Pretty impressed by this game. I don’t know how I got this impression, but I thought it was a 2D side scroller. It is NOT a 2D side scroller 😂

Compared to Heart Machine’s Hyper Light Drifter, this is a radical departure. 2D vs. 3D; isometric Zelda-like vs. third-person Jet Set Radio/Shadow of the Colossus-like; text only vs. voice acted; subtextual narrative vs. explicit. In other ways, it’s totally of a piece. Sprawling, desolate, colorful yet dark sci-fi worlds; Disasterpiece soundscape, bleak tone.

I played this game on a game pass trial, and after clearing the third area, I was close to putting it on pause in favor of checking out a different game. I seldom dip out of a game halfway, especially a game that’s 5.5 hours to beat the main story.

But up to that point, I was somewhat underwhelmed. I was leaning 6/10 or 3/5 stars for a rating. The game was mostly straightforward with few compelling gameplay developments, and the difficulty was borderline too easy. Rei’s abilities, while cool, seemed to be stagnant. Put another way, I felt I’d sort of grokked the game, seen what it had to offer, and wouldn’t be missing out if I moved on.

But I pushed through, thinking I’d be done soon enough, and I was curious to see if the narrative would pay off. I’m glad I did.

As you tilt into the second half of the game, the challenge rises. Not a crazy amount, but enough to keep me from getting complacent. Enemies and combat never get fleshed out too far, but they do ramp up the number, type, and placement of enemies to make you work for it. Traversal challenges get progressively more imaginative and more exciting as well, if not always more challenging.

The fact combat and traversal stay largely consistent throughout isn’t a bad thing. The game is balancing a tone and player experience it wants you to have that it succeeds in delivering. Rei’s abilities, combined with the level layouts and the enemy encounters, allow you to pull off some fun, quick bursts of each type of activity, chaining them together gracefully and artfully, and that becomes the fun. Well, it’s always fun, but it opens up more as it goes, and the devs start to really flex in the back half of the game.

Around this point, I’m leaning 7/10. The game hits its stride, I can see where it’s going and that it had more up its sleeve than I thought.

But then I started collecting more Voidrunner caches. Then I unlocked the suit that lets you track down the remaining caches, so I get all those. Then I look up the last couple locations I need to tie up the remaining side quests. And then I beat the game.

By the time the credits rolled, I went from being interested to invested to engrossed in the story. For what it’s worth, so did my wife, who watched me play a good deal of it, and asked me to fill her in on story developments when she missed some sessions. She came for the gorgeous art, but stayed for the story.

I was eager—we were eager!— to see how it ended, and the resolution was shocking. It’s neither the vanilla happy ending I was expecting nor the despondent, worst possible outcome I would have predicted otherwise. It strikes a weird, chilling middle ground all its own.

For making me genuinely care about the story as well as surprise me with the resolution, this game gets a solid 8/10. It’s a game that pays off if you give it the time (and I did—10 hours 😳). Give it a chance to cook, and it does. It has a new game plus mode and a hardcore mode, which I think are two different modes. So there’s some replay value there too (a cursory Google revealed a group of people who think the hardcore mode is the true way to play, not that I know what changes about it).

I’ll be chewing on this one.

Solar Ash is amazing. A parkour game based on destroying giant anomalies. It reminds me a lot of Shadow Of The Colossus due to the size of the anomalies, however, it is much faster and more dynamic. The game mechanics are incredible, sliding and jumping from place to place is very satisfying, you feel like you're in the game, flying and sliding smoothly. The game's story is incredible, that typical game where you understand practically nothing at the beginning, but as the gameplay progresses, you understand everything and everything falls into place. It's an incredible game, with a great moral and history lesson. I loved Solar Ash and its platinum was relatively medium difficulty. It was a good time and I had a lot of fun. An incredible and dynamic game, to occupy a few hours of your day and have a lot of fun.

Solar Ash is a beautiful and very well realized game about exploring and moving through space. The game feels like it was built upon its skating and gravity mechanics, with some very solid platforming, big boss fights, and a good number of hidden collectables. It also shows off a fantastic sense of vertical scale every time you reach a new area, you're a given vast establishing shots showing the entire area that you will explore. Each zone feels very distinct and there are memorable challenges in each of them.

But unlike Hyper Light Drifter, this game's story does not speak for itself, instead it's delivered through conversations and data logs which I found hard to get into. The central conflict between Echo and Rei is visually striking and mysterious. The imagery is all we really need, I don't think this game needed to walk the player through the story of regret in such a wordy way. Perhaps it is an unfair standard to compare it to the developer's first game, but I think they could have told this story entirely environmentally with as much focus on the boss fights as they had.

