EDIT: I finished the game, and I wish it could still go on, but alas, all good things must come to an end. And yes, like everyone is saying this is Early Access done right The game is finally complete, I still see no reason to make any changes to my review, besides this one


Library of Ruina picks up directly after the true end in Lobotomy Corporation, so you're gonna be pretty damn lost if you're new to this universe, the game has some explanations and flashbacks here and there. Personally LC is not a game for me so what I did was watch all the story cutscenes and read up on a few of the creatures known as abnormalities, as well as footage of key moments of the game to try and understand what that game is about, I don't feel lost with that level of knowledge but some references fly over my head.


This game is a very addicting turn based RPG, you have a team of characters with speed dice which they use to take actions, and the order in which they do, and combat cards, each with their own set of dice, every speed dice can play a card, which has a point cost and then when that character's turn arrives they will attack or clash with another character and attack or defend based on their card dice, which can be attack (2 categories, melee and ranged and 3 types, slash, blunt, pierce) or defense (block and dodge). Simple right?

But then, characters also have a stagger gauge that will leave them stunned for a turn when empty, and then there's also damage resistances, for both health and stagger, and then there's passive abilities, amount and roll range of speed dice on characters, passives, emotion gauges, team emotion gauge (the music changes based on which gauge is higher!), card mechanics, and then you have to manage all this information in battle, prioritize some things and as a result overlook others which bite you in the ass and steal a turn from you. The game itself is easy to learn and you have a manual you can read at any point, it's just that battles can get pretty chaotic and might not be able to pay attention to the little details, like you want to focus on defense and redirecting attacks so no one gets hit too hard but then forget that you're using a slash attack against a slash resistant enemy, which is not terrible unless you were counting on a stagger to turn the tables.

Outside battle you build decks for characters which have 2 types of cards, the combat pages you use in battle and a key page that defines their stats like health, stagger, number of speed dice, damage resistances and passives, owning a key page also unlocks that character's appearance (their entire body minus the head) to use when customizing your crew, key pages are also used to transfer passives to other key pages, so you can equip a page that inflicts 1 bleed stack on a successful slash attack and give it a passive from a key page that increases the power of slash dice by 1.


Next is the story, which follows Roland, a fixer that finds his way into this library and is forced to work with the director to help expand it, by challenging people and defeating them to turn them into books, which gives the library more power and expands it, opening more floors and recruiting important characters. The story has multiple layers, there's the overarching story of the library that is presented to you as you win battles and develop the library, and then there's smaller plot threads that you see glimpses of before each battle that show what life is like in the city and how people are starting to take notice of the library and sending their own people to find out more about it, or recover the books of people you defeated and obtain their valuable information. The story will also present you with a ton of in-universe terms that are mostly found in other source material such as LobCorp and some novels, if you're curious, this seems like a good guide to the world of LoR to check, but I'd suggest only checking after deciding if you will deal with or skip LobCorp and/or its lore
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2098034966


And last but not least, the music, the music is great, alright? The game has a cool opening, a cool menu and dialogue theme, as for battle music, there are various flavors, which music plays in regular battle depends on what floor of the library you're fighting in and which team has more emotion points, if the enemy has more, a generic theme with 3 levels of intensity will play, if your team has more, that floor's theme will play, also with 3 levels of intensity, and of course, there's also special battles that have their own themes, some of them with lyrics, you know in RPGs that means business. I'd tell you to go check out the battle themes but then YouTube might end up recommending spoiler videos so proceed with caution


Library of Ruina is a game that brings me excitement like no other (ironically, the theme of the game is that people fight and intensify their emotions to become more powerful), it's my most played single player game, and the one I've played most consistently, quite a feat for someone like me who keeps jumping between a couple games at a time

I really like this game so I hope that I managed to hold your attention and/or gave you enough information to make a decision on the game, preferably towards playing it, if you like turn based RPGs with good story, abundant lore and catchy music I don't think you can go wrong, even if it takes some dedication and research to understand the setting. My only complaints are that the story ended and there's not much replayability other than replaying old fights (except 80% of the boss battles) EDIT: They added workshop support for custom fights, although the workshop NEEDS a tag/category to find them more easily