For as long as DoubleFine stays afloat, they will be cursed to create the finest legacy-style action adventure games of all time -- love letters and passion projects to their respective genres and influences -- that are just barely too niche or high-concept to make satisfactory returns. They do not make BIG games, they make COMPLETE games with focus and all-star casts and writing that steers dangerously close to "perfect."
Psychonauts 2 will have you inspired to 100% the whole thing without ever touching a walkthrough, and to do so is very attainable and will not even set you back 20 hours. If you have any nostalgia for what existed of the non-"childrens'", non-mascot 3D platformer era or you have any curiosity for what it could have looked like in the modern era, you owe it to yourself to play this game because it is the finest example any of us could have asked for.
This thing is always on sale (again, the struggle to make returns :/ ) so just keep an eye on it until you can pick it up for pocket change. While you're at it, please PLEASE check out Brutal Legend, the most underappreciated gem of the 7th generation that almost killed the studio.

From playing this game, the objective in development seems clear to me: re-develop Breath of the Wild in a way that it is free from anything potentially off-putting that a traditional video game has (such as combat, difficulty, and RPG elements) while simultaneously delivering the artist's own artistic vision -- visually and in narrative. In this respect, the game is partially successful. You can already see the game's beautiful and resourceful presentation made possible by its signature shaders -- true screenshot material -- and the game's innovative approach to text-based dialogue is creative and engaging even when some of the world-building elements come off very cliche. Anyway's it's not ready. Don't buy it.

The game is a technical nightmare in nearly every respect.
Performance tech issues: A high-end computer that runs AAA games released in 2022 at 60fps cannot keep up with the game at all. It stutters intermittently and heavily. No amount of fiddling with the obtuse and confusing graphical settings can fix that -- you know, the ones that treat customizable framerate and V-Sync like mutually exclusive features.
Control tech issues: I like playing on controller and that's how I had been choosing to experience the game anyway but lord forbid you get under the impression that you have a choice. Not only are the default keybinds bad, but the mapping options are so confusing -- you can double-bind some actions on keyboard but not controller. The worst part: you cannot bind ANYTHING to mouse buttons. I'm not talking about thumb buttons or Mouse4,5+, I'm talking about LEFT AND RIGHT CLICK. If you do not have a controller that you enjoy, this game is nearly unplayable for that reason alone.
Stability tech issues: At every session I sat down to play this, something would go horribly wrong. Every indie game is expected to have some clipping here or a crash there, but this game's menus and narrative flags are FUBAR. I was confused as to why I can't find a vital NPC until I tried resetting the game. I was confused as to why I couldn't buy any items from the shop or move my selection cursor until I tried resetting the game. At least you can save and reset anywhere you're standing so long as the PAUSE AND SAVE MENU ISN'T BROKEN AND UNUSABLE-- yeah that happened. Ironically, the one time that the mouse came in clutch.

So yeah, a beautiful game with a beautiful licensed original track and graphics that is unfortunately unplayable. All of these things are fixable, so if you keep up with the developers maybe they'll fix something. But it's been many many months and they haven't, so don't hold your breath. [The team being small is not a free pass, that's not how criticism works.]

P.S.: I just want to address this as neither a positive or negative, but the resemblance to BOTW really cannot be understated. At all. It's not just basic design philosophy but it gets down to every movement mechanic (climbing, gliding, running and its accompanying stamina UI), 4-piece clothing sets that offer climbing boosts etc, ability to place colorful waypoints in a "binocular"-like mode, map design, and also that there are ancient ruins of a society that relies on ornate blue laser technology left behind in the form of shrine puzzles that use pistons and physics-objects to solve. If you find that BOTW's difficulty, scale, and platform are not barriers to your experience, then by all means go play it. Sable introduces many new ideas to its presentation and world building and maybe like 1 or 2 in terms of gameplay, but I'd be fooling myself if I bought into the notion that it's a completely distinct game that needs to be treated like a new property with no resemblance to BOTW.