Having lore and NPC stories doesn't really drag the game down much, but it adds up with some other things. The game's full potential is held back a bit by the combat, certain instances of unfair timing, and occasional jank that's to be expected from such an ambitious 3D platformer. Once you've seen an area and solved its puzzles it can be a little tedious to backtrack through them or have to repeat tricky sections. It's not a perfect game but it's one that is definitely worth your time and one that I look at fondly and will probably return for extra challenges in the future.

PC did not enjoy running the final 2 areas.... pretty unplayable......... couldn't finish........

Might try on PS5/when I upgrade my PC.

Movement was very Haven-esque, which I enjoyed a lot. Environments were also pretty.

Vom Team von Hyper Light Drifter, sieht und hört sich acuh genau so geil an, spielt sich leider ziemlich öde: In kryptischer Welt “flowig” Rätsel lösen (schnell von a nach b kommen) um dann den boss zu machen, dem man SotC-mäßig erklimmen muss um dann …. von a nach b zu kommen. Anfangs leider seeeeehr viel auswendiglernen und bei mir 0 Gefühl von flow. schade. nach 3h nicht mehr wirklich bock gehabt weiterzuspielen. mal schauen, ob das noch was wird ^^

Wenn man sich drauf einlässt, die Welt zu erkunden (oder wird es nach hinten raus wirklich angenehmer?), dann gehts. Steuerung manchmal etwas hakelig, aber sogar für mal eben ne halbe Stunde ein bisschen erkunden eigentlich ganz geil :D
Ab dem dritten Endgegner hat es mir wirklich sehr gut gefallen. Vielleicht auch weil ich da nicht mehr im Handheld gespielt habe, wer weiß das schon...

Really fun platformer with enjoyable, fluid movements, beautiful art design and simple mechanically sound gameplay.
For me personally, the fact elevating this game is that it has an actual story. The lore is deliberately vague, but the plot has clear stakes, a defined ending, several distinct characters and tangible story progression.
None of that "in le head" nonsense of Rime or nonsensical storytelling of Journey, Abzu or The Pathless.
And holy hell this game has a real well voiced protagonist (also NPCs)! With motivations and feelings! Like, who would've thought a story can benefit from a main character that is not a hollow piece of driftwood. Amazing.

Tony Hawk's Shred-ow of the Colossus hits some high highs but some real lows, but remains definitely worth trying out.
Visually stunning, extremely satisfying traversal, but some menial systems in place that felt like they detracted from the overall experience in my opinion.

Primarily upgrades locked behind scavenger hunts of yo-yo difficulty and some relatively obtuse menu systems for tracking completion of side quests.
My biggest personal gripe was with the Withered Eye boss about halfway through the game, where the physics just didn't work - not only did I have to set the game to easy to get through the jank, it was so frustratingly beyond my control I almost put the game down.
I'm glad I persevered, since the final two areas were visually striking and the bosses were satisfying, and the ending stuck the landing for me. A tonne of style, only a touch less substance, and a few baffling decisions, but still very much worth a play.

After Hyper Light Drifter, I was definitely excited to see what Heart Machine (again with Disasterpiece's soundtrack on board) would come up with with their first 3D game. Especially since it's basically a 3D platformer focused on momemtum and speed. And honestly, I was definitely not disappointed.

The premise alone is one of my favorite in video games: The protagonist's planet is about to be sucked up by a black hole, and she descends into the black hole to destroy it. Within the black hole are fragments of worlds that have already been absorbed, connected to purple clouds over which you can surf. An incredibly cool concept in my opinion.

And it plays great and lets you marvel at the beautiful and melancholic world design again and again. The core gamplay loop consists of destroying anomalies with the help of parkoure challenges. Sounds a bit abstract, but that's the best way to sum it up. The problem here is that this loop gets repetitive very quickly and isn't expanded enough with new challenges or more skills. What kept me going were the new worlds, but not the new challenges. Sure, lava floors are used here and timetrials there to add variety to the parkour challenges. But despite that, since the moveset remains the same until the end, a certain routine arises. Get to a new area, destroy 5 anomalies with parkour and destroy the boss. The story is also relatively unimportant; I only noticed the side characters and their fates peripherally.

