I have to preface this whole “review” with admitting the fact that a few chapters in I ended up skipping most of the cutscenes.
I’m sure the story is nice, what I did glean from it certainly was and I feel bad because I’m sure I could have learnt more about a culture I know next to nothing about but I found it all so tepid and boring. The way it looked and was presented did absolutely nothing for me and I could feel my eyelids getting heavy.

So look at the relatively low score, take to heart as much as you feel needed (as you should with any criticism honestly) and if you care, read on for some more game based ramblings about my time with the latest new game to hit the PS plus higher tiers.

There’s a lot to enjoy, the world is vast, plenty of things to collect and many ways to explore it thanks to the game's biggest strength; the possession ability.
Run around as a dog, fly and shit as a bird, swim as a shark.
While staying in human form, climb any surface, glide from heights, use trees to fling you or just sail the sea on a little raft.
All of this is pleasant. It’s just it’s all a little janky.

The possession is great but sometimes you feel desperate to find a bird or something fast to get out of the barren land you find yourself in and at best you find some rocks (you can possess rocks too, I dunno). Everything you possess feels floaty and wobbly, there’s little unique between the different animal types of land, air and sea bar some speed, shitting and occasional attacks which I found one single (very smart) use for.
The sailing is nice and calm but with the only fast travel being restricted to finding ports and traveling too and from them if you’re sailing somewhere new it’s a long slog.

Climbing and surface and gliding is a part of why the Breath of the Wild comparisons have been made and while that is a little reductive and I have no issue with games borrowing from what is probably the best open world to date - it doesn’t borrow it well.
Tchia can climb any surface but you’re like a poor Spider-man. You don’t climb ladders in a usual way and altogether much like the movement with the possessions it all just feels unsatisfying.

Unsatisfying is really the word of my experience. Speaking about it to friends while playing it I found myself going “it’s… it’s not crap but..” and feeling like I was having to defend against my own true feelings because I was having a mostly bad time but there was something there, some elements of enjoyment to found and a good few ideas scattered in.
For the most part the movement is mid to poor but occasionally you’ll slide really fast down a hill, just at the end into the air, fly with your glider then stop and possess a passing bird.

The exploration is budget BOTW with combat encounters that are laughably bad and I’d actually rather were not in it.
There are these cool little rock stacking and totem carving mini games that can unlock abilities and caves and I like that, but everything before and after is tedious.

The tedium is really capped off by some terrible end game segments which are best when you avoid all the combat and therefore the bulk of the segments. These are sandwiched between some walk-slowly-and-do-nothing except get some lore dump bits which as by this point I was skipping the cutscenes really, really sucked.

Am I glad I bothered playing this game? There are bits that will stick with me and it was at least polite enough to be short.
I can’t recommend spending money on this but if you’re intrigued and have access to it for free. Pop it on and see for yourself, feel it for yourself.

I’ll finish this off with one final moment I’d like to share because I found it funny and that was just the feeling of playing this game, wrapping it up a few minutes after watching the final Tears of the Kingdom trailer.
“What the fuck am I doing?” I asked myself as I rolled my eyes at some of the junk of this game.
The comparisons are a little reductive and even if not I don’t expect everything to hit that height but my word; Tchia looks, sounds and feels worse than Breath of the Wild a six year old game for the Wii U and it’s being promoted for the all powerful Sony Playstation 5… come on.