No matter what Vasily uses – an ax, a hammer or even bare fists – he does it with that special oomph. Fights are brief and often end with a bone-crunching fatality; and if there is something like a stake or a saw table nearby, the enemy will meet an especially gruesome death. Firearms are also impressive: even a pistol is a weapon to be reckoned with, while shotgun’s effect is outright terrifying. [Issue#222, p.64]

Redeemer is a very good top down brawler that was close to competing with the biggest names in the business. Sadly, the strong difficulty and impossibility of saving when we want implies an unpleasant die & retry flavor in some places.

If only Diablo III was this fun and exciting to play between all the fluff and management overhead, I wouldn’t have abandoned it; Redeemer has exactly what I want when I crave quick, well-produced top-down action content. The secret sauce and energy are in full effect, and the face bashing is exceptionally fun both with hands, along with the more advanced killing methods.

Redeemer offers a very satisfying mix of good old top-down shooters and modern video games.

Redeemer is an excellent game coming out of Moscow and Kalingrad, Russia and I recommend it to anyone looking for a fast-paced, action packed gore fest that requires a little more thought than your average beat-em-up. Don’t expect much in terms of a story, though. It’s not bad, it’s just not unique enough to be a selling point either.

For the most part, Redeemer succeeds in delivering an action-packed beat-'em-up experience. Unless players are facing bosses or enemies who are immune to regular attacks, the combat is fast and visceral. The overall game length is good, and although some of the mechanics can be inconsistent, there's enough here to make the experience worthwhile.

While the action is visceral and filled with brutal finishers, the battle system is facetted, yet not too complex. Too bad that the mechanics were wasted on mostly boring level design.

Quotation forthcoming.

Redeemer is at its best when being a brawler, which it does most of the time. Guns are nice to take out the small fry and leave room to concentrate on the bigger threats, and the occasional trapped room is best bulled through and forgotten, but when you’ve got a room full of enemies of different abilities and are darting about, looking for environment kills or things to throw while performing counters and working on chaining attacks together the combat flows incredibly well. Heading into a room, assessing threats, coming up with a plan, and adjusting it on the fly to pound cyborgs and mutants into the floor feels great, especially when you fall into the fight’s rhythm and come out with barely a scratch. At the end the difficulty increases by enemies that take a few too many hits to go down, frequently joined by armored sniper that require you to keep moving rather work on offense, but by then you’re almost done and can push on through to the final encounter. Ignore the story and show up for the fighting and Redeemer provides a nice, long quest with plenty of unique areas to wreak bloody violence through.

Redeemer is a brawler which definitely has a lot of remarkable elements and proves that the developers were willing to create something good, but ultimately the recipe broke down on the road, ending up with a game full of "yes...but" arguments.

If you don't have mad skills or lots of patience, keep away from Redeemer. But if you like bloody gameplay with a really high difficulty level - remember this one. The second half becomes boring and there are some technical issues but its fierce attitude, pretty graphics and low price make it worth your while.

As a pure action-brawler Redeemer’s appeal is limited. Like the classic arcade game Double Dragon II there’s a sense of fatigue that becomes hard to shake after a few hours, something that very few games in this genre manage to overcome. But, if you’re a fan of punching things and stringing together combos and takedowns in a violent action game, then there’s a lot to like here. Any hey, any game where you can, mid-combo, rip the arm off a mutant and then proceed to beat it to a pulp with both severity and a severed appendage -- is worth checking out.

The starting point is not bad.

Redeemer is a top-down brawler with stunning graphics and addictive combat. At least the first few chapters. After the half-point mark bugs, boring locations and an artificial difficulty dominate the first impressions.

A game that held a lot of potential. Five or ten years ago, this game would have been an exceptional 2-player co-op brawler à la Gauntlet or Golden Axe. Today it’s a forgettable, short distraction that you’re unlikely to play through a second time.

What initially feels like a celebration of the flow of combat becomes repetitive and frustrating. [Oct 2017, p.70]

Redeemer teeters but never topples over the line into drudgery. For what it's worth, the added mechanics do at least introduce a variety of options for dispatching the legion of enemies Vasily faces in his bloody rampage toward vengeance for his fallen temple.

It’s a pure beat ‘em up game, with satisfying and fast combat albeit without any effort to provide anything we haven’t seen before. Its repetitive nature goes without saying, raising the guilt part of this guilty pleasure offering exponentially with each passing hour.

Initially, I was really taken with Redeemer. The violent action, slick controls and impressive visuals made a great first impression. After three hours of play, however, it became a slog to work through.

Redeemer aims to deliver a modern take on the brawler genre and in some ways, it does that. Yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the game was merely a variation of the combat from Batman: Arkham Asylum. There are combo’s, counters and stealth elements all blended into an action game but it all seems dated. Redeemer just feels slightly displaced in time. It’s an ok game now, but had it come out a few years back it would have seemed a little more fresh and modern.

Redeemer is a flawed title at best. It's a brawler at heart and succeeds on that line, offering visceral and often entertaining combat. However, the inclusion of cheap enemies and a hugely fluctuating difficulty curve makes for often irritating experiences in a number of levels. Though not a large concern for the genre, the story is a mess throwing in characters and concepts with no explanation.

Redeemer has its moments, but they are so scarce that the only thing that kept me going was my obligation to finish the game before reviewing it. [11/2017, p.48]

Redeemer's great peculiarity is that it starts with strong gameplay and a weak story, and then the two switch entirely. Combat that was once challenging, varied, and rewarding gives way to enemy numbers and attack patterns that bottleneck the player into a constant dodge-fest that feels like breaking the rules of a broken game. Whether you succeed or fail, too little of what you do after the first chapter is based on any amount of skill. As monotony settles in, the captivating story proves not enough to pick up the slack. In its first four hours, Redeemer is great. Afterwards? Far from it.

Redeemer is a bit of a dud. While it certainly has a good premise and delivers on its promise of blood and brutality, it just feels like the game came out of the oven too early. Hopefully after a few patches and some more polish, Sobaka Studio can iron out the bugs present and tighten up the flow to create a decent little brawler. Until then, give this a pass.

Awful game design meets nonsensical story. Oh, and rivers of blood.