Rage Quest: The Worst Game (PC) review

The most common pitfall in satire is being so focused on making fun of your source material’s weaknesses that you unknowingly ape them in your pursuit of taking the piss. Imagine, then, my annoyance at watching Rage Quest: The Worst Game saunter casually head-first into such a trap in its opening minutes. Playing the role of a snarky self-aware protagonist dipping their toes into a RPGMaker game to see if it’s worth their time, Ivy complains that a long, boring, unskippable cinematic used as a plot dump has rolled on so long that the burrito she’d left in the microwave is probably cold by now. It could be labelled a funny set-up, humour is subjective and all that, but it still makes you sit through a long, boring, unskippable cinematic to make the joke that long, boring, unskippable cinematics are, like, the worst.

This is probably the lowest point of Rage Quest, and it happens in the opening minutes. It’s not until a few hours later that you realise that this was a set up for a much better constructed joke, and it certainly takes a gamble on the player hanging around long enough to see all the pay-offs. Before its four hour or so lifespan is over, Rage Quest will jump head first into many a JRPG trope to mock it from the very belly of the beast, all while proudly displaying the rage quit button in the options screen. It outright dares you to press it, throwing dodgy escort missions, unclear puzzle objectives, bad camera angles and overlong animations for spells at you to test your patience.

Credit: Kyle Hughart

Credit: Kyle Hughart

But Rage Quest grows into its satire, not really bearing its full focus on decades old clichés like you might initially expect, but instead using well-worn mechanical issues and awful design choices to attack you from brand new angles. There’s a boss fight that issues a party-wide counterattack every time it’s physically struck. Not a problem; just take it on using only your arsenal of spells and attack items. Except, you can’t; your moronic fighter is too dumb to follow commands, so his every action is to wade bravely into battle and start slashing shit up unprompted. Another dungeon is filled with roaming enemies who fling you back to the start of the crawl if they touch you. Usually, not a problem; they patrol in easily predictable patterns and sneaking your way through them shouldn’t be that much of an issue. But the camera angle is set too far back, offering awful visibility and forcing you to stroll into the waiting claws of many a beast you could not see until it was far too late.

It’s often rage fuel, and that’s kind of the point. You’re supposed to get annoyed at being punished unfairly, and won’t help but feel that every time you snarl at your screen, the game’s got one over on you. It’s a real fine line that Rage Quest tries to walk, and I won’t blame anyone for retiring early and trying to find a way to launch the game into the sun. But, at the same time, it’s a lot cleverer than it really has any right to be. Everything’s so condensed and bite sized that even taking a dozen attempts more than you should to complete something because the game’s wonky mechanics keep tripping you up only takes you an extra handful of minutes. It makes the point that you should be progressing a lot faster than you are and are held back by poor design choices, but it never outright holds you back; it just smugly delays you from time to time.

Credit: Kyle Hughart

Meanwhile, venturing out from the starting town pits you against such dangerous foes as Innocent Bunnies who menacingly sniff at the air, or Omnivorous Plants who use packets of kale crisps to restore flagging HP. Other enemies include misunderstand orcs who interpret your attacks as a traditional greenskin greeting and respond in kind in an attempt to make a new friend, or giant bee enemy that attacks you once, disembowels itself upon stabbing you with its stinger, and collapses into a little pile of agony to slowly die. You’ve a protagonist who declares war on the fourth wall, adopting the voice of a gamer losing more and more of their patience, and a world full of NPCs who either don’t care about you, or openly hate you.

There’s enough going on in the world for you to want to delve further in and see how the next town might troll you with poorly localized dialogue, or how the newest enemy will sap your HP away with a library of bad puns. Rage Quest works hard to make sure it’s not just the same joke repeated ad nauseam, culminating in a brilliantly frustrating final dungeon where a fantastically creative end-of-game boss awaits you. Not everyone will make it this far, because even though Rage Quest’s first few hours are purposefully bumpy, they’re bumpy all the same. Patience breeds rewards in this case, though; you’ll just need to suck it up for a while until you get there.