching a flower grow in real time. In fact, to say Rose is slow is doing this game a favor -- I’ve watched body hair grow back faster. Your character has two speeds: lethargic and sloth. Holding the R1 button gives your character the option to creep around slower than normal, an interesting gameplay decision because most people would have probably asked for a run function. This R1 enabled creep-around is stealth-styled -- pointless, because you never need to sneak around. Holding R1 also allows the character to attack by pressing X.
Weapons consist of whatever the player can find laying around the creepy mansion and other game areas, which of course means you’ll have access to an innocuous and non-threatening arsenal consisting of silverware. As the character swings forks around like she’s trying to swat flies, the clay-faced demons you’ll be fighting will easily avoid your palsy-swipes and deal damage to you. With no real system to line up attacks, combat becomes an exercise in patience and begs the question: will breaking my controller make me feel better, or do I want Rule of Rose to cost me any more money than it already has?
Slowing the game down even further is the fact that each time you change to another room or area, the screen goes black, it gives you the specific name of where you are, and loads for anywhere from five to ten seconds. The real issue is that these rooms are tiny, so you’ll be reading a lot of room names, and since you have to backtrack so often, expect to read them more than ten times each. Rule of Rose is a fairly nice looking game, which might account for the loading, but most gamers would have probably rather had a hit in visual quality if the game would have moved quicker.
Also slowing down exploration is the fact that either every door you aren’t supposed to go towards is locked (and there are a lot of them), or that most of the rooms in the game are utterly pointless to enter in the first place. I can understand that some rooms in survival horror games exist to help paint the atmosphere, but the rooms in Rose do nothing but annoy. They’re usually filled with riveting descriptions such as "This hasn’t been used in a long time," or my personal favorite, "There’s nothing worth noting here."
"... you’ll have access to an innocuous and non-threatening arsenal consisting of silverware."
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Atlus must have realized that the game made players feel blind -- they included a helper dog, and he pretty much plays the game for you. Can’t find an item? Have the dog sniff it out. He’ll lead you to where whatever you’re looking for is, and point directly to it. It’s amazing they didn’t include an option to ride the dog and simply watch him play the game. While a dog could have been a creative asset to a horror game (see: Haunting Ground), Rule of Rose uses it as a crutch to hold up it’s defective and underdeveloped game design.
The game’s story was the big selling point, but it unfortunately has few genuinely creepy moments. That’s not to say there aren’t any, but none compare to a moment found in Haunting Ground, where the most unnerving event involves your undead grandfather forcing himself upon you, while flames engulf his zombified body. Mostly everything in Rose feels forced, or just plain dull. The narrative focuses on a group of kids who have taken over an orphanage by force, and creatively titled themselves "The Aristocracy of the Red Crayon." Children have the ability to be absolutely terrifying, as proved in the PSOne classic Silent Hill, but the spoiled brats in this game do more to evoke memories of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" than they do "Children of the Corn."
"... made up of everything that was ever wrong with early survival horror titles..."
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When playing through Rule of Rose, one can’t help but feel it’s made up of everything that was ever wrong with early survival horror titles -- even the magic item boxes are back (though this time they’re magic "rubbish bins"). If you want to play a game that plays like it came from ten years ago, track down Silent Hill, or play Capcom’s similar and superior Haunting Ground for gaming experiences that won’t make you want to sell your Playstation 2.
