My Thoughts on Raji: An Ancient Epic [PC Version]

Raji: An Ancient Epic. Though the game has ‘Epic’ in the title, and I bought it off the 'Epic' Games store, it’s not that epic in terms of length. I finished it in 6 hours, and I did die a bunch of times in the meanwhile. Perhaps they just wanted to appease the guys behind the game engine that Raji was developed in. just a wild guess.

BUT…!

Raji is Beautiful. Period.

I can’t say this enough. Being beautiful is this game’s selling point. Every single area of every single level is crafted with love, packed with care, and gifted to the player with a grateful smile. Raji almost shows its environments off, and quite rightfully so. It knows it’s beautiful and is proud of it. It flaunts its visual splendour and manages to divert all attention from the more ordinary elements.

Now I admit here, being an Indian perhaps allowed me to connect with the game better, since it borrows heavily from Hindu mythology, and therefore had more of an impact on me. But then, there have been other games – like God of War 2 or Sekiro, for example – whose aesthetics were also based on different mythologies and I found them equally beautiful in terms of visual appeal, so I can confidently say that familiarity didn’t influence the way I saw Raji. Genuine beauty did.

Progress in designing technologies and game engines obviously helped enhance the graphics, but graphics are not the only thing that makes Raji’s world rich and realistic. You could construct a floor with four walls and a ceiling and apply the best possible 4k textures on the model, but would you say it looks beautiful? It’d be hollow and empty, and despite there being absolutely no NPCs to interact with except in a couple areas, Raji’s world feels anything but hollow.

If you have a keen eye, you can catch many tiny details sprinkled here and there, reinforcing the fact that you’re not merely wandering around in a wasteland. This place was indeed inhabited once, you think as you walk under bells hanging in temples, or random rugs placed beside walls and beneath a dense canopy, reminding you of the sages that would have once sat and meditated on them.

The Plot – to admire from the hill, or to climb down?

The game is about Raji, a girl whose brother Golu has been taken away by demons, because their leader, Mahabalasura, wants to open the gates to heaven. There are many gaps between these plot points, and these gaps are not bridged satisfactorily. Quite a few mythical elements are involved like trees showing visions of Golu to Raji and a giant, flying peacock; hence giving the writers some creative room. In all fairness, such occurrences are to be expected in a story involving gods and demons, but somewhere along the line the thread of the story weakens and snaps, and even these mythical events are not able to salvage it.

From a tall hill, the forest looks just like any other. I mean, the story is pretty ordinary in its basic premise – the antagonist wants to conquer the heavens and for this, he snatches away something of the protagonist’s, and now it’s all about the protagonist trying to get it back. But once we climb down the hill, once we start focusing on the finer details of the story, we find that the stems are not very strong in places, and the forest may crumble down any moment.

The narration tries to maintain suspense and raises questions by itself. At one point Goddess Durga, who is the narrator, says, “What does Mahabalasura want from Golu?” and this is a well-timed question because the player is thinking exactly the same thing. But then when the climax fails to answer it, the journey, the conclusion, and the build-up to it – all seems to have been in vain. An effort to satisfy this query is made towards the end but it’s a rather weak one, and leaves the audience with no choice but to accept what was said without offering any further explanation. In one scene, it is implied by Goddess Durga that Raji can indeed scale great heights and jump across distances because “she is a circus performer”. For a narrative that considers its central character’s parkour abilities significant enough to explicitly provide a reason for it, it is quite an oversight not to answer a question that the game itself raises – What, indeed, does Mahabalasura want from Golu?

The ending is clearly indicative of a sequel and so there is still hope that it would bring new revelations, which is why it is too early to judge the story of Raji: An Ancient Epic, even if it does feel lacking by itself.

Granted, this is an indie game, and indie or not Raji does not have a bad story at all, but it does not have an exceptionally good one either. I just feel it could have been more polished.

 Conventional Traditional

Something that works brilliantly for Raji is that it displays no UI or HUD while play is in progress. There’s no health bar or health counter in a corner of the screen like there conventionally is. Instead, the health is represented as coloured lotus petals around the feet of the character. There’s no weapon tracker since there isn’t any need for one. There are only four weapons in the whole game and you can always see what weapon you are carrying in the character’s hand. The completely clean display allows the visuals to take over the screen without having any distractions blocking their way.

The art in the game is also reminiscent of simple but beautiful stone paintings that one can get to see across southeast Asia. These paintings are used to narrate bits of the backstory and also tales from Hindu mythology. The player also gets to see stone sculptures at many points in the game which are accurately modelled after statues in ancient Indian temples. Even the cutscenes are animated in the form of shadow puppetry, which is an ancient mode of story-telling in southeast Asia.

Many areas resemble specific places in India, like the stair wells of Rajasthan, or the Ghat Temples of Benaras. Very few elements in the game carry any western flavour – audio language is English, for one, but other than that Raji is covered in traditional Indian attire, much like its protagonist. Even the weapons are traditional like the Trishul and the Sudarshana Chakra – principal weapons of the Hindu Gods Durga and Vishnu, respectively, who by the way, are watching from the heavens, narrating the story, and having little conversations between themselves. Buildings, temples, palaces, exteriors, interiors – everything carries an ancient Indian taste and the meticulous planning that must have gone into designing, crafting, and modelling the levels is pretty evident.

The music of the game, too, is inspired by Indian folk music and has been composed using traditional Indian instruments like flute, tabla, sitar, and something called Ravanhatha, a curious name that I haven’t heard before, along with violin, calimba, etc. It’s a treat to the ears and every piece is well-suited to the mood of its respective scene. Sound designing is also executed well and especially good at some places like the Hiranya Nagri level.

 

Other Cogs in the Machine

Talking of cogs, there are a few puzzles in the game at regular intervals, a couple of them involving cogs, that do well to shake things up a bit. In a way, they provide a bit of a break to the walking-fighting-walking pattern of the platformer which can become monotonous if not broken in time. Raji uses simple puzzles to carry this out. For that matter, the whole game itself is simple and pretty straightforward. It’s short, sweet, and doesn’t try to act smart and stump its players anywhere. Apart from small explorable side-routes, that reward players with a Shakti Beej, all the levels are pretty linear. This Shakti Beej can be used to upgrade weapons and unlock new moves.

The combat moves also deserve a mention here because the effects associated with them – lightning, fire, and ice – are all animated very well and I enjoyed engaging enemies. Other movements, such as wall-running and dodge-rolling are also smooth although at some points the character did jump in a different direction than I intended it to, and hence, died. This may have been a miscalculation on my part because of the camera angle, but the game didn’t eat into any of my progress because of that so…no controllers broken there. *cough*Sekiro*cough*

The rest of the game is pretty much your standard platformer. You walk, you run, you kill enemies, kill bosses, gain weapons…and I know it’s massively unfair to just mention these elements in passing because someone dedicated their precious time to model and program each enemy and boss, weapons, character movement but that’s the curse of doing a mainstream task – no matter how painstakingly you’ve done it, unless it’s exceptionally good, few will notice it. Ask me, I work in a service-based corporate.

In theory, I could write about all the different types of enemies and their moves and the different strategies needed to negotiate each one, but most people would shrug it off and say, “Eh, what’s so special about it, every platformer has it.” Still, kudos to everyone who worked on this game, its enemies, bosses, weapons, character movement, level design, sound design, music – everything. I enjoyed playing Raji: An Ancient Epic, and I believe you should give it a try. It’s a safe recommendation. You may not find it brilliant, but it’s good enough that you won’t curse me for recommending it.