I’ve completed adventure mode 100% and spent some time with the other modes (challenge, music and Mr. Dark). I was hoping to spend more time with the other modes but had enough of music mode and realised the other modes are just there to keep you busy in a grindy way, or repeating the same levels over and over. Adventure mode has about 42 levels total with things to collect and you can perfect them to unlock costumes. Technically the game is very well designed. It looks pretty, polished, the controls are fine and there is enough content to keep you busy. But the game is very a trial and error experience. This is made worse because it’s a mix of a platformer and being a runner. As in your character keeps moving without your input, you can jump, hit and influence the direction through other objects. But the levels become incredibly punishing, especially if you’re trying to collect everything. There is little room for error, you’ll see levels filled with spikes or other hazards and you have to do it perfectly to move on. It doesn’t help that the game has no checkpoints whatsoever. If you make a mistake, then you can start the level from beginning. Music mode is worse about this because not only are you dealing with this problem, your view is also actively hindered because you’re supposed to rely on your hearing to get a perfect (collect 200 lums). I’ve done the first song perfectly with all 4 difficulty levels. The second song difficulty level 3 takes the piss though. The camera perspective is changed often, this is disorientating and ruins runs even if you can move with the beat. Challenge mode is similar to the challenges from Rayman Legends, the difference is you’re not competing with others but rather trying to clear challenges on your own (reach x distance, collect x lums, hit x times etc). This is better since you don’t have to worry about servers shutting down or competing with others who can play like gods. It’s still grindy if you want to get all the achievements. Mr. Dark is clearing 3 missions a day which, when cleared, you get an egg you can hatch to collect monsters. The monsters are displayed in a trophy room and they give you gems. The missions are basically do the same levels from adventure mode but do something specific to succeed. You’re supposed to collect all the monsters. If you like trial and error or like challenging games, then this might be for you. It was too much for me and I don’t like needlessly wasting time with design decisions like no checkpoints. I also prefer Rayman being a full fledged platformer instead of this hybrid runner/platformer.

When I started playing this I thought it would be a fun little diversion to play every now and then when I'm bored in pubic. Obviously it wasn't going to be as good or involved as the other Rayman games from this era of Rayman, but I thought as long as it's a decent auto-runner I would be ok with it.

There are parts I like about this, like how it retains a lot of the moveset of Origins/Legends while still remaining simple, important for the very reaction-based platforming this game has. But for me this game's greatest weakness is the fact that it is an auto-runner to begin with, which I guess means I should stay away from this genre in general. The game tries to capture the feeling of flawlessly running through levels in Origins/Legends, but not being able to actually control the character leads to it not feeling nearly as tight, accurate, or fun. It has moments of "oh that was really fun" but just in general constantly being propelled forward in a side-scroller feels really not great to me.

But the biggest problem for me is that the sense of rhythm and timing is completely wrong here. I don't know if it's lag caused by the touch controls or what, but it feels like you have to input certain moves way before they need to be executed on screen. Many times I attack an enemy in front of me with the same timing I would hit them in Origins, only to die to it because I need to use my attack slightly earlier. This kills the game for me, and the music stages here become unplayable because of it. I think to hit a wall as soon as I go near it, but no, I have to wind up my attack before it even appears on screen, it sucks so bad and makes the idea of playing through the whole game like this a nightmare (I beat the first world, getting all the lums in each, and then stopped playing somewhere in the second world). It made me actually mad to see a game series with some of the best 2D platforming of all time be mishandled like this, and I wasn't even looking for that great of an experience to begin with.