When I started playing this I thought it would be a fun little diversion to play every now and then when I'm bored in pubic. Obviously it wasn't going to be as good or involved as the other Rayman games from this era of Rayman, but I thought as long as it's a decent auto-runner I would be ok with it.
There are parts I like about this, like how it retains a lot of the moveset of Origins/Legends while still remaining simple, important for the very reaction-based platforming this game has. But for me this game's greatest weakness is the fact that it is an auto-runner to begin with, which I guess means I should stay away from this genre in general. The game tries to capture the feeling of flawlessly running through levels in Origins/Legends, but not being able to actually control the character leads to it not feeling nearly as tight, accurate, or fun. It has moments of "oh that was really fun" but just in general constantly being propelled forward in a side-scroller feels really not great to me.
But the biggest problem for me is that the sense of rhythm and timing is completely wrong here. I don't know if it's lag caused by the touch controls or what, but it feels like you have to input certain moves way before they need to be executed on screen. Many times I attack an enemy in front of me with the same timing I would hit them in Origins, only to die to it because I need to use my attack slightly earlier. This kills the game for me, and the music stages here become unplayable because of it. I think to hit a wall as soon as I go near it, but no, I have to wind up my attack before it even appears on screen, it sucks so bad and makes the idea of playing through the whole game like this a nightmare (I beat the first world, getting all the lums in each, and then stopped playing somewhere in the second world). It made me actually mad to see a game series with some of the best 2D platforming of all time be mishandled like this, and I wasn't even looking for that great of an experience to begin with.
There are parts I like about this, like how it retains a lot of the moveset of Origins/Legends while still remaining simple, important for the very reaction-based platforming this game has. But for me this game's greatest weakness is the fact that it is an auto-runner to begin with, which I guess means I should stay away from this genre in general. The game tries to capture the feeling of flawlessly running through levels in Origins/Legends, but not being able to actually control the character leads to it not feeling nearly as tight, accurate, or fun. It has moments of "oh that was really fun" but just in general constantly being propelled forward in a side-scroller feels really not great to me.
But the biggest problem for me is that the sense of rhythm and timing is completely wrong here. I don't know if it's lag caused by the touch controls or what, but it feels like you have to input certain moves way before they need to be executed on screen. Many times I attack an enemy in front of me with the same timing I would hit them in Origins, only to die to it because I need to use my attack slightly earlier. This kills the game for me, and the music stages here become unplayable because of it. I think to hit a wall as soon as I go near it, but no, I have to wind up my attack before it even appears on screen, it sucks so bad and makes the idea of playing through the whole game like this a nightmare (I beat the first world, getting all the lums in each, and then stopped playing somewhere in the second world). It made me actually mad to see a game series with some of the best 2D platforming of all time be mishandled like this, and I wasn't even looking for that great of an experience to begin with.