Release: 2021
Developer: Cape Cosmic
Publisher: Flyhigh Works
Gameplay Stats: 46 hours, 30/33 Achievements
I heard about this game when I was playing through Zelda 2 Adventure of Link as a game that is similar but with modern enhancements. Does it live up to that same hype?
Graphics: This game has some wonderful, chunky pixel art. Some of the animations are particularly beautiful. The animation when the main character wakes up and stretches is extremely cute. Legit made me smile all 100+ times I've seen in. The enemies behave in pretty similar ways as you'd expect, the bosses are a bit weird though. Nothing too bad, but definitely some of the attacks took me by surprise.
Audio: Pretty nice tunes, definitely in the SNES aesthetic. The sound effects are kind of annoying though. There weren't separate audio mixes for sound effects and music so I turned it all down about a third of the way through the game. There were some puzzles where I needed audio later on that didn't have any kind of accessibility options to help with. I had to put my sound back up for those instances pretty begrudgingly.
Plot: The plot might've been the most standout part here to be honest. Mostly it followed a kind of Zelda influence where you help lots of nameless NPCs with random stuff but it was in a post-apocalyptic setting. As you progress the story a bit you find out that the world here is actually between apocalyptic events. Part of our main character's abilities are explained in a kind of unique way too which was neat. There was a tangible reason why the player was able to do a lot of things that the people in the world seemed unable to do. Which was kinda neat! And the explanation was more than just "You are the chosen one!"
Gameplay: Almost everything in this game is a stamina management issue. Attacking, running, jumping, and special weapons all use stamina. I could see this being a really interesting concept, but I didn't particularly enjoy it in practice. When you use up all your stamina trying to dodge you literally cannot deal damage. I think if I were to play again I would set the difficulty a little easier so that the basic attack didn't require stamina, that would give it more of a Zelda: Between Two Worlds feel with all the sub-weapons using stamina but your melee being free. The platforming and controls are a bit weird at first, but I actually really enjoyed it later on. Crouch and Run being shoulder buttons definitely grew on me and I kind of hope more games think to control like this in the future.
Would I recommend this game? That's tricky. I had a good time playing this game, but I don't think it really does anything unique that would cause me to recommend it to someone unless they really wanted a Zelda 2-like. Apparently the developers are working on a sequel which could be really cool, the implications for our main character at the end of the story are pretty big. [7/10]
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