The Redress of Mira
Tonguç Bodur’s mastery in creating remarkably beautiful environments shows again in The Redress of Mira. The game is, like most of his other creations, a walking simulator with light puzzle elements. However, compared to the previous games, The Redress of Mira is much longer (it takes around 3-5 hours to complete), it’s made more dynamic through the addition of several new mechanics, and the somewhat-abstract poetry has now been replaced with a more contiguous, solid story.
The game is played from the perspective of Mira – the daughter of an elfish clan leader. Due to unforeseen circumstances, her family is unable to pay tribute to the Baron and as a result, the ruthless Baron sends a mercenary to forcefully collect the debt against his own will. The storylines of Mira’s family, the mercenary’s and the Baron’s are intertwined and revealed through books located inside chests placed on Mira’s path, each of them unfolding one chapter of the whole story.
Compared to similar games from the same developer, The Redress of Mira is split into very short sections. The map is thus divided into several small areas that will be visited in a linear way, in a sequential manner. In-between two zones there is a gate that can be unlocked only by completing the puzzle of the area or by completing the target objective. Having the game designed in such a way made it even more enjoyable for me also because it has the advantage that the books or the other missables that trigger related achievements are less likely to be overseen.
The minigames border on trivial and they usually involve moving blocks that are then used as platforms for reaching higher areas, or moving levers in a certain way so that different parts of a puzzle align in a correct manner. There are a couple of stealth sequences and a boss fight that occurs several times in the game.
While it’s rather easy to defeat the boss, it’s also a bit annoying to do so. Mira has to charge up her attack by collecting three mana parts from mana-charged bunnies located in her proximity. On the one hand, it’s a bit difficult to target them because they keep hopping around, and on the other hand while Mira is trying to do so, the boss chases her and inflicts damage. Because his running speed is higher than Mira’s, she often has to interrupt charging her attack and instead move to a certain spot that heals her. In order to defeat the boss, this sequence of collecting mana, running to heal herself, and finally attacking the boss has to be repeated several times in a row until he reaches 0 HP. While the mechanics are easy to understand, in my opinion the boss fight is made unnecessarily complex and doesn’t fit that well with the relaxing pace which is innate to the walking simulator genre.
There is a lot to read in the game, and I vastly enjoyed experiencing the full story and seeing how all the main pieces fall into place at the end. Be warned though that it does contain a couple of pages with some NSFW details, and another bit that describes a rather detailed torture scene. The writing flows in such a way that it makes you invested in it, so the latter ended up being quite disturbing for me. Unfortunately, some of the storylines aren’t wrapped up and there is no closure given to certain characters, but as the book states, they might be continued in a sequel. One thing worth noting is that the text is written with cursive letters (mimicking handwriting) and there’s no alternative that shows it written in a plain font. This was obviously designed as such for stylistic reasons and didn’t bother me at all (I have no problem reading cursive text) but some players that prefer intelligibility over style might be put off by it.
The Redress of Mira impresses through its great mountain scenery. Mira will travel though areas reminiscent of medieval villages, with stone castles, bridges and small cozy huts. Outside of these, the environments are rich in vegetation, containing a colorful mix of flowers, alien plants, mana crystals and clear-water rivers adorned with purple lotuses. There are some breathtaking views, which are even more enhanced by the outstanding soundtrack that accompanies the player in their journey. In my opinion, The Redress of Mira is among one of the best games created by Tonguç Bodur, if not even the prettiest.