shh secret masterpiece
Heaven's Vault's high-points soar. These moments largely revolve around the quiet wonder involved in piecing together the past of the Nebula, in finding some old item or deciphering some piece of text, gaining some understanding of how things were. As someone who is not into archaeology this game is very good at letting you into that world and letting you understand the appeal, and much of the game is chasing these moments of revelation, however large or small. The translation mechanic is kind of perfect in this context for how it lets you see through Aliya's eyes, lets you directly engage with both seeking understanding whilst also still having a curtain of mystery shrouding things, doubt surrounding the discoveries you make.
I loved both how the game felt like it gave me a large amount of agency with the decisions I wanted to make, these decisions that have very tangible effects on the world you're in and people you encounter, and also with how nonlinear the game is at points. Both this, and the potential for different possible translations to warp your perspective on the past, give you the feeling that the experience you're having is a fairly unique one from what other players might be going through. In addition to all of this the lore of the game, and some of the implications of occurrences late into it, is fascinating, and I love the art-style used for the characters and how it emphasises this feeling of transience, that you too shall become a piece of the past.
Despite all of this there are various mechanical issues with the game for me that are almost certainly going to prevent me from engaging with New Game+ (as interesting as the game manages to make that concept). Chiefly, the sailing sections that are initially beautiful soon become tedious and very repetitive later in the game as they grow in length whilst you hunt new sites to explore. I was also very frustrated with the two characters you can trade items to for information who will only do one or two things for you per visit before you have to leave the moon and then return to initiate another exchange; at its worst the game can devolve into a bunch of busywork, and these trade sequences are a particularly grating example of this.
All the other flaws are much more minor things that still nudged me out of the experience periodically; there's some awkward sequencing with dialogue that will crop up sometimes either as a bug or due to the game struggling a bit with its nonlinear nature, some of the dialogue in any individual conversation can end up coming to you in a non-sensical sequence depending on choices you make of what to say, the controls and display both become pretty unpleasant during particularly long translations, action indicators disappearing when you're talking with Six makes it hard to ever actually walk-and-talk at the same time in case you miss something you can do. I could probably continue this list for a little bit longer of things that just make the experience feel unpolished.
I never thought I would get so invested in a game about archaeology though, and there are some wonderous moments when the game hits its stride so I will still remember the game largely-fondly even if I can't imagine ever returning to it.
I loved both how the game felt like it gave me a large amount of agency with the decisions I wanted to make, these decisions that have very tangible effects on the world you're in and people you encounter, and also with how nonlinear the game is at points. Both this, and the potential for different possible translations to warp your perspective on the past, give you the feeling that the experience you're having is a fairly unique one from what other players might be going through. In addition to all of this the lore of the game, and some of the implications of occurrences late into it, is fascinating, and I love the art-style used for the characters and how it emphasises this feeling of transience, that you too shall become a piece of the past.
Despite all of this there are various mechanical issues with the game for me that are almost certainly going to prevent me from engaging with New Game+ (as interesting as the game manages to make that concept). Chiefly, the sailing sections that are initially beautiful soon become tedious and very repetitive later in the game as they grow in length whilst you hunt new sites to explore. I was also very frustrated with the two characters you can trade items to for information who will only do one or two things for you per visit before you have to leave the moon and then return to initiate another exchange; at its worst the game can devolve into a bunch of busywork, and these trade sequences are a particularly grating example of this.
All the other flaws are much more minor things that still nudged me out of the experience periodically; there's some awkward sequencing with dialogue that will crop up sometimes either as a bug or due to the game struggling a bit with its nonlinear nature, some of the dialogue in any individual conversation can end up coming to you in a non-sensical sequence depending on choices you make of what to say, the controls and display both become pretty unpleasant during particularly long translations, action indicators disappearing when you're talking with Six makes it hard to ever actually walk-and-talk at the same time in case you miss something you can do. I could probably continue this list for a little bit longer of things that just make the experience feel unpolished.
I never thought I would get so invested in a game about archaeology though, and there are some wonderous moments when the game hits its stride so I will still remember the game largely-fondly even if I can't imagine ever returning to it.
