Hard to express my disappointment in Giant Squid's output. It wasn't until the last legs of this game that I learned it was by that studio; the developers of Abzu, and offshoots of the crew from Thatgamecompany - but it contextualised everything.
It's almost insulting how formulaically they seem to conceive their titles, they might just continue to make 'emotional, artsy' games where the Good Blue defeats the Evil Red until heat death. It's all too convenient, it's the type of theming you come up with while playing Halo multiplayer, made all the less engaging and challenging when you take into account that it follows the very same beats as Flower, Journey, and now Abzu. Giant Squid's games feel robotic, outside of paying the aesthetics lipservice, there is no narrative throughline to keep them together, everything feels present because "they should be" rather than because there is a story that needs told.

It takes more key inspiration from Shadow of the Colossus this time around, the framing and gameplay is essentially identical. This only serves to make Giant Squid's unsubtle hand cause ripples throughout the game at the absolute worst moments. Trying to conjure the quiet grace of Team Ico in one scene, then throwing a tutorial prompt that pauses the game at your face which reads "Press and hold flap while gliding to perform a Super Flap. This powerful move will consume a large number of flaps.", I couldn't help but laugh.

Pathless was not without merit - if it innovated at anything, it was making the normally tedious task of travelling across a vast videogame landscape into a far more engaging affair. A sprint meter that would only get refilled with well-timed shots at ever-present targets that litter the world map. I'll miss those next time I'm expected to hold the analogue stick forward for ten minutes to heavily approach a waypoint on the other side of an empty grassy field. Also present is some nice music that punctuates key setpiece events, including some very engaging boss chase sequences.

Solid on a moment to moment basis while navigating the world. Even as one who has a distaste for open world gameplay design, I enjoyed the traversal and general exploration. This is helped heavily by a world map that isn't huge, in addition to a game that doesn't overstay its welcome length wise.

Things became more iffy when gameplay became more intensive or involved. Namely with the combat and stealth sequences. Nothing was completely broken (other than the time I got spawned into a stealth section directly in the path of an enemy with no chance of escape) but I'm not sold on any of it. I guess it broke up some of the exploration a bit in terms of variety but I could've gladly did without.

This falls into a similar hole that many games do where the narrative kinda steps into focus (after being in the background or even absent) resulting in some weird pacing. The forced walk and ~cinematic sections in the last portions of the game put a damper on things a bit.

Overall enjoyable and I'm glad I gave it a go but I'm not sure if I'll ever return. After this and ABZU (which I think I prefer) from the devs, they'll be on my radar for sure.

It's a beautiful game but I felt pretty bored for the majority of it. I don't know if it's because I had just come from finishing a game with a lot more action or what, but I was just... bored. There were a fair number of puzzles, but they all felt the same. Once I solved the two or three different types, I knew exactly how to solve the rest. It didn't even feel like I was actually solving puzzles, just going through the motions.

The boss fights were cool-looking. You can't die which I don't necessarily have a problem with but figure it's worth mentioning as there's no sense of danger or fear or failure or anything. It just takes a long time if you can't do what they want you to do to move on to the next phase of the boss fight.

My favorite part was the end, not because "lol its the end haha" but because it was a rad fight and I got some cool screen shots. I also loved the eagle, she gets her own star.

so bored of this song and dance

the "so vague as to be inoffensive" aesthetic nod to First Nation Pacific Northwestern spiritual iconography feels less like taking sensitive/subtle creative influence and more like Giant Squid wanted to make a kewl myth but didn't really have anything to say and couldn't be bothered to work with an actual tribe to make something specific or meaningful! I fully understand the limitations of games as binaristic programmed creations driven by market genre demandz but am very bored of the way themes of reverence and prayer are so commonly reduced to dull glyph collecting, "casting out darkness", and spiritual development as marker of incremental progression (insert gate unlocked chime sound effect with added reverb to make it more mysticool here). At this point there are so many versions of these same sorts of exploratory systems and to see games continue to half-assedly wrestle with ideas as huge as ritual, miracle, and the way cultures survive through their symbols in these smug, claustrophobic, near-identical formal iterations without at least problematizing or raging against their own programmatic confines is frankly a lil disgusting!! Wish more of these developers extended the scope of their vision beyond mere aesthetic facades and approached programming as a potential form of boundless incantation in and of itself rather than a repulsive seratonin conveyor belt on a "digestible gameplay" assembly line