The world design and general feeling of gliding above the clouds is so strong that I was drawn into this world. And I'm really surprised that, objectively speaking, there aren't that many aspects here that really excite me. However, the movement and atmosphere of the world are so strong that I am simply enchanted. They could have dropped the voice acting and the detailed lore dumping and left everything just as mysterious and vague as in Hyper Light Drifter. Then it would be much more popular with me.

Talk about a Disappointment... i came into this game with Cautious but high expectations coming from Heart Machine's first game, Hyper light Drifter, which i loved it thanks to amazing presentation, world building, atmospheric soundtrack and excellent action adventure gameplay

Solar Ash isn't a bad game in the slightest. if anything it has redeeming qualities. once again the presentation is phenomenal, dream-like even. every location stands out and the beautiful music makes it just as magical and mysterious. the gameplay can also be pretty fast paced and fun, especially when it comes to the platforming and skating around, and i also like the world building around the Ultravoid itself.

unfortunately while the highs can be high, the lows are also pretty frustrating. When it comes to gameplay, the combat is extremely bare bones, and while the platforming is fun, it can be annoying at times because of the camera and other things in the way. but really the biggest issue with the gameplay is how Easy it is. i rarely died in this game and even if i did, it wouldn't really matter for how the game is so forgivable with saves, health pick ups and how quickly you can finish off your enemies, and feels like i'm going through the motions for most of it.

and while i loved the Presentation of this game and liked the world building of the Ultravoid... the story just kinda sucks. it just feels like the writers wanted to make something in the veins of Shadow of the Colossus, but without what made that game's Narrative work in the first place. and i also didn't like how heavy in the dialogue the game was, Rei especially talks... a lot and while it's not annoying, it was surely distracting from letting me just sink in when going through this world.

I Came into Solar Ash expecting to love it, but sadly... while I'll remember the sights, sounds and fun of jumping around this lovely planet, it has certainly given me a sour taste in my mouth with how it tells it's story which is what the core of it all was... and that sucks

Regardless, I'm still looking forward to the future of Heart Machine, so hopefully, Possessor(s) and Hyper Light Breaker turns out great and gives me the same positive feeling I've had when i played their first game

Almost eerie how much this aligns with my tastes. If I were David Ehrlich, I would call it Jet Set Radio with Mario Galaxy level design (more one than two, with a little less emphasis on planetary gravity shenanigans, though still a fair bit) delicately placed alongside the basic premise and boss fights of Shadow of the Colossus. I (now playing myself) would complain that this sets ludicrous, unrealistic expectations and that the game could not possibly live up to this embarrassing hyperbole. I would then sit down and cross my arms in a crotchety way (crotchetily?) before firing up the game for myself. "Mario Galaxy meets Jet Set Radio," I'd scoff. I'd probably even do a kind of mean-spirited imitation of his voice and chuckle in my dingy apartment. I would then, after five consecutive hours of bliss, stand face-to-face with the fact that he was completely right. I would nevertheless not apologise to David Ehrlich.

This is gameplay as art. This is motion as art. This is why I get irate at how indifferently so many AAA games treat elements as basic as level design and movement. This is why video games are such an exciting form. A small indie team can do this (!) with one millionth of the money a small nation takes to make Anyone but You. Isn't that just unreal? It makes me electrified to even look at this game and recognise how untethered the medium truly is! This is one of the best games of the young decade and handily the best 3D platformer I've played since God himself shone a light down from the heavens that mysteriously transformed into a small chip containing the video game Bowser's Fury. All it would take is access to my neural pathways and a spreadsheet to tell how predictable this opinion is coming from me, but hey. I take what I get, and this is about as good as I've gotten in the genre without the red plumber's appearance. Ever.

Gamefeel is just the worst thing to articulate. There isn't much I can do to describe the joy of a game that truly nails momentum to this degree other than to tell you to drive on some black ice to see it for yourself. So, instead, I'll shout out how well they facilitate it. With the boost, the skating, the rails, and the emphasis on horizontal platforming, a simple push on the analog stick is never less than euphoric. The vistas are stunning and singular. The game is awash with that same post-Hotline Miami neon palette that so many dime-a-dozen pixel art indie games copycat. Here, the blocky models and brighter shades allow the scheme to pop so much harder, especially with the canny inclusion of actual points of contrast (A level has the colour orange! Enemies are a deep black with white cartilage and red eyes! The poison is bright sickly green! The whole colour wheel is within my grasp!). The boss fights are a completely different kind of movement-oriented challenge equally as fun as the rest of the game, and the open areas play my favourite trick in the world of being a series of linear challenges cleverly disguised and integrated into one interconnected visual piece. I'm floating on a cloud spiritually, and often literally, playing this game.