This is one of the most unique games I have ever played, from the world to the gameplay. If you want to immerse yourself completely in this fascinating world, you will absolutely be rewarded for it.
// taken from my Steam review
// taken from my Steam review
The world's history and language are very intriguing to discover and decipher. On the other hand, there's many annoying bugs and design shortcomings that dampen the experience. Worst of these: you can accidentally end the game before coming close to feeling finished, with no way to opt-out or reload a save.
Bizarrely stressful game. The mechanics of uncovering history and deciphering languages is inspired. However, all the invisible mechanics made everything really anxiety inducing. Am I befriending the robot or not? What information does his master have that I needed to keep secret? I don't mind not knowing what my actions do so much but I do care that I can't tell what is and isn't an important decision or not.
I want to sell you on Heaven's Vault.
It has a lot of problems: quests are sometimes ill-defined and may bug out, the translation minigame can get old (if you don't have the patience for it), and traversing the world is slow.
With all that said, Heaven's Vault is one of the most impressive games I've ever played. Excavating the overlapping histories of the Nebula is unlike anything I've ever played before. Inkle's world is also realized in an early Islamic (maybe?) style that's refreshingly unique -- I've never seen anything like it. The characters are human and complex, and the ending, while not original, is very well executed.
Tl;dr: Heaven's Vault isn't for everyone. But it's a game I genuinely love, and if you look beyond the surface-level flaws, there's a special, curiosity-driven experience that I can't recommend more.
It has a lot of problems: quests are sometimes ill-defined and may bug out, the translation minigame can get old (if you don't have the patience for it), and traversing the world is slow.
With all that said, Heaven's Vault is one of the most impressive games I've ever played. Excavating the overlapping histories of the Nebula is unlike anything I've ever played before. Inkle's world is also realized in an early Islamic (maybe?) style that's refreshingly unique -- I've never seen anything like it. The characters are human and complex, and the ending, while not original, is very well executed.
Tl;dr: Heaven's Vault isn't for everyone. But it's a game I genuinely love, and if you look beyond the surface-level flaws, there's a special, curiosity-driven experience that I can't recommend more.
Easily one of my all-time top games ever. It's just fantastic and so unexpected! I loved it enough that I actually made a companion web app to go with it, where you can record your own vocabulary! https://heavens-vault-notebook.herokuapp.com/
Rarely is there a game where I'm so excited to explore a new area and find its secrets. The downside is that exploring areas is slow — but often that means you have an extra moment to make sure you're not missing anything. Deciphering the language is extremely fun — you can actually start to make sense of it over time.
I found Heaven's Vault to be tedious and undirected at best and frustrating at worst. I wasn't invested enough in the characters, story, or world to overcome the gameplay and puzzle mechanics.
Heaven's Vault looks good, but the character animation is purposely not fluid and I don't like it much, though it is unique. The actual art is well done and areas are pretty with quite a bit of variety.
The linguistic puzzle is the main attraction here, and it didn't really work for me at all. The random nature of the discoveries means that much of what you discover is essentially unimportant. This is fine from a language discovery perspective, but it undermines the game, since it isn't clear what contributes to the story and what doesn't. Additionally, many of the archaeological sites feel strange and pointless to explore, because what you are finding is generic and unconnected. Heaven's Vault would be much stronger if the language discovery was designed with more intention.
The actual act of discovering the language is kind of a cool idea, but in practice it feels more like an exercise in shape matching than information analysis. I didn't really ever have a satisfying moment of discovery, I just tried things until the game said I understood more of the language or was stuck.
Most other interaction in the game is through dialog. These are occasionally interesting, but usually antagonistic or stressful for strange and unclear reasons. The whole tone of the game just feels very bad to me.
There is also tedious and pointless sailing between worlds that feels bad and doesn't add anything to the experience.
This is ostensibly a detective story where you are searching for a missing person while also discovering a dead language. The connection between these two things is tenuous, and this lack of motivation makes the game feel scattered.
The game's tone makes this even worse, since it is hard to understand why we want to help any of the hostile jerks we interact with.
