Rubinite PC (Goldberg-Final)

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Rubinite is a dark fantasy boss rush. Use Ruby’s crimson eyes to expose the weak points of the Bloodstained monsters, then strike and shatter.

Carve a road home through the ruined Scarlet Kingdom and face the Witch who took it all. Rubinite is a boss rush action game set in a dark fantasy world. The key to combat is one distinctive core mechanic: Focus. Use Focus to read an enemy, expose its weak point, and land a lethal strike. You play as Ruby, a princess on a journey of revenge to reclaim her home: The Scarlet Kingdom. Fight the Bloodstained to the Death: Ruby’s blade alone will barely wound them. Find their weak points, drive the lethal strike home, and make it out alive.

Your Bloodline: Both a Blessing and a Curse: To take back the Scarlet Kingdom, Ruby must face the Bloodstained in every form they take, whether it be an ancient secret cult, undying parasites, or the source of a deadly plague. Rubinite is a precise boss rush game with a focus on perfection and patience. Ruby has a diverse moveset, with the main focus being the Observe mechanic. Instead of constantly trying to hit the boss, players are encouraged to step back and study attack patterns to build up marks. Once enough marks are accumulated, they can be spent on a powerful critical strike.

Marks can also be gained through a variety of defensive options, including a perfect dodge (essentially a parry), a Sunder Slash (comparable to Sekiro’s Mikiri Counter, but for grabs), and a dart used to intercept airborne attacks. Like with most challenging games, the bosses feel somewhat unfair at first. They’re fast, have huge hitboxes, and can remove half of your health with a single hit, making the extremely generous dodge window feel more like a necessity than a mistake. Once the required counters and their timing are learned, the combat becomes highly satisfying.

While the bosses can get quite difficult, the game never crosses into being excessively punishing. Some of the early bosses present a significant challenge, but the overall difficulty eases as the mechanics click. There’s also a skill tree and a Hollow Knight-style charm system. Neither is particularly remarkable, but neither stands out as a weakness. Story Rubinite has often been compared to several other games, with Nine Sols being the closest gameplay comparison. Unlike Nine Sols, Rubinite’s story and world are much easier to appreciate. That doesn’t make it a masterpiece, though. Barring a major late-game twist, the narrative is fairly inoffensive.

Rubinite PC (Goldberg-Final)

Features of Rubinite:

Every Bloodstained you kill surrenders its power.
Absorb it to grow stronger for the fight ahead, craft a wide range of Talismans, and build a combat style that’s entirely your own.
Absorb Pureblood, Forge Talismans
Exquisite Pixel Environments
Step into beautifully crafted pixelated scenes, where the poignancy and grandeur of the Scarlet Kingdom come alive in every hazardous battle.
Grip your blade and challenge foes that grow deadlier with every step.
The characters are somewhat flat, the world is straightforward, and the overall setting is fairly standard dark fantasy. That said, there’s still enough to stay invested. The characters’ expressive animations elevate otherwise ordinary scenes, and the monastery flashbacks are particularly well executed. The antagonist is by far the most interesting character thanks to these sequences, and there’s still room for the story to surprise later on.