What is it? A survival horror game, developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and first released for PlayStation 2 in 2004. Since the game is 8-10 hours long, those of you concerned with the “price to playtime” ratio probably won’t want to shell out nearly 400 quid for it - but if you pick up a copy of Rule of Rose you’re almost certainly doing so just to say you have it more than anything else, in which case money may be no object. Is it worth it? As a genuine rarity, copies of this probably aren’t going to get any cheaper - and Japanese copies go for just as high a price. In a rather aggressive interview with Gamasutra, the game’s creators noted that they “wanted to show not only how scary adults can be from a child’s perspective, but also how scary children can be from an adult’s perspective” and that “the erotic aspect isn’t supposed to be the main theme… it’s about intimate relationships between all people, not just children, not just girls.” Interestingly, the game was never banned by the Video Standards Council, who believed the claims made about it were “nonsense”. This stemmed from the fact that the game, among other things, explores the sexuality of underaged girls. Why is it so expensive? In Europe, it was the subject of a moral panic which caused publisher 505 Games to cancel its release in the United Kingdom. Maybe a UK PSN re-release would be possible, but I doubt they'd be mad enough to court the controversy a second time.What is it? A survival horror game from 2006, developed by Punchline, the Japanese company who brought us “kissing game” Chulip. I'm not sure it was officially banned in the UK, iirc the publisher themselves opted to pull it just before/after release, so close that UK journalists were able to play and review it and UK physical copies are out in the wild. But any replies that ignored my point in favour of making a case for why they don't have a problem with the controversial content is something I could do without. I don't discount the notion that the idea of gay kids in a game (or y'know, existing) rankled certain people, but to attribute the game's reputation solely to that, as the person I originally quoted did, is misleading and paints an incomplete picture of the larger conversation that was around the game at its time of release. The main scarequote being circulated at the time was from a european commissioner about the brutal and shocking nature of the violence in the game. You'd think there would be some incentive to release it digitally. Its such a well-known game among collectors though. They could put out a trailer that just said "experience the cult classic! one of the most rare games on the PS2 has come to PS4!" or something like that and it would sell enough to go beyond the cost of porting it, but Sony is terrible about that stuff so again, I'm not holding my breath. I'd like to see it get a release on PSN but I don't expect that to happen. It is absolutely not worth that price tag, but whatever. ![]() I see it goes for around $300 on eBay these days which is totally absurd. I'd love to play it again as I have long since sold my copy. The ending kind of lost me and I had to read different takes on the meaning before it began to make more sense. ![]() The combat is dogshit terrible though and really hinders the game, but I was more than willing to endure that in order to experience the rest of the game. I beat this game back when it was new and really appreciated the music, atmosphere, and parts of the story.
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