So where's that final half-star? I've got two hang-ups, neither major, but both nibbling at the corners of my psyche once the credits rolled.

First off, the regular enemies, or just the standard combat. If you can genuinely mount a defence of single-button flailing against enemies in a 3D platformer as, in any way, valuable, then I'd love to hear it. I, for one, do not envision this defence. The slow-down feature adds some dynamics and allows the enemies to occasionally serve the roll of fun shortcuts or movement-combo extenders, but, generally speaking? You just mash the button to kill them in two seconds. You could remove combat like this from every platformer ever made, and history would progress unchanged. It's hard to blame this game for following suit, but it's harder to think of where it's been more pointless.

My real hang-up is more of a question. Does this borrow too much from SOTC? I don't dislike this as an object of storytelling in the way many reviews seem to. I don't even think the constant quipping is that annoying. Although this is almost certainly unintentional, it's a very interesting way to signal a character's unquestioning belief in their heroism. Intellectualising like this won't get you past the enormous speed bump of a voice you find intolerable, but I really like Rei's voice. Sue me!

What I dislike is taking SOTC wholecloth. This has the same twist and build-up. The element with Echo is a nice addition, but, just like the actual plot, it was so over-signalled that I was surprised when it went in the exact direction I thought it would from moment one. I expected a left turn that never came. SOTC is an unbelievably touching, uniquely human fable. I'm more than willing to enjoy this on the level of a retelling, a different author's interpretation of a classic Brothers Grimm story. But that's all I could do. That's all I was offered.

I discussed this a little with the friend who recommended this to me initially (thanks, Blair!), and they had some justifications for the over-telegraphed structure that I kind of bought. The idea that Rei is so single-minded in her mission that she misses the obvious weight of reality is compelling! But even if I was fully on board with this interpretation, it doesn't add to the experience. Take the logs, which are joyous to engage with just on the level of being well-placed collectables. These are positioned as though they are drip-feeding you information, slowly unfurling a mystery throughout the runtime. But they aren't; you get it immediately! Tracing the lines is less exciting when the entire thing is neatly unspooled on the table from moment one. And it wasn't; I lost interest in the logs very quickly. But this is hot air. I still found myself righteously fist-pumping at the climax. Even if it is a retelling, it is a gorgeous and innervating one. Every point lost for lack of subtlety is gained by the unwieldy stadium-sized emotions they choose to substitute them. It, if nothing else, understands that to supplant a vision demands a new one take its place.

Play if you have a pulse, the camera is a dream, speedrun honks, Epic Games exclusivity is a prison that has doomed this masterpiece to a life of obscurity, etc.

Not everyone is gonna absorb a game's atmosphere the same as you, especially if you're not able to fully immerse yourself within one's fictional world. Thankfully Solar Ash had no difficulty setting the mood for its world and environments, establishing the massive scale of all five locations within the Ultravoid.

You're able to see previous and upcoming areas, along with the Starseed, from wherever you're standing. Heart Machine's previous game, Hyper Light Drifter's multilayered music tracks return, scaling progression off of how far you've traversed a level, or what phase you're fighting a boss on. Exploring open environments with a movement system that is fast and fluid is akin to the early 3D Mario games, while the gravity-bending planets and quiet atmosphere just screams Super Mario Galaxy. Taking on the gigantic Remnant boss fights after completing an area's gameplay loop is also reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus.

This game delivers on so many levels and tells an extremely important message about letting go of the past and moving forward, while dealing with themes of loss, loneliness, and desperation among others. But it also manages to hit the mark on a personal level. Not many games manage to give me full-body goosebumps on multiple occasions, or to even make me shed a tear, but this definitely accomplishes that.

Solar Ash feels like a vivid idea I dreamt up as a culmination of specific sources of media from my childhood, and manages to deliver one of the best original 3D platformers I've ever played. (and yeah I may have enjoyed it more than HLD, but Heart Machine's still BANGS)

Heavily advertised as stylish, fluid, fancy, but at least the first hour plays like an empty-feeling open world that's also tricky to navigate to the point of needing quest marker vision. It feels really all over the place because it's weirdly uneven: the UI splash transitions are incredibly polished, but then the UI text is so tiny it's hard to read on my TV.

There's character banter/many popups used to bandaid over poorly communicated design (slowing time down lets you grapple farther?? stepping on some black goo starts timers?). I'm not one to be against weird controls but they don't seem intentionally weird, rather just miscalculations or like quick-patch-up-fixes.

