This game should be the poster child of a game ‘getting in the way of itself’. What I mean by that is, the actual combat encounters and card based gameplay is top tier and genuinely so enjoyable. I loved setting up a round to just sweep through the enemies while constantly having my attacks refunded - so satisfying when it all just works.

The flipside on this is that between these great missions that have you doing a cary of objectives and countering many different enemy types, is a terrible cringe inducing Disney Channel Show for tweens.

It honestly felt like they couldn’t work out the demographic for this game, as part of it feels like aimed at older people who like slower strategy games, and the other part feels like it was made for kids who grew up on Iron Man firing off constant zingers for a couple movies in a row.

As I found out in my Need for Speed review, I really have less patience for this kind of dialogue and game setup than what I thought, and ultimately it marred my experience and interrupted the flow of the game enough to make me shelve it.

My advice, play this muted and go watch youtube while you spam through the dialogue between the excellent missions and gameplay.

Truly an early 2010s roguelike 2D Pixel Art indie of our time, in the best ways and the worst ways. I played about 3 hours of this game and dropped it, as it just wasn’t getting its teeth into me.

Let’s start with the best - great soundtrack, cute pixel art, a fun premise and core mechanic. If I liked this game, I could see myself loving this game. The loop is there, and pretty clearly set out for the player to engage with. It doesn’t try to hide what this game is and it lays it all out for the player, which I appreciate when it comes to these sorts of experiences.

Now to the worst - the controls aren’t ideal (they feel a little too fine tuned for Mouse and Keyboard perhaps?), and the combat isn’t really that engaging. Early game coin generation feels a little too slow, considering every time I want to go back and play the game I have to give up all my coins I wasn’t able to spend, though this could absolutely be a skill issue on my part. The dialogue is charming and cute but it could maybe have done with a little more time explaining what is actually going on and leaving breadcrumbs for me to explore. Why not tell me about The Maya before I encounter it, so I can be intrigued to find my way there? Bear in mind, all this is being said through a 2024 lens, and when this game came out over a decade ago, such expectations were unrealistic, or just unnecessary.

Now is this a bad game? Likely no, and obviously it did well enough to get a sequel. Is this a bad game for me as an individual? Yes, and I won’t sit here and pretend to like it or give it more of my time to learn how to enjoy it. This game feels like a dream for those who enjoy the ‘2D, pixel art, roguelike, indie’ crowd, of which there are many many people, but it’s just not for me - and that’s okay.

I loved my time with this game, clocking in about 15 hours of enjoyment (and 3 hours of pain, but I’ll get to that later).

The gameplay revolves around setting out from your home and exploring what the world has to offer. What makes this different from a Ubicollectathon, is that everything feels so self directed, so organic. You move through this world as you wish, not as the game wishes. It feels like you set out upon your own journey of discovery, both of the world and internally.

The environment tells a story that is further expanded upon by NPC interactions and deeper exploration. It is a world that has lived, and exists within a space so uniquely its own, it doesn’t feel like it is retreading some standard design rolled out for game programming by numbers.

This game did what few others manage to do while my time is so precious nowadays, it made me want to see what is over that ledge, made me curious to see what pressing this button will do, made me want to track down every plume of campfire smoke. The natural exploration, relaxed energy, wonderful OST all combined into an experience I won’t soon forget.

However, I have to say that this was a classic example of going for the Platinum trophy souring the overall experience. I wrapped up all the content in the game aside from the fishing, and spent the last three hours on that grind. The fishing is buggy, clunky, and unfortunately just isn’t enjoyable. Whilst the designs of the fish themselves and the nature of how to find the more unique types of fish does help in the discovery of each new fish, catching 60 “dopey darts” on the way to the trophy wore my patience thin.

Putting aside my thoughts on the platinum process, the other main detriment to this game is its general bugginess and deplorable performance. The amount of times I got wedged between a rock and a bush with no way to escape, or when my bike would clip an invisible rock and spiral out of control in mid air was amusing at first but quickly outstayed its welcome. Combined with the performance shuddering below 20fps, and the game occasionally needing a reset to clean up the performance, these issues unfortunately hurt my overall perception and rating of this game.

If you can stomach the poor performance at times, and avoid the platinum trophy, you’ll find a pleasant game, with gorgeous vistas, witty writing, and a poignant story and world to explore.