I'm conflicted on how to feel about Anodyne.
On one hand, I think the dreamy aesthetic is done excellently. Most of the environments look like they were taken from a nightmare or a tranquil fantasy environment, and the soundtrack reflects this well too; you'll go from calming, ambient tunes, to growling, ominous tracks throughout the game. The story's alright and at times felt a bit forced to me in how dark and brooding it was trying to appear, but I can appreciate the interpretations on how the narrative felt like an inner struggle for the silent protagonist and how those around him dealt with their struggles in different ways.
On the other hand, I really can't say I'm a huge fan of most of the gameplay. It's very akin to an indie top down Zelda game, and most of the puzzles were pretty rudimentary, to say the least. What bugged me more however, was the game's reliance and inconsistency with jumping. At times, you can cheese the game by doing two block gap jumps to skip entire rooms; I didn't have the execution 100% consistent (you have to run off the edge a little before jumping), but since you don't actually take damage from falling, you can just retry over and over again until it works. And then later in the game, you're expected to make two block gap jumps (at least this felt like the case in the 8 bit maze) as part of exploration. It also doesn't help that diagonal jumping doesn't really work for some reason, and the boost jumping mechanics in the circus felt very frame tight (it took me significantly longer to get past a particular diagonal boost jumping room than beat any boss in the game). I also faced various jank in the form of drowning/not drowning by almost falling off edges, dust often getting caught on edges before I could use it to swim (or getting caught inbetween screens on a boundary so I'd lose it somehow trying to get it back), wrong warping between connected rooms when I took damage from enemies in one particular water filled room (this one happened more rarely), and so on so forth. Combat's not particularly difficult either; I felt like I was able to get by just tanking hits from bosses and rushing them down before they took me down in every fight except for the final boss. That said, fighting some of the common enemies (particularly the dogs) felt strange because I couldn't quite pin down how they moved somewhat erratically. And finally, most of the puzzles and a lot of the exploration sort of felt like they were just taking up time, including many of the rooms that required a lot of jumping feeling a bit strange with jump lengths/timing; if there was some form of movement tech to accelerate this, I feel like this problem would have greatly alleviated.
It also doesn't help that I spent a solid hour prior trying to figure out how to use an Xbox Wireless controller in the game, but ultimately couldn't make it work. I think somewhere along the last few years, updates in Steam/Windows broke the controller support, and this was never quite rectified, which is a bit of a shame. I would call jumping and dodging somewhat functional with keyboard controls, but I feel that it would be much more consistent and fluid if I could use a controller.
In short, I think Anodyne's got its great moments and potential, but I definitely felt lethargic playing this for a good chunk of the runtime, which concerns me because my final in game time was only four and a half hours. It just didn't quite click with me most of the time, and I often felt that the gameplay more often than not was an impediment to the otherwise solid atmospheric experience. I'm still looking forward to tackling Anodyne 2 soon though, as I've heard great things about the sequel and am very interested to see their spin upon the old PSX era.
On one hand, I think the dreamy aesthetic is done excellently. Most of the environments look like they were taken from a nightmare or a tranquil fantasy environment, and the soundtrack reflects this well too; you'll go from calming, ambient tunes, to growling, ominous tracks throughout the game. The story's alright and at times felt a bit forced to me in how dark and brooding it was trying to appear, but I can appreciate the interpretations on how the narrative felt like an inner struggle for the silent protagonist and how those around him dealt with their struggles in different ways.
On the other hand, I really can't say I'm a huge fan of most of the gameplay. It's very akin to an indie top down Zelda game, and most of the puzzles were pretty rudimentary, to say the least. What bugged me more however, was the game's reliance and inconsistency with jumping. At times, you can cheese the game by doing two block gap jumps to skip entire rooms; I didn't have the execution 100% consistent (you have to run off the edge a little before jumping), but since you don't actually take damage from falling, you can just retry over and over again until it works. And then later in the game, you're expected to make two block gap jumps (at least this felt like the case in the 8 bit maze) as part of exploration. It also doesn't help that diagonal jumping doesn't really work for some reason, and the boost jumping mechanics in the circus felt very frame tight (it took me significantly longer to get past a particular diagonal boost jumping room than beat any boss in the game). I also faced various jank in the form of drowning/not drowning by almost falling off edges, dust often getting caught on edges before I could use it to swim (or getting caught inbetween screens on a boundary so I'd lose it somehow trying to get it back), wrong warping between connected rooms when I took damage from enemies in one particular water filled room (this one happened more rarely), and so on so forth. Combat's not particularly difficult either; I felt like I was able to get by just tanking hits from bosses and rushing them down before they took me down in every fight except for the final boss. That said, fighting some of the common enemies (particularly the dogs) felt strange because I couldn't quite pin down how they moved somewhat erratically. And finally, most of the puzzles and a lot of the exploration sort of felt like they were just taking up time, including many of the rooms that required a lot of jumping feeling a bit strange with jump lengths/timing; if there was some form of movement tech to accelerate this, I feel like this problem would have greatly alleviated.
It also doesn't help that I spent a solid hour prior trying to figure out how to use an Xbox Wireless controller in the game, but ultimately couldn't make it work. I think somewhere along the last few years, updates in Steam/Windows broke the controller support, and this was never quite rectified, which is a bit of a shame. I would call jumping and dodging somewhat functional with keyboard controls, but I feel that it would be much more consistent and fluid if I could use a controller.
In short, I think Anodyne's got its great moments and potential, but I definitely felt lethargic playing this for a good chunk of the runtime, which concerns me because my final in game time was only four and a half hours. It just didn't quite click with me most of the time, and I often felt that the gameplay more often than not was an impediment to the otherwise solid atmospheric experience. I'm still looking forward to tackling Anodyne 2 soon though, as I've heard great things about the sequel and am very interested to see their spin upon the old PSX era.