I really didn't have a good time with this game. If you are looking for a game about information discovery, Return of the Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds are far better choices.
Heaven's Vault looks good, but the character animation is purposely not fluid and I don't like it much, though it is unique. The actual art is well done and areas are pretty with quite a bit of variety.
The linguistic puzzle is the main attraction here, and it didn't really work for me at all. The random nature of the discoveries means that much of what you discover is essentially unimportant. This is fine from a language discovery perspective, but it undermines the game, since it isn't clear what contributes to the story and what doesn't. Additionally, many of the archaeological sites feel strange and pointless to explore, because what you are finding is generic and unconnected. Heaven's Vault would be much stronger if the language discovery was designed with more intention.
The actual act of discovering the language is kind of a cool idea, but in practice it feels more like an exercise in shape matching than information analysis. I didn't really ever have a satisfying moment of discovery, I just tried things until the game said I understood more of the language or was stuck.
Most other interaction in the game is through dialog. These are occasionally interesting, but usually antagonistic or stressful for strange and unclear reasons. The whole tone of the game just feels very bad to me.
There is also tedious and pointless sailing between worlds that feels bad and doesn't add anything to the experience.
This is ostensibly a detective story where you are searching for a missing person while also discovering a dead language. The connection between these two things is tenuous, and this lack of motivation makes the game feel scattered.
The game's tone makes this even worse, since it is hard to understand why we want to help any of the hostile jerks we interact with.
I really didn't have a good time with this game. If you are looking for a game about information discovery, Return of the Obra Dinn and Outer Wilds are far better choices.
A game about wandering through the bones of half forgotten old worlds. The worlds are deeply thought through, carefully written, and it teaches you a fictional language along the way. There is a bit of a pacing dip near the middle but persevere and you will be rewarded with a rich and memorable journey.
Underwhelming; the translation mechanic is a neat idea, but it never felt like I was figuring things out...it felt like I was trying to stumble into Aliya figuring it out for herself. The traversal (both on the ground and between moons) is clunky and frustrating, and the way the story comes together is extremely unsatisfying. It has neat ideas and moments that I really liked, but it stumbled at every other moment.
I've read that it comes together on New Game+, and I started a run, but the issues I had with the mechanics kept me from wanting to go much further.
I've read that it comes together on New Game+, and I started a run, but the issues I had with the mechanics kept me from wanting to go much further.
I have mixed feelings about this game.
All the information the game communicates to you comes from written dialogue, as the visual presentation is barebones with only flavour-text voice acting on occasion. The three ways of gameplay found being; ship traversal, branching dialogue and "match the shape" translation puzzles, all suffer from not demanding much engagement from the player in order to make progress. At last, dialogue choices can feel unsatifying at times due to you playing an established character, Aliya is a character with her own beliefs and values, which are not going to change due to a buttonprompt. This is not a roleplaying game, despite 1/3 of the game being dedicated to branching dialogue.
On the other hand, the story and worldbuilding of the game was very enjoyable to me. The game tells a story of an archeologist, dealing with all the luggage the profession can bring with it. The world on display is unique and full of its own problems, bringing a hostile and tense atmosphere to every conversation. The game will reward tought-out decision making with new knowledge about the universe and its past. You are really making discoveries about the past and present that matter, and make you think about the history, creation, nature and future of this universe.
Heavens Vault is a memorable game that I wish other devs would notice, and try to improve on the concepts and ideas shown in it. Translation is such a cool idea for a from of gameplay, and this game only scratches the surface of it.
All the information the game communicates to you comes from written dialogue, as the visual presentation is barebones with only flavour-text voice acting on occasion. The three ways of gameplay found being; ship traversal, branching dialogue and "match the shape" translation puzzles, all suffer from not demanding much engagement from the player in order to make progress. At last, dialogue choices can feel unsatifying at times due to you playing an established character, Aliya is a character with her own beliefs and values, which are not going to change due to a buttonprompt. This is not a roleplaying game, despite 1/3 of the game being dedicated to branching dialogue.
