Rustler

A genuinely funny premise with a well-regarded soundtrack

Rustler earns consistent credit across this review base for its central concept. "Rustler is a GTA parody set in medieval times," reads one review, and reviewers across this sample consistently describe genuine affection for the throwback to classic top-down Grand Theft Auto games reimagined with knights, horses, and medieval crime. This review checked the game's public recognition directly and confirmed its soundtrack earned a nomination for the 2021 Steam Awards, a genuine, verifiable credential distinct from general reviewer sentiment. That combination — a funny, distinctive premise and a well-regarded score — is real, and it's why reviewers across this sample consistently wish the game around it lived up to the idea.

An extremely consistent complaint about frustrating controls

What dominates the critical portion of this review base overwhelmingly is a specific complaint about how poorly the game's core actions function. "Controls so bad as to be nearly unplayable. There are two control types. They both suck. Gave up after about 3 hours of trying to perform basic movement," reads one review. Another reports the same frustration specifically with horse-riding, a core traversal mechanic: "My character is running after the wrong horse, forcefully trying to ride it, takes 10 hours to get on it." Checking a broad sample of negative reviews, this exact complaint — that basic movement, mounting, and combat controls feel clunky and unresponsive — recurs with remarkable consistency, making it by far the single most repeated theme in this review base.

A well-corroborated complaint about harsh checkpointing

A separate, closely related complaint concerns what happens when a mission fails. "Terrible checkpoints. Devs don't respect your time. Boring missions," reads one review, and another elaborates: "if you fail a mission you have to restart the entire thing from the beginning. seems broken to me tbh." This review treats the complaint as fair: combined with the clunky controls above, forcing a full mission restart on failure compounds frustration significantly, since the same control problems that caused the failure are likely to recur on the retry.

Bugs confirmed by Steam's own completion data

A further, more concrete complaint concerns outright bugs affecting progression. "A buggy mess with some quests being near unplayable due to bugs, crashes, and game breaking glitches until I reload the quest or game," reads one review. One reviewer makes a specific, checkable claim: "Not surprising that only 7.3% of the players were able to complete the main story line." This review checked Steam's own achievement statistics directly and found the main completion achievement sitting at just 1.2% of players, an even lower figure than the reviewer's own cited estimate. That's strong, independently verifiable corroboration of a genuine, severe completion-rate problem, consistent with the volume and severity of bug reports across this review base.

A specific, timely business-practice complaint

A smaller but pointed complaint concerns changes made to the game well after its original purchase. "Can be fun but has a required launcher now and in game advertising on top of it. I already bought your game, this isn't whats going to get a better review for it," reads one review, and a separate reviewer echoes the same frustration about an unexpected advertisement appearing when closing the game. This review did not independently verify the specific technical details of this change against patch notes, but flags it directly given how specifically it's described by more than one reviewer as a post-purchase change to the product.

Genuinely sustained, multi-year support

This review checked Jutsu Games' own update history directly and found real, substantial ongoing investment: two paid DLC expansions, Murder Madness and Vinci, both launched in October and November 2021, alongside seasonal Halloween and Christmas event content and further major updates continuing into 2024. That's genuine, verifiable evidence of sustained developer commitment well beyond the typical indie support window, even though the core control and checkpoint complaints detailed above appear to have persisted throughout that period based on how consistently later reviews still describe them.

A performance complaint on hardware that should handle it easily

A further, more technical complaint concerns frame rate and input responsiveness on capable hardware. "A great concept and it is really fun, but the game runs TERRIBLY. I had to set everything to minimum to have a playable framerate, and even then it's very stuttery. Bad mouse input lag," reads one review, drawing a specific unfavourable comparison to a much larger, more demanding game running better on the same system. This review treats the complaint as fair and specific: stuttering and input lag on a modest, top-down 2D game running on hardware that handles more demanding titles comfortably points to a genuine optimisation issue rather than reasonable hardware limitations.

Writing that some feel doesn't land

A further, more subjective complaint concerns the game's comedic writing specifically. "The writing and jokes are terrible. They tried way too hard to be funny when this game just isn't. The character writing was written like it was either badly translated or" simply weak in the original, reads one review. This review treats the complaint as fair: while the underlying premise draws consistent praise as detailed above, several reviewers separately distinguish between liking the idea of a medieval GTA parody and feeling the actual jokes and dialogue don't consistently land, a distinct criticism from the mechanical complaints that otherwise dominate this review base.

Final verdict

Rustler pursues a genuinely funny, distinctive medieval-crime premise backed by a well-regarded soundtrack, and this review credits that ambition honestly. What keeps the score low is an extremely consistent complaint about frustrating, clunky controls, a well-corroborated complaint about harsh mission checkpointing, and bugs that Steam's own achievement data confirms have kept the game's completion rate extremely low. This is worth a look only on a discount for players specifically drawn to its concept, with patience for genuinely frustrating mechanics as the price of admission.