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⣿⣿⣿⠋⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⣿
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Stray, is a game about a cat. If that sounds amusing to you, then buy it.
It is a short but sweet game, with a very charming beginning but a bit of a slog towards the end… just a little bit. Took me roughly 9 hours to platinum (1 hour is just wasted on the sleeping for 1 hour trophy).
It's a puzzle platformer, with the platformer stuff being automated like Assassins's Creed and you have no way of falling down. The main puzzles are simple enough but not too braindead, the optional puzzle can be frustrating but it is optional and there aren't that many.

The beginning is amazing, you are basically just jumping and running around, sometimes being chased by a small but deadly creature, it feels great. I like the dreary and cramped environment and the cat stuff you do is fun like pushing stuff over the edge just because, or scratching carpet just because.

The mid section has a bit of exploration and puzzle, can be a bit confusing without map, but I like the environment so much that it was fun just running and climbing around the place.

There is a stealth segment close to the end and an ESCORT segment after that, this is why I said the end was a bit of a slog. It is very slow compared to the rest of the game, while the stealth can be fun, the escort is just too slow and annoying.

As for the story, it's interesting, you as the cat are exploring this dreary town after being separated from your pack, the town is filled with robots with no human in sight. The robot behave the same as human, even eat, drink, sleep, etc.
You are accompanied by an amnesiac small robot that will help you pickup and hack stuff. As the story keeps on going, your companion will start remembering stuff and you will be able to piece together the story.
The ending is satisfying but very predictable.

I'll start with the positives first:

This game is absolutely gorgeous. It's hard to imagine this releasing on the 360/PS3 and looking this damn good. I was floored by some of the cutscenes, and the different environments + biomes that you find yourself are all incredible to see.

The combat, while at times frustrating, is largely a lot of fun. I quickly realized that I couldn't just mash my way through this game, and that I would need to be smart about which paradigms I chose to get through some of the tougher boss fights. I also loved the Crystarium--it's a unique way of raising your stats that made the process a lot of fun.

The story--although it definitely gets muddled toward the end, I thought the story was fairly strong overall. I love a complex story, and this one was definitely complex enough to keep me interested, and the themes of fate + blind worship are pretty interesting. I'm curious to see how the game builds on the lore in the sequels.

Now for the negatives, the biggest one being the enemies in this game. Towards the end of the game I found myself avoiding most if not all combat encounters because the enemies had way too much HP. It would take me 3-4 minutes to get through an encounter because normal enemies would have upwards of a million HP. It made the game drag on so much more than it needed to, and I got so frustrated with trying to get through these that I had to put the game down several times. The bosses are another thing entirely--they have absolutely absurd amounts of HP that made the fights take ages, especially if my team wiped and I had to start over after fighting for 10 minutes.

The characters were sort of a mixed bag for me. I appreciated the way they grow and develop over the game, but as individuals I couldn't stand a lot of them. I felt like I wasn't as invested in their journey because they all felt sort of flat, with the exception of Vanille, she was wonderful.

All in all, this was a good game that had a solid plot, fun combat and gorgeous graphics that overstayed it's welcome with spongy enemies that dragged the game on far too long for me. Excited to see what XIII-2 has in store!