Platform: PC
Genre: Platformer, Metroidvania
Gameplay Stats: 26 hours, 46/57 achievements, 100% completion
I played this game back when it was first released in like 2014 and had an itch to revisit it since the sequel was recently released. I had pretty rosey memories about my previous time with the game, let's see if/how my opinions changed over time!
Visuals: This is definitely a strength of the game, it's beautiful the whole way through. There are some minor issues with readability at some points, particularly where the actual terrain changes. There were a couple of times where I thought I was safe but I slid or walked into some spikes. Not a huge issue, apart from some areas in the beginning of the game where spikes were instant death. The movements in particular in this game are stellar. It really looks like they put a lot of time and effort into many of the animations. Some of the enemies are a little same-y, but overall I really enjoyed looking at all of the different areas. Way too many thorny blobs and fat frogs that spit/shoot at you.
Audio: I think they really tried to have the audio on par with the visuals here, but I think they missed the mark a little. The background music is really nice, but the sound effects were more miss than hit for me. I found the combat sounds in particular to be really annoying. I chose to play on hard mode and it meant that I really needed to mash in order to kill anything, repeating the attack sound over and over and over. I don't remember it being a large issue when I was playing the game previously but I think I played on normal then, so I suspect this may be more of an issue with the difficulty I chose this time through.
Plot: The opening cutscene punches you right in the gut. I think the only applicable comparison is the opening of the Disney movie UP. I don't think anything else in the game plat was super memorable until the ending. At its core this is a platforming game, so I suppose that is to be expected, but it seems a little misleading to me to hit a strong chord with the opening scene and then not do much in the way of plat for the remainder of the game. The only character that talks to you is your little hovering light friend, everything else has little groans. Even the narrator is just deep groans! It really makes the game seem split on how it wants to tell the story. With emotion or conveyed through a text dump.
Gameplay: I'm kind of split here too. The platforming in this game is really good. It's really satisfying to fly through the air and kind of bounce off of enemies and projectiles, but the combat itself seems pretty clunky. Again, maybe this was because I was playing on hard, but it really seemed like a mashing game more than anything else. You can't aim, all you can do is dodge and mash. It also felt to me a bit like the game tacked on an experience point system just to say that it had one. I know they were really hot back in like 2014 when the game came out, but it seemed like a bit much. Definitely disjointed with the rest of the game in my opinion.
The game is pretty competent! I can't say that it blew me away apart from some pretty cool platforming sections (lookin' at you Ginso Tree!), but it was good. I think the game may have been better if it stuck to the emotional, wordless story-telling and stripped away a good portion of the combat. It would've definitely been a short experience, but I think it would have been a little tighter. At any rate though, I am definitely looking forward to the sequel even if my impressions were quite as positive this time I played through the game. [7/10]
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