An easy game to love, but also a surprisingly easy game to dislike.
The islands look so cosy, the protagonist is cutesy-cool, the animals you can become are lovely (not to mention that the ability to poop as any bird was a great success with the kids), there are many fun little touches (like being able to pick up animals above your head and deposit them in your bag for later use, or how you can dance on your boat while it speeds into a sunrise), and seeing Tchia kiss another girl made my queer-loving heart jump with joy.
And yet when I had taken photographs of a factory for a mission and the game then asked me to take pictures of three more factories, I couldn't help but feel my finger twitching for the “skip gameplay segment” button.
Because the problem is that the game doesn't have much to offer. The story tidbits can be cute, but most of the game is threadbare and just filler, sending you running across the island back and forth on boring fetch quests while filling the map with icons to gather like you’re in an Ubisoft game (and it's just as exciting as you can imagine). The possession mechanic isn't even as fun as I had expected - you can only possess a handful of things and creatures (no possessing a chair that somebody is sitting on), your stamina for possession is limited per day, requiring you to sleep and eat (boring things) to use the most fun mechanic of the game, and even then possessing items is nearly useless, as none of them have any actions that remain fun beyond the first introduction.
But the clearest sign that the game didn't respect my time wasn't even the factory quest, but when I had to talk to another girl to progress the story, so the game sent me to the other side of the island from her home village where I got the quest, and then gave a short cutscene when I arrived which ended with the girl standing up and walking up a path, calling me to follow. The cutscene ended and I didn't see her anywhere so I checked the map to see where she was and she was back at the village where they had just told me to find her here! A backtrack followed, because I was not ready to quit yet; unfortunately that didn't last.
There are things that are legitimately impressive about Tchia, but unfortunately I couldn't love it, and as it left PSN before I could finish it, hence the grade.
And what's worse - I had plenty of time to return to the game before it left PSN; but remembering the factories I still had left to photograph, I just didn't want to.
The islands look so cosy, the protagonist is cutesy-cool, the animals you can become are lovely (not to mention that the ability to poop as any bird was a great success with the kids), there are many fun little touches (like being able to pick up animals above your head and deposit them in your bag for later use, or how you can dance on your boat while it speeds into a sunrise), and seeing Tchia kiss another girl made my queer-loving heart jump with joy.
And yet when I had taken photographs of a factory for a mission and the game then asked me to take pictures of three more factories, I couldn't help but feel my finger twitching for the “skip gameplay segment” button.
Because the problem is that the game doesn't have much to offer. The story tidbits can be cute, but most of the game is threadbare and just filler, sending you running across the island back and forth on boring fetch quests while filling the map with icons to gather like you’re in an Ubisoft game (and it's just as exciting as you can imagine). The possession mechanic isn't even as fun as I had expected - you can only possess a handful of things and creatures (no possessing a chair that somebody is sitting on), your stamina for possession is limited per day, requiring you to sleep and eat (boring things) to use the most fun mechanic of the game, and even then possessing items is nearly useless, as none of them have any actions that remain fun beyond the first introduction.
But the clearest sign that the game didn't respect my time wasn't even the factory quest, but when I had to talk to another girl to progress the story, so the game sent me to the other side of the island from her home village where I got the quest, and then gave a short cutscene when I arrived which ended with the girl standing up and walking up a path, calling me to follow. The cutscene ended and I didn't see her anywhere so I checked the map to see where she was and she was back at the village where they had just told me to find her here! A backtrack followed, because I was not ready to quit yet; unfortunately that didn't last.
There are things that are legitimately impressive about Tchia, but unfortunately I couldn't love it, and as it left PSN before I could finish it, hence the grade.
And what's worse - I had plenty of time to return to the game before it left PSN; but remembering the factories I still had left to photograph, I just didn't want to.