On the other hand, the story and worldbuilding of the game was very enjoyable to me. The game tells a story of an archeologist, dealing with all the luggage the profession can bring with it. The world on display is unique and full of its own problems, bringing a hostile and tense atmosphere to every conversation. The game will reward tought-out decision making with new knowledge about the universe and its past. You are really making discoveries about the past and present that matter, and make you think about the history, creation, nature and future of this universe.
Heavens Vault is a memorable game that I wish other devs would notice, and try to improve on the concepts and ideas shown in it. Translation is such a cool idea for a from of gameplay, and this game only scratches the surface of it.
This review contains spoilers
This is an immensely cool concept that only barely manages to rise above the janky and frustrating gameplay it's behind. I'll save actually listing all of my complains for the end of the review so that you don't have to scroll past it, but for now suffice to say that the game is extremely slow and tedious, you're constantly being interrupted and having to wait. It was bad enough that I couldn't bear repeating it for a second playthrough, even though I was excited by the prospect of a New Game+ with deeper puzzles.
Visually, the game's artstyle looks unique and great in stills, but in motion, in gameplay, I found it very jarring, with the minimal animations, leaving behind inexplicable specters as you walk, and awkward camera issues as the game tries to dynamically make a cutscene out of wherever you're standing.
So then, the concept that redeems all this. Even with the shallow nature of the conlang, and the puzzles often being more about guessing what words make sense rather than interpreting the glyphs, it was still a fun, satisfying mechanic, and I was always motivated to push through the tedium of the rest of the game in the hopes of getting to more inscriptions. The setting and history are really engaging too, especially with the way you uncover it being a fundamental part of the game's flow.
I was also impressed with how dynamic and open the game seemed, with you able to learn new information in radically different orders, and in conversation Aliya's dialogue will reflect that.
As far as the actual plot goes though - Iiiii dunno. The secret hyperadvanced precursor society - if you can call it a society - is a pretty played-out trope, and the focus on the entropy of the universe kind of undermines the importance of looking at history and learning the language. Unless I missed it, you don't even get offered the chance to translate the huge amounts of ancient script in the Vault. Nothing you learned matters, because everything is doomed and you need to either leave it all behind or (I assume) die for your principles if you refuse to. In general, the last minute ending split tends to be a red flag.
I do love the "Vault" wordplay - secrets hiding in plain sight on the cover and all that - but the very fact it's wordplay relies on the shallowness of the conlang. Why would "safe-underground-place" and "travel-high-far-fast" be the same word in such an ideographic language?
Right: Time to whine. Each of these complaints is individually minor, but they add up to a tedious, frustrating experience. It's a mix of small one-time things and game-spanning quibbles that never go away.
As already mentioned, the game's visual style is pretty strange in motion.
The dialogue system is really slowly paced, unvoiced, and doesn't have the best contrast against the background. Lines appear one-by-one far slower than I'd like, with no option I could find to bring up the next line early. Voiced lines are extremely rare, and don't always seem important enough to get that distinction, compared to the conversations that go unvoiced.
Aliya is... kind of a dick, sometimes to an unwarranted degree, and sometimes you don't really have any good choices, or you don't realise a choice will go where it does. I like to try to be nice! This does have the upside of making Aliya a distinct character, but the amount of game you spend choosing responses feels at odds.
The game doesn't seem to like alt-tabbing very much.
I'm not sure if it was a related issue or just intentional design, but when I played the game, a lot of it was almost silent. Not just the lack of dialogue, but few-to-no music or sound effects. It was eerie, and not in situations where it would be intentionally so.
The game likes to take control away from you to walk down stairs or through doorways and such. This increases the feeling that you spend a lot of time waiting, without player agency. Additionally, if you're in the middle of a conversation, which can usually play out while you walk, you'll stop dead in your tracks until it plays out in full, including any responses.
Six bugs you to return to the ship almost every time you cross a threshold once you've cleared one plot flag on a moon, even if you're trying to walk directly another one.
I don't know that there's much benefit to doing so anyway, but does Huang have to walk away slowly with each individual artefact I give him when he knows I have five more?