The Pathless's most eye-catching feature has to be its movement system: I know I was instantly drawn to the game when I saw footage of its main character sprinting over this huge grassy field, then going into a slide as she draws her bow, gaining a huge burst of speed on hitting one of the floating targets dotted all over the screen. There's actually a little bit more to the system than you initially expect: targets can be hit with more precise timing to get an even bigger speed boost, and those exact windows are naturally dependent on your current distance to each individual one, keeping you active and constantly trying to intuit when to let go of the trigger. Going for a more difficult shot and then fucking it up will slow you down more than if you'd just gone for the easy shot in the first place, and while none of the game's challenges ask you to think about it that hard, maintaining your momentum with no awkward breaks is intrinsically satisfying and presents you with a perpetual guessing game of how best to approach each target, which specific ones to go for and how to smoothly transition between grounded and airborne traversal. A lot of that natural pacing translates perfectly into the boss fights; even though they're not nearly as varied or surprising as I would've ideally liked, they provide meaningful shots of excitement, as well as a glimpse at just how special The Pathless could've been.

Because ultimately, the experience feels sadly torn between all the obvious potential of its overall premise and general execution, and all the different elements that are so painfully undercooked. The four area bosses that you will eventually fight also roam the world as you're exploring, and coming into contact with them triggers a stealth sequence where you need to dodge lights as you try to get back to your eagle companion. Mechanically, it saps the game of all its appeal, while also failing to elicit any sense of tension or worry for your pet with how bland and rigid the execution is (not to mention that the punishment for being spotted is inconsequential.)

This brings me to the much larger issue in that the bond between the hunter and the eagle feels incredibly anemic. It's clear The Pathless is specifically trying to fill the shoes of both Shadow of the Colossus and The Last Guardian, but it doesn't do itself any favors with how much less organic and elegant it comes across by comparison. There's never a point where the eagle steps up from being a gamey mechanic existing solely for your convenience, to anything even resembling a living creature in the vein of Aggro or Trico. Moments of implied peril will just leave you cold when the eagle is so clearly artificial, always there at the touch of a button and with no unique behavior arising naturally from play. The way you're reliant on the eagle feels so specifically gamey and rigid that it actually ends up running directly against a lot of the story's themes: as you explore, you begin to understand that the people's over-reliance on the Gods and clear instructions for how to lead their lives is what lead to the slow decay of the world; but the way the game's message ends up boiling down to "find your own path or whatever" doesn't hit when, mechanically, the way you conquer every new obstacle is through some Deus Ex Machina power-up for your eagle (most evident in the final rematch you have with the main antagonist, where the game isn't asking anything new from you mechanically to overcome this previously unbeatable challenge, instead you just get buffed to shit in a cutscene.)

The game's impact ends up being so much weaker and more generic than it could've been, I feel, though from my perspective it also seems difficult to reconcile a lot of that potential without significantly more time spent in development. I can point out all these avenues for improvement, but making players feel shit is hard, and just like with the game's overall message, you can't follow a set blueprint if you want to move forward. While The Pathless gets too caught-up trying to reference surface-level aspects of more powerful games, I can give it some credit for at least trying.

