Really excellent boss battles. Most powers felt great. Platforming feels amazing, and there are many challenge rooms for Xerxes coins to put you to the test there. Character designs and modeling was good as well as attack VFX, and VO was generally good. Some cute puzzles. A lot of good, enough so that I feel too harsh giving it a 3.5, but it's close. Now for the complaints!
The world art is disappointingly AAA. Sand looks like sand, terrain looks like terrain. Saturated, beautiful, lush colors are not common in this game. So much of the map, especially early areas, is just made out of straight X or Y dimension platform segments in plenty of areas that don't amount to any notable sense of visual storytelling. Eventually, you get to some areas with impressive color use and visual design, including one particularly imaginative water area, but they feel a bit like outliers. (Also, funnily enough, you undo the imaginative premise of that water area midway through it so it kind of just becomes less cool.)
The game's screen-to-screen level design is generally pretty fun especially when you get your double jump and can really string shit together. However, the macro level design of the map is often meandering and flavorless. There are a plethora of one-way gates, but they’re infrequently hidden and often act as dead ends in sections with no clear way to go because of lacking visual and geometric cues. Part of the magic in Dark Souls of a one-way is being confronted with an important one right on the main path, or having them hidden so that you stumble into a loopback and go "oh wow, i didn’t know this would connect here!" – this game just branches all the time with impassible walls (due to cardinality or due to lack of upgrades) always a room or two away from where you want. This resulted in a strong feeling of me playing the map screen and not the game itself sometimes, because rooms melt away from your thoughts pretty instantly after leaving them, especially when there's rarely any gimmick or iconic shapes to drag your virtual body against and feel.
Generally feels like it was lacking one more big pass of polish. Several unfinished looking VFX of platforms instantly disappearing beneath you, and a lacking sound mix that felt incomplete. Sound effects are inconsistent in volume and several boss battles seemed to have no music (in addition to two different bosses failing to play their cutscenes the first time i walked into their arenas which really messes up the functional storytelling they at least attempt to do). And the story flirts with being interesting at times cases but overall is just halfway-realized.
In conclusion, Mount Qaf is a land of contrasts
The world art is disappointingly AAA. Sand looks like sand, terrain looks like terrain. Saturated, beautiful, lush colors are not common in this game. So much of the map, especially early areas, is just made out of straight X or Y dimension platform segments in plenty of areas that don't amount to any notable sense of visual storytelling. Eventually, you get to some areas with impressive color use and visual design, including one particularly imaginative water area, but they feel a bit like outliers. (Also, funnily enough, you undo the imaginative premise of that water area midway through it so it kind of just becomes less cool.)
The game's screen-to-screen level design is generally pretty fun especially when you get your double jump and can really string shit together. However, the macro level design of the map is often meandering and flavorless. There are a plethora of one-way gates, but they’re infrequently hidden and often act as dead ends in sections with no clear way to go because of lacking visual and geometric cues. Part of the magic in Dark Souls of a one-way is being confronted with an important one right on the main path, or having them hidden so that you stumble into a loopback and go "oh wow, i didn’t know this would connect here!" – this game just branches all the time with impassible walls (due to cardinality or due to lack of upgrades) always a room or two away from where you want. This resulted in a strong feeling of me playing the map screen and not the game itself sometimes, because rooms melt away from your thoughts pretty instantly after leaving them, especially when there's rarely any gimmick or iconic shapes to drag your virtual body against and feel.
Generally feels like it was lacking one more big pass of polish. Several unfinished looking VFX of platforms instantly disappearing beneath you, and a lacking sound mix that felt incomplete. Sound effects are inconsistent in volume and several boss battles seemed to have no music (in addition to two different bosses failing to play their cutscenes the first time i walked into their arenas which really messes up the functional storytelling they at least attempt to do). And the story flirts with being interesting at times cases but overall is just halfway-realized.
In conclusion, Mount Qaf is a land of contrasts