A genuinely fantastic game with two major issues.
The issues: (1) No mid-late game map & (2) Unclear ability gates
The fantastic: Pretty much everything else
The movement is pretty boring at the start and finding movement upgrades is really unintuitive and difficult, but once you have a lot of abilities unlocked the movement is absolutely transcendent. I haven't had this much fun in a 3d platformer since Mario Odyssey. The music is great, the enemy designs are interesting (but I wish they were a bit better themed per zone and consistent narrative design). The world design is very fun and had a lot of "I'm not supposed to be here" type of moments where I felt like I was moving around a pre-existing world that was not created for my character to be in. Not in a bad game design sense, more in the cool and inventive ways I was able to use the movement to get around the existing world. I love the low frame rate animations and the low poly/texture aesthetic. It looks and plays so well. This game does so much right.
Going into specifics on my criticisms:
(1) No mid-late game map.
This is a self proclaimed metroidvania and therefore the player should be rewarded for memorizing the map and how it interconnects. Having no map is an interesting choice as the world feels expansive and undiscovered and the mental mapping of the terrain is a fun way of going about it. Unfortunately while the zones themselves are visually unique, the way each room connects to the next in each zone is not distinct enough to be mentally mappable. The doors that connect each room are mostly identical and fog covers anything past the door itself. This leads to constantly being turned around and not knowing which mystery fog door connects to which mystery box room and stringing them all together to get anywhere new feels exponentially incomprehensible. Castle Sansa and Sansa Keep especially are a nightmare to navigate given the amount of identical doors and small rooms. Mid to late game navigation turned into 15 minute excursions of wandering around hoping to find that one place I had been hours before with very little success. An unlockable and detail limited map for each zone would be a great collectible item that would go a long way I feel.
(2) Unclear ability gates.
MILD ABILITY AND END GAME GOAL SPOILERS
The platforming in this game is fun execution testing that never felt too hard for me. When I was platforming each challenge with the abilities they were designed for. Certain movement abilities are not clearly visually explained which challenges are designed for them. Specifically the wall cling gem and the fourth wall kick have zero visual indicator that you might need them for a specific section. This leads to platforming challenges feeling not impossible, just incredibly difficult. As an example of this, I was trying to get the Major Key in Sansa Keep but didn't have the wall cling gem yet. Using every other ability except the two abilities I mentioned, I was able to get almost to the end of the challenge, just barely. Using the wall kick I was able to complete sections of that challenge that felt hard, but doable. But the doable kept getting reduced bit by bit as the challenge continued until it was just actually impossible (unless you are a cracked speedrunner lol) with my current toolkit. But it felt like it was just a more narrow timing requirement that I wasn't quite meeting and just needed to get better at. Almost every other ability gate was clearly conveyed so I didn't waste my time on them or I at least knew I was trying to sequence break. The inconsistent way ability gates were presented lead to a platforming difficulty that felt very erratic and sometimes lead me along only to drop me off a difficulty cliff with no other options in sight. The way to fix this I would say would be to make it abundantly clear if the player is missing an ability in the menu screen. Like in Ocarina of Time where each item slots into an empty mold on the key items screen. We don't have to know what it is, but knowing I'm not yet fully equipped, plus making the start of challenges have more visual distinctions (such as a white paint on the walls for the wall cling gem) would have made this much better.
SPOILERS END
Overall this game is so much fun and if these two issues are addressed I would be absolutely over the moon about it. I still recommend it to support the dev, but it feel like a bit of an early access game with my current two criticisms in place. If you love good movement and the incredible retro presentation and are willing to accept a few major rough edges I very highly recommend this game and I'm looking forward to what the dev makes going forward!
Side notes:
The combat is completely adequate with some unique ideas. Dropping your sword from getting hit, throwing your sword, giving up power/range to heal. No major issues, but I would love to see more R&D put into the combat and it could be something really special. Also the lock on never worked in a way that felt helpful for me.
The story felt like a lot was left unused/explored. Felt like there was a great setup to a interesting loose/minimal story and then nothing was done with it. I would love just a tiny bit of additional context/lore and I would be satisfied.
Took me a little under 9 hours to get 90% completion and roll credits.