(Footnotes: flaps are bad and hurt level design, having different arrow types to let you choose what an orb does rather than different orbs might've been more fun, puzzles are bland but it's cool how organically you can enter different locations from unique angles)

If Shadow of the Colossus is considered ahead of its time, and Journey simply of its time, The Pathless trails somewhat behind on that spectrum of minimalist adventure games centred on movement and traversal of sprawling landscapes.
That's not to say it has little to offer, but it's just not walking on particularly fresh ground. Some of the lovely imagery is even just borrowed from the more ethereal moments of Giant Squid's previous effort, ABZÛ.
The puzzle solving and vast exploration are perfectly enjoyable, though not as intriguing as its key influences such as Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The boss battles can also feel repetetive but are often the most fun parts of the game, and turning them into cute animals is always nice.
I'd like to think I'll revisit the game to collect the last few bits I missed in the open world landscape, as it can be a soothing playthrough, albeit empty in places.

abzu journey fellas just jump themselves and deliver some new magic world for my eyes and ears

i love it

gameplay very simple again, but it's not bad actually, it's more peaceful game with love to simplicity about everything in design. and it so much gamey this time by comparison to old works, so maybe.... maybe next time we will see some nintendo polish game level shit in that formula, we'll see

It's pretty much Shadow of the Colossus with some Breath of the Wild sprinkled in, which should've been amazing.

There's a lot I loved about this. I loved the visuals of course, I loved the way you could see the end point of the game in the distance from the very start (a la BOTW), I loved the mobility, and I loved the structure overall. You step into a new area, explore a bunch of ruins and solve some puzzles to find some thingamajigs to activate three towers and then you fight the area boss and move on to the next area. Simple and reliable formula. The problem is that the gameplay itself is rarely ever that interesting.

The puzzles are all really basic and never get very challenging, and the boss battles are the exact same way. And what's even worse is that all of the boss battles, and even most of the puzzles, are the exact same thing. The reason Shadow of the Colossus didn't become monotonous was that each boss battle was unique. You couldn't beat any two of them in the same way, so despite the fact that pretty much all you do in that game is "ride horse to giant monster, kill giant monster, repeat", it stayed fresh the whole time. In The Pathless, every boss, down to the final one, is the exact same. They even have the same attacks. Not to mention they're all super easy, so you're not even getting a good challenge to go with your monotony.

That's pretty much my biggest gripe. Story was generic as it gets for a game like this but the game makes it pretty easy to totally ignore it if you want to, so it didn't negatively impact my experience that much. I did enjoy exploring the ruins and solving the puzzles, and if nothing else, the bosses were a fantastic visual spectacle, so overall I did enjoy the game. Plus it's pretty short and doesn't overstay its welcome at all, so I would recommend picking this up once the price drops.

The Pathless is a really neat little game. The movement feels good, though transitioning from air to ground running could be better. The main issue is that there's just so much repetition. There are maybe 4 different puzzle components and there are only so many different ways you can use them before things get dull. The same can be said for the map; the last areas are absolutely quantity over quality, and they're far too big. The boss fights are rancid until the last one, which thankfully rules. Overall if you have a few hours to spare you could find worse ways to spend them.

A giant step forward for Giant Squid. The moment to moment movement and gameplay is sheer joy, the set pieces are all standouts, and the progression through the journey is well paced and satisfying. Unsurprisingly, the world and every detail of it looks fantastic, and Austin Wintory's score is a grand accompaniment. The story could be a touch stronger, and I would have liked slightly more challenge/options at certain points, but all in all, an experience that feels wonderful the whole way through.

I absolutely adored this game! Beautiful graphics, fun puzzles, a slick movement system, and some truly epic boss battles made this a delight! So much so that I went out of my way to Platinum the game (wasn't too hard).

Honestly, my only nitpicks are as cool as the movement system is, it does get a bit old by the end, and aside from some truly unique puzzles, most aren't too hard and get a bit repetitive by the end.

That being said, the severity of those issues was pretty damn low, and the game ends right when it needs to. The story, while nothing crazy, was perfectly entertaining and motivating to get me to the end, and the boss fights, while not too challenging like the puzzles, were truly magnificent in terms of scale and design.

Highly recommend this, it's a great game to blast through!

