I have a lot of fondness for the Journey/Abzu/GRIS/etc. style of gameplay-light story-driven exploration game, and Lost Ember manages to hit enough of those buttons to compel me to finish it, but man, is this lacking in polish. Too long for this subgenre (levels are too large relative to the amount there is to do in them, tedious optional collectibles aside), too much dialogue, too many poorly signposted areas leading to aimless wandering, and too many instances where the controls and level design can get you stuck in a spot to the point where you’re forced to restart from the last checkpoint (admittedly never a huge setback here, but that wouldn’t be an issue at all in a more tightly designed game). How on earth did this get 90% from PC Gamer?

Oh, and the story attempts to apply horseshoe theory to its two ideological poles of “revolution to overthrow an oppressive regime” and “licking said regime’s boots,” so fuck that. Who wrote this, Ken Levine?