The strange semi-diegetic dialogue ("I can grapple farther by pressing A!" or "Oh no not another enemy!") feel a lot like AAA games like an Uncharted or something.

I, of course, love narrative in games, but it's a balance that needs to be considered, not dropped in. Sometimes narrative can merely be a bandaid over a game world having trouble communicating narrative-feeling-elements through its game design.


now, the movement...

The level design weirdly pulls you into these momentum-stopping things: climbing on walls Assassin's Creed style, overly straightforward 3D combat with a weirdly punishing health system. Sometimes the level ideas are kind of dense and compact - not a bad thing on its own, but the movement wants to be about speed and long jumps! The level ideas sometimes feel like little skate parks, but the movement isn't built quite right to take advantage of these levels. And ultimately skating games are about a different avenue of expression (the tricks, reading the walls/floors/slopes/rails for the corresponding wallslides/manuals/tricks/grinding).

I think what Solar ash's movement fits better into is something like those CS surfing maps, 3D sonic, etc.

So there seems to be a base-level conflict between Level Design Direction and Moveset, and even conflicts within Moveset itself.

That's not to say there aren't any moments where the level design works (at least after an hour) but it tends to be more in fragments. I can see moments where stuff shines, but then I'm climbing on a goo wall again or 3-hit-comboing an enemy.

The "speedrun a course to clear it" idea is interesting. I think that you have to get checkpoints to extend the timer is great. But at the same time the checkpoints being precise things you have to hit, kind of feels like it restricts the level design expression even more - it almost makes the levels feel kind of 'automatic'? Think about the mario 64 yoshi race - it's essentially a timed challenge, but it's still left up to you how to make your way up the mountain. Should you take the bridge or long jump it? Run around the balls or not?

And it's not like getting checkpoints to extend a timer is no good, but the fact the time extends are so precise and attention-focusing feels off.

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But, there also feels like a feel-conflict between the way you are supposed to move fast and then sometimes stop or move precisely to slash stuff. It makes me think to Sonic Adventure - the reason your homing attack, well, homes, isn't a mistake - it's because they wanted to add simple combat for texture but also let you maintain a relative level of speed. Imagine if Sonic had to stop to punch the enemies instead of just bopping them in a row! Solar Ash's combat admittedly is fast, but it's still a strange context switch.

I also think the affordance of the dash button feels mushy - you're already moving quite fast to start, so a button to make you move faster feels like it mostly leads to something like making it harder to read distances in the level geometry gaps. (Compare this to the way that the walk vs run feel a lot more clearly distinguished). Going from fast to faster can work in some contexts, but to me it's better as a puzzly mechanic. I think a "go from fast to faster" mechanic makes more sense in a racing game where the focus is micro-optimizations, but in something like Solar Ash it kind of muddies up making jumps /grinds/grapples .


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There's also the health system which seems to be symbolic on the surface but feels like a way to justify having little plasma cells to collect and grind. And that it's tied into combat makes it not stick the landing even more - if the combat feels flat, then a health system tied to it probably can't carry much narrative weight. I love the idea of having symbolic systems in the games (heart machine? plasma?) but it seems tied to the wrong system here.

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Lastly the first boss battle: I know it's taking inspo from Shadow of the Colossus but this game lacks the gravitas of its implementation. SotC works because you're slow and puny, tiny and have a horrible time trying to cling on to the giant colossus thing. There's no friction getting on or off the boss in Solar Ash - completing a hit weirdly respawns you on the ground, ready to get back on - an easy grapple away. If it's easy to get on then it doesn't feel that tense being on it. SotC might have easy moments when stepping on the colossus, but those are exaggerated into sheer tension because you may have had to do something tedious to get on the colossus.

In Solar Ash, punctuating moments of speed with a full stop (the hit) feels odd to me. It's not to say it doesn't feel a little cool running on a serpent, but like I mentioned with the time extends earlier - the fact that 'hurting the boss' is so strictly signposts serves to exaggerate the Mario Boss/Zelda-Puzzle quality of fighting them, shifting the focus from movement/speed into following a trail to the next clearly marked thing to slash open.

Boss fights in platformers are always tricky. I'm not even sure I'm convinced that 3d platformers should have boss fights - at least not in the 'use flimsy combat to hit an enemy 3 times' - perhaps something else entirely should be in their place in terms of emotional climaxes.

