I think they have a very nice formula with this saga. The open world works very well with the different side stories, the customization, the way they manage collectibles, etc. I specially enjoyed the bounty hunter stuff in this one.

However, it suffers from the same thing most Star Wars spin-offs suffer from, in which the story itself feels like an accessory to the main story we already know from the movies and which they can't seem to separate themselves from. That story is finished, it works by itself, and doesn't need any of these stories in it, which ultimately makes them feel weightless an unimportant. And it's a pity, because I actually like the characters in these games. The story itself would be more interesting if it didn't have to last 15-20 hours.

It's worth mentioning that this game has quite a problem with balancing in combat. Some fights feel like they're trying to emulate Dark Souls combat in terms of struggle, but instead they just feel unfair and boring. That doesn't apply to the whole of the game, and the biggest example of this is an optional fight, so don't let it deter you too much from playing it.

Pretty on point for a game that's both an adventure and a cat simulator. You can do most things you expect to do, and it's a good short time. Beat it in just under 4 hours and had some stuff left to do. I think it's a good time for this kind of games.

Ah, unfortunately I got softblocked from a part of the game in which there were a couple missions I have left to do :( I know there's a way back in, playing a bit with collisions, and they recently released a patch that might have solved it.

I would have liked the controls to have a better gamefeel to them, cause I didn't really feel much feline agility. But if you're looking for a game you can just lay back and enjoy, with little rush and with a nice soft piano in the background, this might be right up your alley.

It's not exactly I game I love, but I enjoyed it in short doses, and the dev team behind it seem to have put a lot of love in this.

I'll be honest, I bought this for the hype, played for about 10 minutes and thought 'yeah, I'm probably refunding this'. Played a bit more, just to see where would it take me. Suddenly, I was waaaay past the maximum playtime to refund. I didn't want to refund anymore.

One of my favorite things about metroidvanias is never really feeling stuck. Somehow, you just keep going forward. If you hit a wall, you try a different path and continue. Animal Well is so rewarding in this regard, giving you a permanent feeling of progression, with new puzzles all the time. It remixes its mechanics to make every challenge feel like a novelty, and it's SO GOOD at letting you find out its secrets. You're likely to find out how some of the tools you get work by sheer luck or accident, making challenges you skipped thinking you didn't have the tool click. These tools never really work the way you expect. More accurately, they always work in an extra way that you didn't expect.

Everything is framed in a gloomy atmosphere aided by visuals and audio.

This is a very good game!