This, uh, really does not feel great to rate 2.5 stars. (bumped it up to 3.5, see last 4 paragraphs for why) Especially since when Evening Star first announced Penny to the world, I was really rooting for them to knock things out of the park, and prove that they don't need to rely on Sega to deliver a fantastic game. Booting this up for the first time, I thought I was in for a slam dunk, like there was no way this would be anything else but a good time. The reality is... somewhere in-between. After playing it, I'm still rooting for Evening Star, but mostly in the sense of hoping that they fix what's currently a very promising, but frankly jank game.

There are technical issues. In the first world, I got softlocked when jumping onto a roof. Thankfully, you can restart from checkpoints. Then there were two other times where I clipped straight through a wall. The first time, it was really amusing because it was actually helpful as a shortcut towards an optional collectible. The other time, it just led to an unfair death. The boss with the ship setpiece was all sorts of wonky, the camera would keep snapping away from Penny onto some random part of the level, leaving me in disarray regarding my current position. At the end of one level, Penny decided to do her victory dance while floating in mid-air.

I'm not usually the type of person that attracts bugs and glitches, because I don't try that hard to experiment in the games I play. Generally, I do my best to follow what they want me to do. So, the fact I was able to run into bugs this easily - not to mention seeing reports of other people having the same issues - makes me wonder if shadowdropping the game this month was a good idea.

Then there's the controls. So, this one seems way more subjective, and it's possible you might not feel these problems as I did. The most generous way to describe playing Penny is "technical." The less generous description would be "Takes some heavy getting used to." Speaking of heavy, the least generous term is heavy. In contrast to what the trailers made me think, getting Penny to soar through these levels was far from an easy task, and has led me to fumble an embarrassing amount of jumps. I counted eight. Eight instances of me just walking off an edge before I was able to press the jump button, and that's when I began to question if I'm starting to get too old for video games. But, no, I'm fairly certain that there's just something slightly off here, but slight enough that I could never quite get used to it.

Having to double tap the attack button for the dash, instead of just giving it its own button, is one questionable example. Sometimes, the dash would not activate if my double tap was too rapid, requiring me to adjust to a slightly more drawn-out timing. I would keep forgetting to do this however, and would keep falling to my death as a result. There were also moments where a whole bunch of enemies ganged up on me, and I would panic by mashing the attack button in order to deter them away. Of course, this would then activate the dash, and cause me to careen off a cliff. The physics on the dash itself feel too overtuned, using it to attempt and reach a platform would often cause me to overshoot it, and because Penny's turning can be heavy, it would be not enough to course-correct my mistake.

By far the worst of it is the rolling move, the one where you get on your yo-yo and can use downhill slopes to gain a ton of momentum and launch off ramps. Again, the trailers made this move look so fun, but as I got to try it myself, I've learned that for some ungodly reason, your directional controls are completely locked during the first 2-3 seconds of using this move. It's only after that, you can start kiiinda moving left and right, but forget about making any sharp turns. The rolling movement is only good for making slight adjustments on linear paths, but otherwise feels really stiff to use, less like a car and more like trying to steer a tank as it tumbles down a hill.

I've tested both the keyboard and the controller, and while controller does feel a little better, it does not flip the entire game feel upside down, and the problems still persist. It's hard to learn, and hard to master. I believe there desperately needs to be a patch to retune the game feel, as what's on offer right now is good enough for a casual run, but would make me rip my hair out if I was trying to perfect it.

And I really do think that a couple touchs-up is all this game needs to rocket into stardom. Have you seen those visuals? Holy shit, dude. You look at the visual design of the menu and think "Oh, whoever made the Sonic Mania menus definitely worked on this", and then you go into the game, and everything's so charming, and colorful, and the main character is so expressive! And the MUSIC, man, the game's hiding its best track for one of the later stages, and I already know I'm gonna be blasting this on loop for the next several weeks.

And I know I've been super harsh on the gameplay, but I can feel it, there's something really special here on those couple instances when the game IS working in your favor. It can be great to swing from one platform to the next, to soar at high speeds, to find little shortcuts and alternate pathways. The combo system in itself looks like a whole different ballpark of skill which I haven't even scratched the surface on, and I would love, LOVE to be able to fully appreciate these things if-!

