So.. is Rain World: The Watcher Good? (spoiler free review)

"cons: complex lore" you do realize that is also the case in base game it's just been out since 2017 so we have basically figured everything out. also more updates will be coming soon with arena unlockables and more

I feel like the general consensus is gonna shift heavily within like 2 months. The initial response is mainly from those who got into the game because of Downpour, which is very linear. Given some time, the frustrated voices will have cooled off, and people will finally see The Watcher for what it is: an absolute masterpiece.

Can't say I loved every second of it, but I didn't love every second of vanilla either. The game is difficult, often unfair, vague about directions- yet it's my favourite of all time. Just give it 2 months, let people process their thoughts.

is there a story summary anywhere? i dont have it in me to suffer through more rain world for the story after downpour

I did not find any dead ends, there was always a karma flower in either of the ends of the regions. Did anybody else relate?

I've played for 5 hours so far and have gotten so absolutely lost that I am trying to find my way back to my first region and can't lol

I do agree that the world feels a little disconnected because of the portals, but it makes sense. You're not just a survivor now, but a traveler. And some of the regions are not even in the same continuity. I feel like a solution to this, instead of having portals between regions, there would be portals between CLUSTERS of regions, where within a cluster the regions will be connected by gates.

I haven't played Rainworld in a time, and the list of cons is actually exciting to me (minus the bad spawnpoints, do not like getting jumped)! It doesn't sound far off from the Survivor experience in someone's first playthrough, and I'm eager to relive that sense of wonderment… and frustration… while I hope to remember the controls.

(minor spoilers ahead if you have not played the DLC at all)

Part of why I loved base game Rain World (and Downpour aswell) was the immersive world design.
The way the regions connected, sometimes unexpectedly, and how they flowed into each other and looped back on themselves

The Watcher throws this all away, by essentially allowing teleportation at any time and slapping together a bunch of isolated regions into a giant space carabonara

The mechanics are very obtuse and poorly explained.
Some regions are frankly uninteresting to explore, with a lack of rewards and too many dead ends. Visual clutter is a big issue, with it a being impossible to distinguish background from foreground a lot of the time.

Enemy placement is also questionable. Too many times I have have been instantly killed or fallen to my death coming out of a portal.

But this is also just normal Rain World shenanigans so,..

Despite all this, I think I still like The Watcher – it is more Rain World after all. The regions in isolation are often incredible; the music goes hard and the rooms are visually stunning. The region variation also helps keep things fresh as an experienced player.

All in all I guess I am a bit disappointed, but I still like the DLC. Definitely worth the buy if you liked the base game and have played Downpour.

Rant off

I don't see it mentioned much, but I think this slugcat pushes the boundaries on readability quite a bit.
Although yes they are the same color as the background, and that can be confusing entering a new room and not knowing what pipe your head is poking out of initially…

SPOILERS:

When they use their power, the body just vanishing besides the eyes makes sometimes knowing how my scug is oriented even looking at him iffy.
Just making them slightly transparent for player or have a white outline when in "watcher mode" or something would have been helpful for readibilities sake.

a lot of the downsides you listed feel like positives to me. feeling lost and directionless again is what i wanted from a rain world dlc! i don't mind backtracking. i do agree that it's kind of the antithesis of msc

Coral caves made we want my $15 back

downpour speaks to you about a story in a world directly through spoken communication

the base game speaks to you through a story of a world through mostly nonverbal communication

based on the 1/4 – 1/2 of the dlc ive played so far, the watcher feels almost as if you were in a busy place overhearing thousands of little pieces of conversations that you were never meant to hear, about a story of not just one world, but a plethora of worlds overarching the story. its an incredibly unique experience, but with how far removed the base game and downpours experience is from the watcher, not everyone who likes rain world will necessarily like the watcher

i just wish that they were given more time to better develop it, the dlc itself seems like the devs were crunched and had their scope set too high for how long they had to develop it. making it really feel like they werent able to fully bake in what they were going for originally, leading to people seeing it as an unconnected maze instead of everything despite being so different from each other is being a part of something bigger

I was hoping for more story on the iterators and the world we knew while seeing other things but it’s largely a completely new game imo

I got trapped in Chimney Canopy on Watcher SO HARD that it almost made me ragequit at one point. The difficulty of spawns are turned up so you get more dangerous creatures in most regions, and Chimney's karma gate basically said "Lol, get gud if you want to escape" because as the video said, Chimney is one of those many… MANY dead-ends.

I wonder which updates are they going to release for this

Quick thing is that the DLC is in part 1 so it means that it will come out more things to the DLC in the future

(Hasn’t finished the Watcher so take this with a grain of salt) I think the Watcher STARTS as a straightforward revenge plot, taking place a bit after the great migration away from the Superstructure. The Watcher’s mother and sibling were killed by Hunter, likely for food during a short cycle. The Watcher intentionally went into the facility during it’s darkest moments, when the rot was getting so bad that FP’s washing was beginning to affect most regions, because the Watcher believes Hunter might still be there. And then they kept running into That Fucker so now we get to play 5d hide-and-seek guest-starring actual cancer.

This might sound hypocritical but some of the let's say.. "unstable" areas are a huge difficulty spike that I haven't experienced in this game before. I guess it fits the narrative though

5:34 but isn’t this the whole point of the game?

There are a few regions where the platforming is so atrocious I just started devtooling out of frustration. There's a single jump in one of them that is actually impossible I'm pretty sure. Maybe there's a way around it but the place is laid out in a way that it makes me think I'm supposed to go that way.
[SPOILER]:

I'm talking about Outer Rim, there's a bit with poles on a wall where you seem to have to make a jump sideways that is at least 6 tiles wide. YOU CAN'T MAKE THAT. Again there might be a way around but I can't be arsed to find it. Outer Rim just sucks so much in terms of platforming I hate it.

Banger video