Sort of like Pikmin but if you remove the convenience of the C-Stick and add in an unnecessary inventory management / item crafting system that bogs down the gameplay. The game was much better once I decided to completely ignore the crafting mechanic as a whole, but almost the entire time I was just wishing I was playing Pikmin instead.
Story and art style were really good but gameplay was just worse pikmin and kinda glitchy at that. I really dug the look of it all but wasn’t having fun with the gameplay
Gradevolissimo visivamente. La OST accompagna bene i singoli scenari, senza mai essere nulla di eclatante: è sempre solo un sottofondo piacevole. I puzzle possono ogni tanto risultare scoccianti ma solo perché è presente del backtracking (dovuta al fatto che in certe zone ci si può tornare solo dopo aver ottenuto un numero maggiore di Twigling e le varianti ghiacciate, lunari e infuocate) e orientarsi in base alla mappa in funzione delle aree da rivisitare non è immediato. Inoltre, la difficoltà dei puzzle stessi letteralmente si annulla nel momento in cui si ottiene un buon numero di Twigling (25-30), in quanto a quel punto si tratterà semplicemente di ripartirli opportunamente di situazione in situazione. I nemici alla lunga sono abbastanza monotoni e la loro presenza è difficilmente giustificabile in quanto il combatterli non porta a quasi nessuna varietà già che adottare delle strategie vere e proprie è impossibile. Probabilmente sarebbe stato meglio concentrarsi solo e unicamente sui puzzle, sull'avventura e su un sistema di crafting che, in aggiunta, risulta essere piuttosto superfluo (fatta eccezione per gli esplosivi).
Gradito il sistema di viaggio rapido, così che ci si possa spostare tra le varie zone senza la rottura di coglioni del procedere a piedi.
Così come in Pikmin, le creature aiutanti in questo gioco vengono lanciate nella posizione designata dal giocatore: mai troppo distante, così da non facilitarsi troppo la vita con certi puzzle. Tuttavia, questo metodo è assolutamente imbecille nel contesto del combattimento: se in Pikmin poteva essere sfruttato adeguatamente grazie anche al fatto di essere in 3D, ciò non funziona assolutamente in The wild at heart. Anzi, la meccanica del lancio rende semplicemente il tutto più macchinoso: sarebbe stato probabilmente meglio un sistema più immediato come quello adottato in Overlord, permettendo anche una certa autonomia ai Twigling stessi.
Gradito il sistema di viaggio rapido, così che ci si possa spostare tra le varie zone senza la rottura di coglioni del procedere a piedi.
Così come in Pikmin, le creature aiutanti in questo gioco vengono lanciate nella posizione designata dal giocatore: mai troppo distante, così da non facilitarsi troppo la vita con certi puzzle. Tuttavia, questo metodo è assolutamente imbecille nel contesto del combattimento: se in Pikmin poteva essere sfruttato adeguatamente grazie anche al fatto di essere in 3D, ciò non funziona assolutamente in The wild at heart. Anzi, la meccanica del lancio rende semplicemente il tutto più macchinoso: sarebbe stato probabilmente meglio un sistema più immediato come quello adottato in Overlord, permettendo anche una certa autonomia ai Twigling stessi.
Endearing presentation, Pikmin-style gameplay, smart dialogue - pitched at a younger audience.
This review contains spoilers
This game had an amazing atmosphere, but I wasn’t too into the gameplay. The 2D art was great and worked very well with how the camera would move with your character. The ambient music was very fitting, and it was enjoyable to just walk around and explore the map. The sound effects were especially good, the best I’ve heard from a game in a while.
As for the gameplay, the most obvious things were how it could often be kind of buggy. On one of the first screens in the game you encounter a river. What happened to both me and my friend is we threw our guys into the water to see how it would interact and they bounced back and landed on the ground in an infinitely falling state. They could only have been removed from this state with a power-up you luckily unlock on that same screen, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to save them. There are a couple other miscellaneous areas where my guys were unable to be recovered, and I even accidentally clipped into a wall once and was unable to get out of it.
Aside from the fixable gameplay issues, I generally didn’t enjoy the combat, the backtracking, and some of the puzzles. Most of the enemies you encounter are just solved by spamming q and making sure to use the correct element if need be. Most of the time I just opted to maneuver around enemies, so I didn’t have to wait through a fight. There wasn’t much incentive to fight the enemies aside from the crafting items you would get, and those weren’t very useable either. Oh and on the topic of items, I disliked how you could only store items one at a time. Often times I would have a stack of 10 items in one slot so in total I would have to press a button 20-30 times to deposit everything lol.