Fuck, I walked off the edge again.

Update: I opted to do some post-game cleanup, and began to get to gripes with the combo system, thus engaging with the levels in more involved ways by aiming for the high scores. I also took some time to watch a developer utilize the combo system, and was taught that the best way to use the roll move, is to toggle it off by jumping, then readjust your direction, and toggle it back on while still in mid-air. This allows for a significantly higher degree of maneuverability than I previously thought was possible.

Don't get me wrong, I still hold the view that the game's physics could take some fixing up, they're still too finicky for my liking, and at times, feel either unresponsive, or too strict. However, if you're gonna play the game, I would highly advise engaging with the combo system and taking the time to learn as much of it as possible before you proceed through the rest of the game, as this is where I have found the most amount of fun to be had. Doing a 2nd run, the moment I obtained a high score after several tries, pumped my fists and thought "HAHA, YES!!!", that's when I realized "Oh, shit, so it IS fun!" It's just that the learning curve feels higher than it really should, and it took me a 2nd playthrough to really understand it. That's not good. Some people aren't gonna stick around for that long to figure this out. Then again, some people have clicked with the controls far more immediately than others did, so clearly, your mileage may vary.

Is it worth 30 dollars? Ehhh, I'm not so sure about that, I would've rather paid 20 myself. Is it good, though? Sure, but I do think that... it could've handled teaching the player its mechanics a lot better. But if you were to take the time to learn these mechanics yourself, and practice up, I think you could get quite a lot out of this otherwise short game. Give it a try! Perhaps you'll end up feeling proud of the scars it gives you.

Update 2: 5 attempts at getting a high score messed up due to collision bugs. Alright, seriously. This needs work.

TLDR: I believe that Dark Souls III is a game with a lot of missed potential that pissed me off so much I felt compelled to write a review about it weeks after finally beating it.

I saw a tweet the other day that said Dark Souls III is a game about letting go of the past and knowing when to end things before they drag on too long. Did I play the same Dark Souls III?

I finally got 100% completion across three playthroughs, but I may come back for an SL1 run someday, since that might give me a better understanding as to why people love this game's bosses so much. Right now, it just feels like I played Bloodborne with a Dark Souls (1) skin put on top of it, with extremely linear level design and a lot of the bosses consisting of nothing but R1 + dodge spam (although I guess that's true for every game in this series excluding Sekiro, I guess). I wouldn't mind this game mimicking Bloodborne so much if it had an interesting narrative or set pieces like that game does, but Dark Souls III constantly asks the player if they remember Dark Souls 1 with its overt fan service. Admittedly, it got to me sometimes and I loved certain aspects of it, but most of the writing and atmosphere felt desperate to woo me over, especially during segments like that one area after Pontiff Sulyvahn and the final boss as a whole.

Having played this game after about 60 hours of Elden Ring, it's so weird seeing so many of my problems with that game stem from here. I won't get into that aspect too much since it'd be a little unfair to compare this game to one that came out six years later, but it does get on my nerves in both of those games as opposed to other Soulsborne entries. I haven't played much of Dark Souls II and didn't like what I have played so far, but at least that game presents unique (albeit jank) ideas instead of sucking off Dark Souls 1 for a large majority of the runtime.

However, I still think there's a lot of fun to be had with this game!! I don't want anyone to feel bad about liking Dark Souls III just because I don't, especially since apparently this was an introduction into the series for a lot of people. In fact, I did enjoy using Gundyr's Halberd and a high poise build to steamroll a lot of late-game fights, and two DLC bosses in particular are some of my favorites in the series. This game even has some of the most creative bonfire shortcuts despite being so linear. I'm just upset that this is a game that could've done so much more with its world despite the linearity and combat-focused mentality if it wasn't afraid to be a little less derivative.

In a world where people hadn't been so harsh to Dark Souls II, this game might have ended up being an amazing conclusion to a trilogy that combined elements of the previous two as well as bringing clever new ones to the table. Instead, I just see this as a game made as a product— an attempt to capitalize on both the infamy of Dark Souls 1 and the phenomenal success of Bloodborne. I can understand why fans of Dark Souls III love the game to death, but whenever I look back on my time with it, I'll always just think about what could've been.