RAJI: AN ANCIENT EPIC

The lore and narration pulled me in right away, and I loved all the little details where you casually learn about Indian mythology while exploring. It feels respectful and proud of its roots, which is rare to see. Combat is fast and fun, and the skill trees give you enough variety to keep things interesting without overcomplicating it. On top of that, the world just looks gorgeous. Raji is a great mix of culture, storytelling, and solid gameplay. Played it on a handheld and had a blast playing it.

Raji is a good game, but not the best. I really like that Indian developers are making PC games and not jumping straight into creating AAA titles. They started with a passionate project and did really well in many areas.

However, when it comes to controls and combat, things fall apart. I struggled with the controls the entire time. The i-frames were very inconsistent, and the combat felt clunky. The game launched in 2020, so the developers have had around 5 years to improve the controls and combat but they still haven’t. I think they are more focused on their new upcoming game, Raji: Kalyuga.
On the positive side, the story and narration are superb. I personally loved the Hindi voice acting and dialogue as an Indian, that part made me really happy and proud.

Overall, I would give this game a 6/10. It’s a combat-heavy game, and unfortunately the combat and controls are the weakest part. I truly hope they fix these issues in their next title.

I wish there was a Raji sequel where she kills Mahabalasura and brings Bhoomi Devi back to life or at least avenges her. It's really good given the depiction of Hindu culture. My only complaint is that we needed more types of common enemies and at least 2 or 3 more bosses

(Ignore my english)Like its a good game But sometimes its very repitative . BTW story is decent ,world is good .boss fights were very irritating and frustating . This games is playthrough is around 4 hours or something ,but after lossing with bosses i complete this game in 9 hours.

This is a must-play game. The Indian cultural elements and the portrayal of Hindu gods are done really well. The visuals look great, and even though the story is linear, it’s still strong. Raji’s journey to find her brother is handled beautifully. Hats off to the developers. We need more made-in-India games like this. I’m waiting for the sequel.

I think the game is visually stunning, reasonably well animated, conceptually sound and with lots of charm and personality.
As a european with next to no knowledge of Hinduism, the game presents its lore and story very well, and I was actually surprised how they give you achievements for actually activating lore prompts.
HOWEVER.
The mechanics around gameplay are very poorly optimized.
It screams to me that this game did not have sufficient playtesting because it just throws everything at you without rhyme or reason and your main strategy in combat have to spam dodges, rolling attacks and not much else.
It's just that I (and most others) can barely tell when the enemies are about to do attacks, and when you have so many of them on screen with so little time to react, the game just becomes a spamfest of your best moves, which usually is using the bow's "wallrun attack" witch shoots 3 powerful AoEs mid air, and deletes most enemies in 2 full bursts.
(If you go check the steam trailer on the store page here you'll see that most of the time Raji is attacking only 1 or 2 enemies with combos, and with groups of more than 2 enemies the trailer shows Raji during mid-air attacks or invibility attacks. This is because during said group fights those types of attacks are the only ones you can be doing without getting shredded by enemies.)
And then the final boss... Oof...
Attacks comes out earlier than they should hit, WAY too many things on screen, and a weapon that you have never used before. It is absolutely an unfair boss fight with terrible optimization.
You will be spamming dodge and attack so much, that your fingers will ache from it.
Hell the worst part is that Durga and Vishnu will both tell you how "You will have to use everything you learned to defeat this threat." but actually no. Like I said, you have a completely different weapon and you are fighting in a completely different way.
Finally you have the platforming, which is fidgety and will lead to your demise because most of the time you can't tell if you are aiming correctly at the other side, but actually you aimed sideways, causing you to miss your jump.
Or not being able to properly measure distances.
Being unable to identify the correct areas to platform.
It's also just not very challenging.
It's sad really, you have a very well-polished environment and charming story, but the gameplay itself?
Even if it looks good on paper, iy just fails the players.
If this game was a person, it would be a Hindu ascetic: it's only skin and bones, with no meat on it.
5/10 - Buy it on sale, or play it on "Story mode" difficulty where you can just breeze through gameplay and check out the story.

Short and sweet, fun for an adventure game (which I usually don’t play). I absolutely loved the storyline, it was simple and straight to the point, but also felt mythic at the same time. It didn’t need novel-quality writing: it was a story about a sister trying to be reunited with her brother, with fate throwing a wrench in that throughout the whole series (it’s an adventure game, not an RPG, after all).
The synopses of Hindu myths were actually really fascinating, and I never found myself so inspired by any game before. They chose really fun stories that got me interested in reading more about Vedic mythology as a whole, just out of curiosity. The gameplay was easy to master, and I felt engaged for the most part. It paced itself well and progressively got harder throughout about 90% of the game. The final boss was a little easy, but otherwise the pacing felt appropriate. I enjoyed the banter between Durga and Vishnu (with Vishnu basically being dismissive of Raji until she does something to benefit him, and then he’s suddenly on her side). The aesthetic, especially the cutscenes when it went into a sort of paper-doll mode, was phenomenal. The scenery itself was beautiful, and I found myself inadvertently exploring everything I could.
I rarely go for achievements, but I got about 80% of them just by being curious about the world around me. I wanted to find all of the orbs, and I think I only missed some, but most of them were very easy to find. I only got lost in one part, and even then only briefly, which is saying something since I have a terrible sense of direction.
The music was pleasing, and I just wanted more of it in my life. The boss fights (or, in the case of Naga, not really a boss fight but more of a boss encounter) were fun and had enjoyable mechanics. I especially loved the Rangda fight. The encounter was challenging at first, but once you figured out her move set, it felt easy enough to make you feel like you had accomplished something.
Weird camera angles at times made some of the platforming a little harder than it needed to be. That might have been intentional, but there were a few (not many) instances where it became a problem. The controls and combat aren’t very intuitive at first, but they’re easy to get the hang of. The story is a bit short, and it felt like everything went above and beyond until the last area in the desert. That section felt like the developers ran out of ideas and started throwing tough mobs at you. It wouldn’t have been much of a problem if the game were longer. The ending itself felt a little rushed, which is probably my biggest complaint, since I really enjoyed the storyline and aesthetic. I wish there had been more to the final part of the story. I also wish the game were a bit longer overall, with more weapons and levels.
Overall, it was a fun experience, it’s rare that I walk away from a game feeling inspired by a foreign culture and wanting to learn more about it the way Raji made me feel.