Like I said, I have some mechanical gripes with the translation mechanic. When you're trying to define word boundaries, I couldn't figure out a way to make the game try it even if I knew everything left I could add was wrong. And every time you do get it wrong, often being just forced to, you have to sit through Aliya or Six chiming in with the slow dialogue system, then all of your progress is discarded and you have to place it all back again.
Also, I wanted to be able to search inscriptions by words. If a definition is rejected and I need to choose a new one, I want to be able to see the context I previously defined it in, and if the definition of a word updates, I want to review other inscriptions it was in, even if it's not all locked in yet.
When sailing, the slow dialogue system will sometimes make you miss turns. They could have taken more care to keep those lines shorter so that the important thing is always in the first message.
Visually, the game's artstyle looks unique and great in stills, but in motion, in gameplay, I found it very jarring, with the minimal animations, leaving behind inexplicable specters as you walk, and awkward camera issues as the game tries to dynamically make a cutscene out of wherever you're standing.
So then, the concept that redeems all this. Even with the shallow nature of the conlang, and the puzzles often being more about guessing what words make sense rather than interpreting the glyphs, it was still a fun, satisfying mechanic, and I was always motivated to push through the tedium of the rest of the game in the hopes of getting to more inscriptions. The setting and history are really engaging too, especially with the way you uncover it being a fundamental part of the game's flow.
I was also impressed with how dynamic and open the game seemed, with you able to learn new information in radically different orders, and in conversation Aliya's dialogue will reflect that.
As far as the actual plot goes though - Iiiii dunno. The secret hyperadvanced precursor society - if you can call it a society - is a pretty played-out trope, and the focus on the entropy of the universe kind of undermines the importance of looking at history and learning the language. Unless I missed it, you don't even get offered the chance to translate the huge amounts of ancient script in the Vault. Nothing you learned matters, because everything is doomed and you need to either leave it all behind or (I assume) die for your principles if you refuse to. In general, the last minute ending split tends to be a red flag.
I do love the "Vault" wordplay - secrets hiding in plain sight on the cover and all that - but the very fact it's wordplay relies on the shallowness of the conlang. Why would "safe-underground-place" and "travel-high-far-fast" be the same word in such an ideographic language?
Right: Time to whine. Each of these complaints is individually minor, but they add up to a tedious, frustrating experience. It's a mix of small one-time things and game-spanning quibbles that never go away.
As already mentioned, the game's visual style is pretty strange in motion.
The dialogue system is really slowly paced, unvoiced, and doesn't have the best contrast against the background. Lines appear one-by-one far slower than I'd like, with no option I could find to bring up the next line early. Voiced lines are extremely rare, and don't always seem important enough to get that distinction, compared to the conversations that go unvoiced.
Aliya is... kind of a dick, sometimes to an unwarranted degree, and sometimes you don't really have any good choices, or you don't realise a choice will go where it does. I like to try to be nice! This does have the upside of making Aliya a distinct character, but the amount of game you spend choosing responses feels at odds.
The game doesn't seem to like alt-tabbing very much.
I'm not sure if it was a related issue or just intentional design, but when I played the game, a lot of it was almost silent. Not just the lack of dialogue, but few-to-no music or sound effects. It was eerie, and not in situations where it would be intentionally so.
The game likes to take control away from you to walk down stairs or through doorways and such. This increases the feeling that you spend a lot of time waiting, without player agency. Additionally, if you're in the middle of a conversation, which can usually play out while you walk, you'll stop dead in your tracks until it plays out in full, including any responses.
Six bugs you to return to the ship almost every time you cross a threshold once you've cleared one plot flag on a moon, even if you're trying to walk directly another one.
I don't know that there's much benefit to doing so anyway, but does Huang have to walk away slowly with each individual artefact I give him when he knows I have five more?
Like I said, I have some mechanical gripes with the translation mechanic. When you're trying to define word boundaries, I couldn't figure out a way to make the game try it even if I knew everything left I could add was wrong. And every time you do get it wrong, often being just forced to, you have to sit through Aliya or Six chiming in with the slow dialogue system, then all of your progress is discarded and you have to place it all back again.