With the puzzles and backtracking, early on you encounter a lot of things you realize that are intended to come back to with a different power-up. A few of the times with the puzzles, there would be some issue that made me assume I had done everything I could and just would come back later with a different power-up. I only came to that conclusion because of misunderstanding the puzzle and backtracking being regularized. The times these happened were the first time you would switch partners and keep their action going (I think this might’ve been explained once but I just didn’t know it was a possible mechanic by the time you actually use it), the top right zone of the ice area (I tried to throw twiglings over a small fence and it got bounced back so many times I figured it wasn’t possible), and all the stones that required a bomb kettle thing. All these occurrences made me assume that something needed to be completed elsewhere so I would again walk all over the map until I eliminated all other options. And I know the bombable rocks are optional things, but I spent an extra few hours than I should have on backtracking, despite already having the resources I needed for them at the time of first encounter. Also as far as I know, there wasn’t much indication on how to blow those up? I just guessed it would have worked. Oh and I only found out how to break the beehives in the post-game, I don’t think that was mentioned anywhere. Now that I think of it, they might’ve been tips from the kettle guy but I didn’t want to go through all of them considering they were randomized, but the game was actively telling me to ignore something until I unlocked the right power-up. Oh, and the very last thing I completed in the game were the bounties and the reward for that was extra insulting considering the amount of backtracking I did lol. I think it’s normal for that to be the last thing to complete considering the nature of how it plays out unless you stopped doing everything else as soon as you unlocked them. My friend coincidentally also finished that last, too. It honestly seems more suitable if it logged how many enemies you defeated prior to receiving the bounty. If it was like that then you would receive that item at a reasonably relevant time, and it would have saved me a lot of grinding and backtracking. I said earlier that I enjoyed just walking around and exploring the game, but not when I had to walk through the same exact areas numerous times.
Overall, I had a pretty good time playing the game. The story wasn’t anything special, but the characters could be charming. I liked reading through the book pages once I collected them all. Again, the art was great across the board. The gameplay could be tedious but wasn’t too bad most of the time.
As for the gameplay, the most obvious things were how it could often be kind of buggy. On one of the first screens in the game you encounter a river. What happened to both me and my friend is we threw our guys into the water to see how it would interact and they bounced back and landed on the ground in an infinitely falling state. They could only have been removed from this state with a power-up you luckily unlock on that same screen, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to save them. There are a couple other miscellaneous areas where my guys were unable to be recovered, and I even accidentally clipped into a wall once and was unable to get out of it.
Aside from the fixable gameplay issues, I generally didn’t enjoy the combat, the backtracking, and some of the puzzles. Most of the enemies you encounter are just solved by spamming q and making sure to use the correct element if need be. Most of the time I just opted to maneuver around enemies, so I didn’t have to wait through a fight. There wasn’t much incentive to fight the enemies aside from the crafting items you would get, and those weren’t very useable either. Oh and on the topic of items, I disliked how you could only store items one at a time. Often times I would have a stack of 10 items in one slot so in total I would have to press a button 20-30 times to deposit everything lol.
With the puzzles and backtracking, early on you encounter a lot of things you realize that are intended to come back to with a different power-up. A few of the times with the puzzles, there would be some issue that made me assume I had done everything I could and just would come back later with a different power-up. I only came to that conclusion because of misunderstanding the puzzle and backtracking being regularized. The times these happened were the first time you would switch partners and keep their action going (I think this might’ve been explained once but I just didn’t know it was a possible mechanic by the time you actually use it), the top right zone of the ice area (I tried to throw twiglings over a small fence and it got bounced back so many times I figured it wasn’t possible), and all the stones that required a bomb kettle thing. All these occurrences made me assume that something needed to be completed elsewhere so I would again walk all over the map until I eliminated all other options. And I know the bombable rocks are optional things, but I spent an extra few hours than I should have on backtracking, despite already having the resources I needed for them at the time of first encounter. Also as far as I know, there wasn’t much indication on how to blow those up? I just guessed it would have worked. Oh and I only found out how to break the beehives in the post-game, I don’t think that was mentioned anywhere. Now that I think of it, they might’ve been tips from the kettle guy but I didn’t want to go through all of them considering they were randomized, but the game was actively telling me to ignore something until I unlocked the right power-up. Oh, and the very last thing I completed in the game were the bounties and the reward for that was extra insulting considering the amount of backtracking I did lol. I think it’s normal for that to be the last thing to complete considering the nature of how it plays out unless you stopped doing everything else as soon as you unlocked them. My friend coincidentally also finished that last, too. It honestly seems more suitable if it logged how many enemies you defeated prior to receiving the bounty. If it was like that then you would receive that item at a reasonably relevant time, and it would have saved me a lot of grinding and backtracking. I said earlier that I enjoyed just walking around and exploring the game, but not when I had to walk through the same exact areas numerous times.
Overall, I had a pretty good time playing the game. The story wasn’t anything special, but the characters could be charming. I liked reading through the book pages once I collected them all. Again, the art was great across the board. The gameplay could be tedious but wasn’t too bad most of the time.