The issues: (1) No mid-late game map & (2) Unclear ability gates
The fantastic: Pretty much everything else
The movement is pretty boring at the start and finding movement upgrades is really unintuitive and difficult, but once you have a lot of abilities unlocked the movement is absolutely transcendent. I haven't had this much fun in a 3d platformer since Mario Odyssey. The music is great, the enemy designs are interesting (but I wish they were a bit better themed per zone and consistent narrative design). The world design is very fun and had a lot of "I'm not supposed to be here" type of moments where I felt like I was moving around a pre-existing world that was not created for my character to be in. Not in a bad game design sense, more in the cool and inventive ways I was able to use the movement to get around the existing world. I love the low frame rate animations and the low poly/texture aesthetic. It looks and plays so well. This game does so much right.
Going into specifics on my criticisms:
(1) No mid-late game map.
This is a self proclaimed metroidvania and therefore the player should be rewarded for memorizing the map and how it interconnects. Having no map is an interesting choice as the world feels expansive and undiscovered and the mental mapping of the terrain is a fun way of going about it. Unfortunately while the zones themselves are visually unique, the way each room connects to the next in each zone is not distinct enough to be mentally mappable. The doors that connect each room are mostly identical and fog covers anything past the door itself. This leads to constantly being turned around and not knowing which mystery fog door connects to which mystery box room and stringing them all together to get anywhere new feels exponentially incomprehensible. Castle Sansa and Sansa Keep especially are a nightmare to navigate given the amount of identical doors and small rooms. Mid to late game navigation turned into 15 minute excursions of wandering around hoping to find that one place I had been hours before with very little success. An unlockable and detail limited map for each zone would be a great collectible item that would go a long way I feel.
(2) Unclear ability gates.
The platforming in this game is fun execution testing that never felt too hard for me. When I was platforming each challenge with the abilities they were designed for. Certain movement abilities are not clearly visually explained which challenges are designed for them. Specifically the wall cling gem and the fourth wall kick have zero visual indicator that you might need them for a specific section. This leads to platforming challenges feeling not impossible, just incredibly difficult. As an example of this, I was trying to get the Major Key in Sansa Keep but didn't have the wall cling gem yet. Using every other ability except the two abilities I mentioned, I was able to get almost to the end of the challenge, just barely. Using the wall kick I was able to complete sections of that challenge that felt hard, but doable. But the doable kept getting reduced bit by bit as the challenge continued until it was just actually impossible (unless you are a cracked speedrunner lol) with my current toolkit. But it felt like it was just a more narrow timing requirement that I wasn't quite meeting and just needed to get better at. Almost every other ability gate was clearly conveyed so I didn't waste my time on them or I at least knew I was trying to sequence break. The inconsistent way ability gates were presented lead to a platforming difficulty that felt very erratic and sometimes lead me along only to drop me off a difficulty cliff with no other options in sight. The way to fix this I would say would be to make it abundantly clear if the player is missing an ability in the menu screen. Like in Ocarina of Time where each item slots into an empty mold on the key items screen. We don't have to know what it is, but knowing I'm not yet fully equipped, plus making the start of challenges have more visual distinctions (such as a white paint on the walls for the wall cling gem) would have made this much better.
Overall this game is so much fun and if these two issues are addressed I would be absolutely over the moon about it. I still recommend it to support the dev, but it feel like a bit of an early access game with my current two criticisms in place. If you love good movement and the incredible retro presentation and are willing to accept a few major rough edges I very highly recommend this game and I'm looking forward to what the dev makes going forward!
Side notes:
The combat is completely adequate with some unique ideas. Dropping your sword from getting hit, throwing your sword, giving up power/range to heal. No major issues, but I would love to see more R&D put into the combat and it could be something really special. Also the lock on never worked in a way that felt helpful for me.
The story felt like a lot was left unused/explored. Felt like there was a great setup to a interesting loose/minimal story and then nothing was done with it. I would love just a tiny bit of additional context/lore and I would be satisfied.
Took me a little under 9 hours to get 90% completion and roll credits.
2 Comments
@LeahThe3th thank you very much! Always fun to make an internet friend with similar interests. Definitely taking a look at your favorites for recommendations as well!
LeahThe3th
3 months ago