Also, I wanted to be able to search inscriptions by words. If a definition is rejected and I need to choose a new one, I want to be able to see the context I previously defined it in, and if the definition of a word updates, I want to review other inscriptions it was in, even if it's not all locked in yet.
When sailing, the slow dialogue system will sometimes make you miss turns. They could have taken more care to keep those lines shorter so that the important thing is always in the first message.
I had to play this for a class. I remember really hating the controls, and although I like the ideas this game's world presents, playing it just... was not fun to me at all.
Great little idea but the clunkiness of the movement and mechanics made it a bit of a slog throughout the whole thing
While everyone arounds you wants to uncover the worlds' secrets to their personal and political needs, the protagonist just desires to satisfy her unending curiosity for the past, without letting it consume her gaze towards the present.
The mechanics too support her views: the stages have lots of optional collectibles and interactions, as characters you can sell your findings to, to gather yet more knowledge in return.
And the sole reward for all this eagerness is being one step closer from understanding the next word of this ancient language. Being one step closer of gaining insight of the past through barely 5 word fragments which have survived the millenia. Being one step closer to trivial knowledge such as epitaphs or engravings in good luck charms.
And to me, this was all the reward I needed.
The mechanics too support her views: the stages have lots of optional collectibles and interactions, as characters you can sell your findings to, to gather yet more knowledge in return.
And the sole reward for all this eagerness is being one step closer from understanding the next word of this ancient language. Being one step closer of gaining insight of the past through barely 5 word fragments which have survived the millenia. Being one step closer to trivial knowledge such as epitaphs or engravings in good luck charms.
And to me, this was all the reward I needed.
THE best narrative game I have ever played. Inkle's Heaven's Vault is a refreshing take on a graphic/point & click adventure. Instead of a linear story in between slow click+combine puzzles, HV has a sprawling story with so much player freedom and interaction, no tedious slow downs or confusions, and an incredible puzzle mechanic about translating an ancient language that feeds into the mysteries of the storylines.
Beautiful ideas in this clunky, buggy game. I got too frustrated with how rough it is.
The game has a lot of good elements, from the core deciphering mechanic and the dialogue system, to great art direction and sound. And yet, I found myself growing tired of constant back-and-forth between locations and of how most characters come across as rude despite my best counter-coaxing. The narrative itself, while intentionally somewhat fluid, has a few confusing/nonsensical scene triggers and often gets lost beneath a bunch of other interesting but orthogonal lore.
This game was specifically designed for me to like it. I loved puzzling out the ancient inscriptions, uncovering the history of the Nebula, and meeting the whole rogue's gallery of characters. What's more, it's rare that a game comes up with a diagetic New Game+ that is as interesting as as this one. I'm looking forward to playing even more.
An incredible setting, fun sailing, amazingly compelling translation mechanic, and mystifyingly bug-filled experience
I blame this game for me studying linguistics and anthropology
Really enjoy the translation mechanic and world design, but traversing the world is such a pain that I don't feel like going back for a 'better' ending. Especially when NG+ resets the map...
this game is beautiful and the translation mechanic is really fun.
but god, the robot just never stops asking to stop exploring and go back into the ship. let me die in peace
but god, the robot just never stops asking to stop exploring and go back into the ship. let me die in peace
The translation was engaging, as was the story. I found the traversal frustrating, and sometimes it was unclear when a decision you'd make would be permanent and lock you out of a choice.
A game I respect slightly more than I enjoy. I think it does a lot of things very well but I would have been happier had I ended perhaps 2 or 3 hours earlier, as the core mechanic has kind of outstayed its welcome by the end. Its nevertheless a very engaging archeology game with none of that dumb hollywood schlock, you just have a notebook and a desire for learning. It also does some interesting, spoilery things with its narrative, so I will say no more
What a weird-ass game this one is. I highly recommend it just for how unique and imaginative (a legitimately rare trait when it comes to games!) it is, despite it also being slow and clunky and often a time-waster. You get to decipher a conlang which is cool as shit despite it being a fairly shallow one, but I assume that was required to make this work as a full game. This game is very organic and your playthrough will not be the same as mine, or anyone else's, from what I've seen.
