Ronout

Years after trying the demo, my thoughts on Ronin are largely unchanged: it channels the same cool-factors as Gunpoint and Mark of the Ninja, but its attempts to be more tactical than the former suffer from imprecision relative to the latter.

Those messy imprecisions unfortunately run head-first into the game's second enemy type -- a dude with swords who insta-kills you at close-range. The rules of engagement for this enemy are ambiguous at best, so dying again, and again, and again, while trying to figure them out... becomes real tedious real fast.

At least those die-and-retry loops are somewhat small, with mid-level checkpoints (unlike, say, Deadbolt). But that's not enough. I don't feel like the game is giving me the tools to learn and improve; just more chances to guess at a sequence of moves that'll happen to work.

Progress: Killed the old man.