Okay, let me preface this by saying it's not awesome, just pretty good I guess.

Pros:
- Extremely customizable; has basically all of the features that I've been wanting out of button-mapping wrappers for years, including the ability to map inputs to a specific mouse-click area on screen, and the recognition of input groupings (face buttons, either of the two touch pads, joystick) so that they can all serve a similar function such as camera or character movement (rather than just getting locked in 8 directional control), and the ability to toggle or hold other input profiles with a button
- Grip buttons are a welcome feature that no console's default controller has - will greatly reduce the amount of situations you'll need to take your thumbs off the pads or joystick in.
- If you're too lazy to spend a lot of time carefully crafting the optimal mapping that will suit your style perfectly, chances are someone has already made it, so you can just download it and get to using it instantly.
- Mouse movements are pretty precise. Infinitely better than trying to aim with a right-stick on FPS games, for example.
- Pretty ergonomic, all things considered.
- The price is pretty fair compared to is competition, especialy on sale.
- Definitely better than some small cheapsh## wired logitech controller, for example.

Cons:
- It feels cheap. Everything is made out of either that matte hard plastic or the glossy fingerprint-kind, and it has no significant weight to it.
- You have to use a (pretty sizable) dongle; no bluetooth. Although, MINI-PRO: if you get one without a dongle (like I did because I bought used off Amazon), just tell valve you didn't get one, and they'll be light "aight" and ship it for free, no questions asked. It's extremely helpful and it happened to both my friend and I.
- The mapping software is not graceful in any capacity. It's clunky, and it tries+fails at trying to be user-friendly. You need to go to Big Picture to access it (bet you forgot that exists) and the way profiles work is so broken, and, dare I say, glitched. I made an Overwatch mapping as the first thing I ever did with my controller, and somehow I ended up with a profile that said "Overwatch" for like a year, no matter how many times I thought I deleted it and made a new napping or deleted it or changed it, it annoyed me, which brings me to...
- Barely compatible with non-steam properties. I still barely understand how to even get it to work outside of big picture. Don't expect to be having fun on Origin, Battle.net, or Dolphin any time soon if you buy.
- The face buttons are kinda small and awkwardly placed. It sounds picky, but it's important to me.
- Is still absolutely no replacement for aiming with a mouse, even if it is more ergonomic.
- DualShock 4 or frankly any [good] gamepad is better in just about every aspect except price, customizability (kinda), and mouse precision, but those are pretty important in PC gaming, so...

I know, I'm too wordy.

I have always been a fan of single player action/advntures and allegories, so as you can imagine I love this game. The puzzles are unique and the environmental design is creative and functional.
The graphics don't look triple-A obviously, but graphics have never bee a huge facotr for me. I only mention this because I know they could be a bit of a turn off for some people. I'd take a low-budget 3D title over another damn 16-bit sidescroller 8 times out of 10. Don't get me wrong though, that's not to say that the *visuals* aren't great. The environments are pretty and the animation is fluid and cartoony. It looks great, that's all I have to say about that.
The other great thing I have to say about this game is that the sound design accompanies it perfect;y. It mostly consists of panflutes and other woodwind instruments with plenty of accompanying chorus in what I can only assume is Brazillian Portuguese. It sounds really good.
I only have 2 big complaints, and those are the length and replayability. The game is definitely under 5 hours at the longest (as you can see from my profile) and there's little to nothing to do after beating it. I know length isn't indicative of a bad game it's just something to keep in mind while buying. I still think it's worth a buy, I'd just suggest waiting for a sale (like all steam games). The only replayability to speak of AFAIK is this achievement for collecting all the hats that appear on the doll things after you beat thefirst playthrough (?) or something along those lines.
The last thing I think needs addressing is that I think the metaphor is a little overpushed sometimes. Like yeah, I got it immediately, you don't have to keep making it more and more obvious every hour.
Great puzzle game, reccomended.