Or idk, maybe it could be a race. Race 3 people to the death, but one of them is your friend! A melodramatic dialogue takes place as you lap them, reaching the finish line before them...
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This is a pretty harsh review overall, but both 3D platformers and action games are important to me and I think it's important to talk about why games' designs fail! And it does bother me that a lot of resources and promotion go into games that aren't making the mark design-wise.

Like with the way other game designs or art directions fail - it is sometimes a matter of things appear decent up-close - at the level of single mechanic or animation, audio log or NPC, but taken as a whole there is little harmony.

Just because Solar Ash could have been better, doesn't mean that it's not great.

At its core, Solar Ash is a movement based Shadow of the Colossus, that somehow looks even better. It even has the same type of twist, (although Solar Ash's ending, which is so easily the best part of the game, does enough different from SotC to appreciate them equally and separately). Of course, while there are benefits to being similar to such a beloved game, it's hard to not immediately draw comparisons between the two.

On the one hand, when it's at its best, Solar Ash is as fun any really any game can get. Most of the boss fights reach this height, with the final pair being just unbelievably good, as you just zip all around with a really great move set. Visually too, this game is so beautiful, with the stunning colors and terrific sequences being a constant.

Unfortunately, this game does struggle in one key compartment, which is its attempt to recreate 'Team Ico'-esque simplicity. The game makes the decision to not really explain most of its concepts, something that causes a bit of confusion as you just go around hitting stuff until something happens, but something that does increase immersion. The problem with this though, is that this immersion is immediately destroyed by the inherent 'gamey' ness of this game, with health upgrades and glowing weak points and everything. At parts of Solar Ash, it feels like you get the worst of both worlds, as you struggle to figure out what to do, while also feeling like there's a layer in between you and the story.

Speaking of which, the story is... overall fine. There is a ton of dialogue, (especially if you go for the side quest stuff,) all of which having pretty rough voice acting. There are a couple of twists at the end that I did really enjoy though, and it's the type of story where you can kind of forget about the boring first 90% because the ending is just that solid. Definitely a moral at the end that'll rumble around your brain for a bit.

Overall, Solar Ash is a weird game to talk about, as there are so many parts of it that are truly fantastic, but you still unfortunately spend about half your time either looking for the next fun bit, or reading mountains of dialogue. Still, if you can sit through some somewhat boring stuff, and you allow yourself to struggle while learning the game's rhythm, there's a really good core here.

7/10
Game #27 of 2024, May 10th

no game this pretty should have to suffer from writing THIS bad. i don't like to be too hyperbolic, i love video games and i just wanna be chill about em, but Solar Ash has some of the most aggravating writing i've experienced in a game. the core appeal here, to me, is getting to effortlessly glide around gorgeous landscapes and soak in the atmosphere - but your protagonist NEVER shuts up!!!! you'll see a glowing red eye on a goop obstacle and she'll blurt out "that must be its weak point! i should attack it!". the game constantly patronizes the player with obnoxious hand-holding quips, the tone of which never really matches the world's. there's an area with hazardous green acid that causes a vignette and a warning indicator to appear on screen - obviously, that isn't obvious enough of an indicator of danger so she says "Even the water here is hazardous, because... of course it is."

Hyper Light Drifter managed to have an interesting world without any dialogue. it's strange to see how much of an emphasis this game places on story, with a fair amount of sidequest NPCs and text logs that no human being has ever read. a lot of its meat ends up being exposition and a stream of meaningless sci-fi proper nouns. the back end of its narrative has that YA-fiction blatant stating of themes in an attempt to be about 'something.' the final boss is the manifestation of the protagonists' self-hatred and guilt that gets defeated by reaching out to others, i couldn't help but groan.

part of me thinks this game's focus on story is more a reflection of how empty the rest of it is. a lot of its systems seem entirely superfluous - health points never matter (why can you even take damage?), the only thing you can spend currency on is on getting more health, you can collect more suits but they have a negligible effect on gameplay. there's a lot of time spent on boss fights but all of them play the exact same way - you home in on a bit, glide around hitting little needle things, and then home in on their eye. it's fun the first couple of times but gets repetitive. for a roughly 5-6 hour game, a lot of it feels like filler. it never stops looking gorgeous, it never stops being fun to skate around in its world (tho i disagree with how its momentum is so easy to lose & never really builds in a tactile sense and nothing you really DO with the movement is engaging, the world itself isn't particularly fun to explore), but i wish it was designed tighter. and that whoever wrote it is never allowed to communicate in any language ever again.