ABZU showed that "Journey but again" is still nice but already tiring, especially when you are even a little worse than Journey. So here is an open world adventure game, with some of the best traversal in one.
This, alongside its beautiful landscapes and atmosphere, is the games biggest strength. It is amazing to sprint and leap through this world, depending on you shooting magic targets which nail a perfect balance between being challenging to hit and reuqiring no thought at all at such a pace.
It is also nice they decided against a map and objective markers. Instead, all you are handed is an eagle eye mode, highlighting places of interest you have not been to. Resulting in cool scenarios where scouting for final bits to explore required me to go to high places and, well, look for them, instead of just having a map tell me where to go.
For the main duration in a region, you also have a moving red fog always inconveniencing you. In the way that it may block some places of interest, but also that if you end up in it, you have to play hide and seek with the monster. If you fail, you lose some progress on an upgrade. The closest this game comes to consequence since death is nonexistent.
One of the biggest issues this game has is the amount of repetition combined with little variety. The task is always the same: collect some spirit things, activate towers, fight a monster in a well done set piece, go to the next area. If you are interested, you can do additional exploring and do more puzzles for upgrades.
There are stand out places and overall this is still all good enough but those painfully similar puzzles do definetely become painfully repetetive.
Journey and Abzu work with little gameplay variety because they are short experiences. The Pathless is 5 times the length of each of those, so having no gameplay variety AND little to no puzzle and exploration variety does drag it down.
The story was nice enough. I would have liked more nuance but also feared for there to be less. What I am getting out of it is a commentary on the stasis of a world or the status quo, how the desire for change can convince someone to complete annihilation of the status quo, and about purpose. Purpose and fulfillment is perhaps the most straightforward theme. Describing the antagonist as "The Pathfinder" in the game "The Pathless" could not make this more clear.
All in all, this was a nice and beautiful experience and a breath of fresh air after Abzu. Where it fails is to offer variety in any big sense. Either way, I am thrilled for Sword Of The Sea, the next project of Giant Squid.
This, alongside its beautiful landscapes and atmosphere, is the games biggest strength. It is amazing to sprint and leap through this world, depending on you shooting magic targets which nail a perfect balance between being challenging to hit and reuqiring no thought at all at such a pace.
It is also nice they decided against a map and objective markers. Instead, all you are handed is an eagle eye mode, highlighting places of interest you have not been to. Resulting in cool scenarios where scouting for final bits to explore required me to go to high places and, well, look for them, instead of just having a map tell me where to go.
For the main duration in a region, you also have a moving red fog always inconveniencing you. In the way that it may block some places of interest, but also that if you end up in it, you have to play hide and seek with the monster. If you fail, you lose some progress on an upgrade. The closest this game comes to consequence since death is nonexistent.
One of the biggest issues this game has is the amount of repetition combined with little variety. The task is always the same: collect some spirit things, activate towers, fight a monster in a well done set piece, go to the next area. If you are interested, you can do additional exploring and do more puzzles for upgrades.
There are stand out places and overall this is still all good enough but those painfully similar puzzles do definetely become painfully repetetive.
Journey and Abzu work with little gameplay variety because they are short experiences. The Pathless is 5 times the length of each of those, so having no gameplay variety AND little to no puzzle and exploration variety does drag it down.
The story was nice enough. I would have liked more nuance but also feared for there to be less. What I am getting out of it is a commentary on the stasis of a world or the status quo, how the desire for change can convince someone to complete annihilation of the status quo, and about purpose. Purpose and fulfillment is perhaps the most straightforward theme. Describing the antagonist as "The Pathfinder" in the game "The Pathless" could not make this more clear.
All in all, this was a nice and beautiful experience and a breath of fresh air after Abzu. Where it fails is to offer variety in any big sense. Either way, I am thrilled for Sword Of The Sea, the next project of Giant Squid.