This really surprised me. Very very good game, it's not perfect, has some issues, but it it's very well done overall.

If you love exploration and puzzle solving just like in the Temples of The Legend Of Zelda, this game is for you. It's also a very chill game, story is easy to follow, no need to put a lot of attention to it.

So you can just boot up this game and chill solving puzzles and traveling to this open world which has an interesting movement mechanic, so it''s always interesting to move around.

The music is amazing.

I would say the bad things about this game is the stealth parts, and the fact that the game sometimes wont let you explore wherever you want because there's a boss that chases you randomly and it's very tied to the stealth parts, I think those are the most annoying parts of the game.

But, to finish this review, if you are on the fence to try this out, I think this is one of the best of 2020, sucks that I took long to play it. I don't think I would replay it but very good for one playthrough.

The Pathless is basically Breath of the Wild but with very little combat and on a smaller scale. Not literally on the latter point, though, because the size of the world is quite huge, and there is an astounding amount of verticality in here too, but in terms of game length. The sense of discovery, satisfying exploration and traversing, and emergent puzzles are all here, though. In your travels you may come across, for example, a formation of three rocks that stand out from their surroundings, and if you perform a certain action sequence, you will be rewarded with an exp increase to your flight ability. The puzzles often successfully place their trust in the player's own intelligence instead of guiding them every step of the way, and you never feel like the game doesn't give you enough to go off of. Perhaps the weakest part of the gameplay is when the game thrusts you into traditional 3D platformer like arena battles with the boss enemies. The gameplay there is serviceable enough and occasionally results in cool moments, but as the game wasn't built for those encounters specifically and lacks commands like dodge roll and guard, you sometimes can't help feeling like you're playing an action game where the devs forgot to map half the buttons.

There is a story in here too about paths in the metaphysical sense, and all of it ties together nicely with the theme and the gameplay of the game. For this type of game that is in the same spiritual continuum with games like the Shadow of the Colossus, Journey, Abzu, and the likes, the story is surprisingly overt rather than subtle. You can get a very good idea of what's going on in the game by reading the various pieces of lore scattered about, and the black and white style story introduces a clear villain that you, the good and pure protagonist, must defeat. While the story is satisfying with its occasional highpoints, ultimately the game is at its most clever when it leans on its organic puzzle gameplay and the emergent side of the story instead of the story that's conveyed through the cutscenes.

On the audio side, your mileage may vary, but fans of Austin Wintory may be disappointed that this game doesn't have the kind of killer track that would change your life and that you'd introduce to your parents, like Journey had "Apotheosis" and "I was Born for This", and Abzu had "Their Waters Were Mingled Together." Sure, some of the field tracks will wiggle into your ears in a good way but mostly the soundtrack stays in the background. Some of the musical choices take some digesting, though, as the whimsical string plucking of the boss themes is often in a weird contrast to the demonic imagery and presence of the bosses themselves. The Meditations soundtrack the man himself has put together is good for studying and working, though!

A very peaceful game. Familiar mythic tropes lay the foundation for some hours of exploration, light puzzle solving and the occasional boss battle as you clear an ill-fated island of the corruption that has overtaken it.

Its simplicity is a boon. Breezy, atmospheric, calming. Painterly art and assets will age it gracefully, wind and rain and sunlight casting environments into different moods and hues.

Fluid movement mechanics enable you to go fast and maintain a sense of momentum that will never truly get boring, despite the lack of depth. Bird friend enables you to soar and cover huge ground. Organic paraglider levelling up bit by bit. Comfortable progression.

Currently playing, seemingly about 3/4 of the way through. A cozy, comforting game. Perfect at the £20-25 price point.

I had to drop this one.

I don't think the game is bad. I stopped playing for a bit and tried to get back into it, but I just ended up getting bored with it after trying to jog my memory. I would recommend getting through it in as few sittings as possible.

The traversal mechanic (the main draw of the game) is cool but marred by the charge bar that goes with it. I think I would have preferred something more free in that regard.