Interesting enough to hold my attention. I appreciate them trying something new with the game play. The controls are bad.
You may like one piece because of luffy or zoro, but this is robin time.
I think there is a fantastic game in here somewhere, and I really enjoyed my time playing it. The mystery and world are fun and fascinating to uncover and explore, the music is perfect for the setting, the writing is great and the character interactions in particular are endlessly intriguing to watch unfold. The core game mechanic of translation is fun and novel, and is the closest I've had a game come to making me feel like a real archaeologist. Despite all the problems I'm about to list I really liked this one and do highly recommend it.
Unfortunately, the game just really isn't made very well at all. I was constantly battling with cameras clipping through terrain, music cutting out for no real reason or characters getting stuck in corners and glitching out completely. While the presumably hand-drawn character models are great (albeit with an animation style that wasnt to my taste), a lot of the scenery textures seem weirdly low-fidelity. These things combine to make the game feel quite dated at points, despite its 2019 release date.
There are also a lot of design choices in the game that are... frankly, a bit baffling. The game loves taking control away from you to autowalk the character for sometimes only a few metres, and the sudden lack of control can be quite jarring. A lot of things that it would be nice to be able to do (e.g. put the ship on auto-fly, teleport back to ship after finishing a location, etc etc) feel like they should be things the player can choose to activate, but most of the time you just have to sit there and hope you hit the cryptic conditions for the relevant prompt to appear for you for 2 seconds. And I would give my left foot for a dictionary mode where you can just see all the words you have translations or guesses for; there even /is/ a dictionary in universe for God's sake, Aliya very regularly mentions it, so why can't I see it?
Then there are more quality of life things. Why can you not revisit locations? I guess I can understand not wanting the player to revisit dig-sites to keep the game flowing, but at least 2 locations are populated towns that you can't go back to unless the game itself deems you have cause to. Certain actions in the game seem to take far more of your time than is respectful (e.g. Huang looking through his lists to show you an artefact, Six being silenced). And /by God/ does the player character move slowly; a real irritant in some of the larger locations in the game.
Early in the game, I really thought all these things would get to me. But by the end, I barely noticed most of the problems were there. Despite everything, the game totally sucked me into its world. And if a game's core can shine so brightly through so many layers of problems, then that truly must be a bright core indeed.
Unfortunately, the game just really isn't made very well at all. I was constantly battling with cameras clipping through terrain, music cutting out for no real reason or characters getting stuck in corners and glitching out completely. While the presumably hand-drawn character models are great (albeit with an animation style that wasnt to my taste), a lot of the scenery textures seem weirdly low-fidelity. These things combine to make the game feel quite dated at points, despite its 2019 release date.
There are also a lot of design choices in the game that are... frankly, a bit baffling. The game loves taking control away from you to autowalk the character for sometimes only a few metres, and the sudden lack of control can be quite jarring. A lot of things that it would be nice to be able to do (e.g. put the ship on auto-fly, teleport back to ship after finishing a location, etc etc) feel like they should be things the player can choose to activate, but most of the time you just have to sit there and hope you hit the cryptic conditions for the relevant prompt to appear for you for 2 seconds. And I would give my left foot for a dictionary mode where you can just see all the words you have translations or guesses for; there even /is/ a dictionary in universe for God's sake, Aliya very regularly mentions it, so why can't I see it?
Then there are more quality of life things. Why can you not revisit locations? I guess I can understand not wanting the player to revisit dig-sites to keep the game flowing, but at least 2 locations are populated towns that you can't go back to unless the game itself deems you have cause to. Certain actions in the game seem to take far more of your time than is respectful (e.g. Huang looking through his lists to show you an artefact, Six being silenced). And /by God/ does the player character move slowly; a real irritant in some of the larger locations in the game.
Early in the game, I really thought all these things would get to me. But by the end, I barely noticed most of the problems were there. Despite everything, the game totally sucked me into its world. And if a game's core can shine so brightly through so many layers of problems, then that truly must be a bright core indeed.