Completed all achievements of Tchia. I finished the main campaign at 9 hours and wrapped 100% at 15 hours, played on PS5. This is a gem of 2023 and definitely deserved the awards it received. It’s not perfect, but it punches so far above its weight class, it’s ridiculous. The game is packed with a tight and engaging playstyle, surprisingly compelling and well animated character moments, and so much genuine heart, humor, and lore. Oh and it’s gorgeous and the music is phenomenal. I loved it.
I knew literally nothing about New Caledonia before trying this out. Now I feel like I have a starter idea of its geography, culture, lore, and spirit. That’s awesome.
The spirit jumping mechanic combined with the ukulele abilities meant I almost never ran out of cool stuff to do and felt like a badass. I usually don’t feel compelled to collect all the widgets, but it was just so much fun to travel around and collect things that I used it as a podcast game while exploring for a few extra hours and had a blast. There’s a surprising amount of varied activities to do so it rarely felt stale to explore, even hours after completing the main story. I particularly appreciated the game simplifying the tedium of finding a lot of the hidden objects. You’d get pinpoint accuracy of where they were and just had to get there, oh and they typically were brightly glowing at night to really make them findable. The lack of minimap exact location was an interesting choice, which I find pretty engaging actually, especially because I could just drop a waypoint where I wanted to go and rarely needed to actually figure out where I was. And the pretty restrictive fast travel system helped make the game feel more immersive.
Minor complaints:
- The music playing minigames were a little more challenging than expected and it took a few songs to get the 100% achievement. At least two of them I got 98% because the game hiccuped most of the way through and I missed it slightly. That said, these were also some of my favorite moments.
- Most of these BotW-like exploration games start off with just a tediously low amount of energy. Tchia does this twice over, with spirit power and stamina. Once you boost that up (which I strongly recommend focusing on once you can), it feels so freeing and great. But I dislike just how anemic they tune the beginning.
- My last thing to find for 100% completion was one damn fish. It took over an hour to find the stupid thing. Angry face.
- While I appreciated most of the races were tuned pretty easily so I got gold on almost all of them on my first try, I found the shooting and diving challenges a little more tightly tuned than I’d like. They took me several tries. But even then, they incorporated a really generous retry system so you could jump straight back in!
- I’ve heard some complaints about the combat sections, and I’d agree they’re a weaker part of the game. I did complete 100% of them, but if you’re really not liking them, they added a “skip gameplay” mechanic so you can just boost past those if you want.
They left enough open threads (although they do a very good job of wrapping up this main story) that it seems somewhat obvious they plan a sequel. I would be very excited to see what this team makes next!
Overall, I strongly recommend. It’s a beautiful and unique experience, even while borrowing many mechanics from other games. It’s still on Ps+Extra for at least a few more weeks, so it’s worth trying it out if you are already a subscriber, for sure!
I knew literally nothing about New Caledonia before trying this out. Now I feel like I have a starter idea of its geography, culture, lore, and spirit. That’s awesome.
The spirit jumping mechanic combined with the ukulele abilities meant I almost never ran out of cool stuff to do and felt like a badass. I usually don’t feel compelled to collect all the widgets, but it was just so much fun to travel around and collect things that I used it as a podcast game while exploring for a few extra hours and had a blast. There’s a surprising amount of varied activities to do so it rarely felt stale to explore, even hours after completing the main story. I particularly appreciated the game simplifying the tedium of finding a lot of the hidden objects. You’d get pinpoint accuracy of where they were and just had to get there, oh and they typically were brightly glowing at night to really make them findable. The lack of minimap exact location was an interesting choice, which I find pretty engaging actually, especially because I could just drop a waypoint where I wanted to go and rarely needed to actually figure out where I was. And the pretty restrictive fast travel system helped make the game feel more immersive.
Minor complaints:
- The music playing minigames were a little more challenging than expected and it took a few songs to get the 100% achievement. At least two of them I got 98% because the game hiccuped most of the way through and I missed it slightly. That said, these were also some of my favorite moments.
- Most of these BotW-like exploration games start off with just a tediously low amount of energy. Tchia does this twice over, with spirit power and stamina. Once you boost that up (which I strongly recommend focusing on once you can), it feels so freeing and great. But I dislike just how anemic they tune the beginning.
- My last thing to find for 100% completion was one damn fish. It took over an hour to find the stupid thing. Angry face.
- While I appreciated most of the races were tuned pretty easily so I got gold on almost all of them on my first try, I found the shooting and diving challenges a little more tightly tuned than I’d like. They took me several tries. But even then, they incorporated a really generous retry system so you could jump straight back in!
- I’ve heard some complaints about the combat sections, and I’d agree they’re a weaker part of the game. I did complete 100% of them, but if you’re really not liking them, they added a “skip gameplay” mechanic so you can just boost past those if you want.
They left enough open threads (although they do a very good job of wrapping up this main story) that it seems somewhat obvious they plan a sequel. I would be very excited to see what this team makes next!
Overall, I strongly recommend. It’s a beautiful and unique experience, even while borrowing many mechanics from other games. It’s still on Ps+Extra for at least a few more weeks, so it’s worth trying it out if you are already a subscriber, for sure!