If you're looking to take a stealthy approach, you should focus on improving Super Sense, which highlights all nearby enemies and get items that allow you to distract enemies so you can take them out silently with the help of the Harvester gun.
If you want to take an offensive approach with guns blazing, you should get the appropriate ranged and melee weapons and focus on improving your health and shield, which can be used to protect Zimri from all incoming damage. The combination of all of the game's mechanics gives players a great amount of freedom on how they want to approach it. Each weapon and gadget has its own use, making them more effective depending on how the player wants to tackle the game's many challenges. These allow players to exchange the different currency types for melee and ranged weapons, and other types of gadgets like drones, grenades, and so on. Like any roguelike worth its name, The Persistence features different types of currencies, which can be spent at Fabricators found all over the ship. Obtaining these cells is extremely important to improve stats, which can be done in the main hub. The only permanent weapon is the Harvester gun, which is used to obtain stem cells from unsuspecting enemies. Zimri will also have to arm herself properly to have a fighting chance against the feral clones. All of the four decks in the game have a specific theme with slightly different traps and enemies, so things do not get particularly repetitive.
#THE PERSISTENCE REVIEW FULL#
Unlike pretty much all roguelikes, though, a full map is available at all times, so it's possible to plan a route with ease, whether it's a direct path to the goal or a detour to obtain more resources before clearing a deck. Controlling Zimri in a first-person view mode, players have to explore the four decks of the ship, which are all procedurally generated this means that their layout will be different every time players return to the starting deck. The main reason why you should play The Persistence is the roguelike experience, which is among the best we have seen in recent times.
If you are playing the game just for the story, however, you're probably better off with something else, as this is, at the end of the day, a fairly simple space survival-horror story with no shocking twist. The two main characters receive an adequate amount of development during the course of the adventure, and the game's great atmosphere manages to make players feel the same tension Zimri does while exploring the ship even if they are not using a VR headset, thanks to a great implementation of directional audio. The Persistence's story isn't likely to surprise you, but it is well executed all the same. Armed only with the Harvester and the uneasy knowledge that she can be revived over and over through the aforementioned clone printer, Zimri heads out to explore the ship's four decks, restart the ship's stardrive and make it out of her predicament in one piece. Her task, however, is not going to be anywhere near simple, as the black hole caused malfunctions all over the ship and clone printers are creating incomplete, feral humans that will not hesitate to attack Zimri on sight. Having lost all her fellow crew members, Serena has no choice but to resort to one of the clone printers found on the ship and effectively revive security official Zimri Eder. Only one crew member managed to survive, the engineer Serena Karim, and she needs help to restart the ship's stardrive and escape from the nightmare she finds herself in. The Persistence is not just the name of the game, but also of a space ship that has been crippled by the effects of a huge black hole during an expedition. These jumps are usually not without issues, so how did developer Firesprite handle the conversion? Pretty well, as it turns out.
#THE PERSISTENCE REVIEW PC#
Originally released as a PlayStation VR exclusive, the space horror roguelike The Persistence made the jump to PC (and all the major consoles) complete with tweaks that allow the game to be played without a VR headset.