Rayman Origins really feels unpolished, yet you can admire it for its ambition. Going through this game I tried to 100% complete it, which means getting all 6 Electoons throughout each level, which includes 2 electoons that are hidden in the level, 1 electoon that is at the end of the level, 2 electoons that are obtained after reaching a certain Lum count by the end of the level, and 1 electoon that you aquire after completing a time trial for a certain level. There's also a Lum medal that is awarded for getting 350 Lums for any particular level (minus some smaller ones which have a lower Lum count). I did not think this was going to be as painful as it was.
To begin though, I want to say that I think casually, Rayman Origins is a very fun experience, albeit a little repetitive. Levels kind of run out of interesting ways to present themselves, and throughout the first half of the game you are gradually obtaining your entire moveset, which at least spreads out some level design ideas a bit. For example, there's a wall run ability that allows you to run on a wall as long as it has a slope, and this mechanic is fun, but not used until you get to world 5, where you obtain it. After you have seemingly finished all 4 worlds, that have about 5 levels each, the game pulls a fast one and says "actually there are about 20+ more levels to complete, with about 5 more levels per world. I was kinda okay with that, but completing each level requirement to 100% was getting very tedious, as you at least have to go back through a level one more time if you want to do the time trial. But most of the time, I sadly had to redo a level because my Lum counter was not at 350, and the game, while it does let you go backwards on occasion, for some reason locks you into the final room of a level and will not let you go back to find more Lums. This is a decision that truly makes me scratch my head. Why force me to completely redo a level, find all of the Lums I had previously found over again, just because I missed one or two? This was a pretty frustrating challenge and a lot of the times, levels barely had over 350 Lums, which requires you to scour entire levels to find the ones you need. I did push through, but dear god I really was debating on quitting the challenge and finishing the game casually.
Time trials were actually a fair enough challenge and were pretty short. There are also what I call the "chase levels" which can be either really fun or somewhat annoying. What I've found is that Rayman Origins encourages fast, momentum based movement with the movement options you have, but the chase levels actually don't encourage this at all. You'll quickly learn that the moment you veer off the "intended" speed of these chase levels, everything falls out of sync. So sometimes these levels just feel like they're actively fighting what you are able to do as Rayman.
There are some smaller quirks with this game that kinda add up to feeling a lot less polished presentation-wise than Legends was. The art style is very nice but sometimes animations can feel unpolished compared to its successor. Another issue I think really soured my experience was the music. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of songs, especially the ambient ones, that I truly enjoy. But a lot of tracks are simply repeated way too much. Many times replaying levels and going through a world you will hear the same 3 to 4 songs, and honestly, there are some I find a little bit annoying. One particular song in the water section was repeated so often I muted my tv because I really didn't want to hear it another time. Then it played during the credits and I muted again LOL. I think this is a matter of taste but I really just did not care for the high pitched singing voices sometimes and the Jazz, spy like instrumentation in one particular track (which was very weird for an Ice themed world), as well as a track that kinda felt like if a white guy wanted to come up with what he thought Mexican music sounded like LMAO
So basically this game is good but flawed. A completionist nightmare and doesn't really have a lot of new ideas to stretch across its runtime.
To begin though, I want to say that I think casually, Rayman Origins is a very fun experience, albeit a little repetitive. Levels kind of run out of interesting ways to present themselves, and throughout the first half of the game you are gradually obtaining your entire moveset, which at least spreads out some level design ideas a bit. For example, there's a wall run ability that allows you to run on a wall as long as it has a slope, and this mechanic is fun, but not used until you get to world 5, where you obtain it. After you have seemingly finished all 4 worlds, that have about 5 levels each, the game pulls a fast one and says "actually there are about 20+ more levels to complete, with about 5 more levels per world. I was kinda okay with that, but completing each level requirement to 100% was getting very tedious, as you at least have to go back through a level one more time if you want to do the time trial. But most of the time, I sadly had to redo a level because my Lum counter was not at 350, and the game, while it does let you go backwards on occasion, for some reason locks you into the final room of a level and will not let you go back to find more Lums. This is a decision that truly makes me scratch my head. Why force me to completely redo a level, find all of the Lums I had previously found over again, just because I missed one or two? This was a pretty frustrating challenge and a lot of the times, levels barely had over 350 Lums, which requires you to scour entire levels to find the ones you need. I did push through, but dear god I really was debating on quitting the challenge and finishing the game casually.
Time trials were actually a fair enough challenge and were pretty short. There are also what I call the "chase levels" which can be either really fun or somewhat annoying. What I've found is that Rayman Origins encourages fast, momentum based movement with the movement options you have, but the chase levels actually don't encourage this at all. You'll quickly learn that the moment you veer off the "intended" speed of these chase levels, everything falls out of sync. So sometimes these levels just feel like they're actively fighting what you are able to do as Rayman.
There are some smaller quirks with this game that kinda add up to feeling a lot less polished presentation-wise than Legends was. The art style is very nice but sometimes animations can feel unpolished compared to its successor. Another issue I think really soured my experience was the music. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of songs, especially the ambient ones, that I truly enjoy. But a lot of tracks are simply repeated way too much. Many times replaying levels and going through a world you will hear the same 3 to 4 songs, and honestly, there are some I find a little bit annoying. One particular song in the water section was repeated so often I muted my tv because I really didn't want to hear it another time. Then it played during the credits and I muted again LOL. I think this is a matter of taste but I really just did not care for the high pitched singing voices sometimes and the Jazz, spy like instrumentation in one particular track (which was very weird for an Ice themed world), as well as a track that kinda felt like if a white guy wanted to come up with what he thought Mexican music sounded like LMAO
So basically this game is good but flawed. A completionist nightmare and doesn't really have a lot of new ideas to stretch across its runtime.