This game is excellent. Bought this game at launch after seeing a couple reviews and aside from a few minor gripes, I had a great time. I unequivocally recommend this game. Some of the challenges are really tough, but just keep trying. Probably the best old school Zelda vibe in recent memory. Funny, fun, and a great time. Absolutely worth full price, which is a criminally low $20.

Game In Service of the Art

There's a lot of little things that would keep this from being a great game. Weirdly slow scrolling on the map screen, got boxes that feel inconsistent, controls that sometimes just ignore some of my button presses, etc. These things can be easy to overlook if the rest of the game is good enough, and this one just isn't. As I said in the title, the game serves the art, rather than the other way around. This isn't inherently bad. Some really good games have been art first experiences, and the art and animation does look great. The problem is they tried to make a game where the play experience wasn't about the art, it is largely about the combat and that combat experience is mid to bad. Very frequent combat challenge rooms become tiresome when button presses feel less like commands and more like suggestions, or when you lose track of where you are because it's visually confusing when you are in a melee with 6 enemies, when you can get juggled for over half your health and you have no way to regain control until you hit the ground and hope no one attacks you during your stand up animation. And a lot of these challenge rooms are mandatory for progression, so you might end up fighting the same challenge a dozen times.

The level design is pretty mid, but they can't all be Super Metroid. The writing is, too, but Metroidvanias really aren't about the narrative. But the main reason I'm giving this a "Do not recommend" is because I wasn't having fun. The game didn't start that strong and after 10 hours, I was only trying to finish it to say I did. In fact, all I really wanted to do was move on, so I am.

There were a couple of interesting ideas. I liked the area where you had to activate the lights in the mine. Made what was essentially opening gates feel a little different. But overall I just don't care if I see the ending. I don't even feel inclined to look it up on YouTube.

Also, more than a year after release, it looks like any support for the game is likely ended so I am not expecting anything to be improved or fixed at this point. I hope the devs can learn a lot of lessons, so that their next game can be better.

This is an interesting take on chess. I'd say if you like chess and you want to try something different, definitely try this. There's still an advantage to attacking, and stronger pieces do more damage, which keeps some of the original spirit of chess alive. Overall, I recommend this game.

I absolutely don't understand why people are praising this game. I did not have fun playing this. I played for over 2.5 hours. The controls feel unresponsive, the gameplay is slow, some trash mobs take half a dozen hits to kill absolutely killing any sort of pacing for exploration, and I had to go through the same hallway a dozen times without making progress. Between a few deaths learning new enemy attack patterns and getting dropped down from above with no easy way to get back up, I had to go the long way around. It's like the developers ignored the last 30 years of game design advancements for the sake of nostalgia. At least I picked it up on sale, because I would be getting a refund if I hadn't gone over the limit by 45 minutes.

PROS: Excellent, engaging narrative, beautiful art, very good voice acting, and a sense of the game being a true labor of love.
CONS: Unresponsive controls, mid level design, mechanical design decisions that are better on paper than in practice.

This game has a really wonderful narrative with excellent voice acting and art. This alone is worth the price of entry if you want to experience what is likely a story from a heritage you are unfamiliar with. It doesn't break new ground in its themes, but it's told very earnestly, and it has more heart than AAA titles today. Overall, I do recommend this game, BUT...

If you like a lot of metroidvanias, you are going to find a lot of frustration. The level design is very basic, it's sprawling without a sense of purpose for the scope, and the progression is locked mostly via "key and lock" abilities rather than mobility enhancements. Also, the mechanics bad enough that you are going to get upset. Surgent, I hope you are reading, because I think this is all fixable. All collisions with enemies stop you in your tracks. Oh the flying enemy that can't weigh more than 30lbs? Stops you, a man arguably 6 times its weight, dead in your tracks, and because he's flying, that means he blocks your jumps. Only a problem when you are fighting a group of enemies, like in a challenge, but still a problem. The art and animations seem to trump responsive controls. If there's one thing to change, it's this. The controls should always enable the player. That means the dash needs to cancel other animations and it needs to work every time. It also needs to get through diving birds without you taking damage. It's the only form of damage mitigation in the game (dodging), so when it fails, it feels less like a skill issue to be overcome or a puzzle to figure out and more like the game cheated away some of your health bar. Also, windup animations for enemy attacks don't do me any good if they are off screen, and having it feel like a coin flip for successfully jumping over the really big guys when they charge you is incredibly frustrating. Speaking of windup animations, please remove the wind up and wind down from the glide ability. Most of my gliding deaths were due to the lack of responsiveness of the move. Better auto-aim on the flying enemies wouldn't hurt either. I'm also not a fan of the fact that shields make enemies immune to any sort of knock back or CC. I'll be honest, I was ready to rage quit after a couple attempts at my first master challenge because of all of the issues I just listed. Losing half my health bar because I jumped over the charging big guy, but not actually because a bird was in the way, then get juggled by 3 shielded birds that I can't actually dash through is a really bad time. And then when I switched sides, I had to guess which mask I was supposed to have on in the 5-8 seconds to launch a few attacks before the next charge, then having those attacks be body blocked by an enemy with the opposite color shield...it was not fun. If you are going to put in challenges to player skill, then the only thing that should dictate success or failure is player skill, not working around bad mechanics, RNG, and hoping the game doesn't ignore one of your inputs. One final minor gripe, the default button layout is pretty bad. Don't reinvent the wheel. Just steal from Metroid and Castlevania. Even several hours in, I find myself pushing the wrong button to switch masks. Also, the instant death spikes were deeply overused. For a game with about 12 minutes of credits, it feels like these issues should have been resolved.

Edit: I have finished the game. My overall thoughts have not changed, but I have added a few more notes.

Neat concept, but the execution could not be much worse. Just about everything feels extraordinarily clunky on mouse and keyboard. I haven't tried it with a controller. Honestly, I don't actually care enough to try. The story premise is interesting, but the writing is spectacularly bad. Some of it may be lost in translation, but most of the dialogue is cliches and one liners that aren't impactful. I've played this 3 times now, and it never got less frustrating, or ever felt like I wasn't fighting the controls to just do basic things. Any good ideas are completely overshadowed by a terrible experience overall.

It's hard to play a survival game that isn't Subnautica after playing Subnautica.

After nearly 20 hours, the game is...Ok. The pace of progression is a little slow when you don't know what you are doing. There also doesn't actually appear to be an endgame.

Why am I not gonna play anymore? You see in Easy mode, it says you don't lose your stuff when you die. There is no note as to what happens with your stuff when you die on Normal. What I inferred was that on normal, you drop your stuff on the spot that you died. That would make sense. No, friend. When you die, it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ gone. Just gone. Poof. You had a bunch of metal tools, bow, metal arrows, etc? Well get rekt. Hardcore, I'd understand. But better yet, once you die, it autosaves. Never taken on hostile fauna on a big island before? Sucks to be you. You lose your stuff and you can't even load a save to get back to where you were.

So if you love survival games, and you know going into this that the game WILL screw you for dying, sure consider picking this up. For everyone else, just play Subnautica.

Despite a few technical hiccups, I found this game very enjoyable. It's a bit like playing through an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie from the 80's: over the top, ridiculous, and full of explosions. Don't take any of it too seriously, grab a 2-pack and a friend (or a second controller for old-fashioned couch co-op), and blow up all the things.