just "finished" it. Accidentally got BEHIND the last door somehow before the final boss and glitched the game out to where I fell into a void, and then couldn't even press start Lol. But when I rebooted I saw my stats: 82% and 9:49 time played, so pretty much exactly 10 hours when you count the boss fight. I'm pretty sure my actual time is higher for as many times as I redid some fights but maybe the timer keeps ticking for those, I am unsure.
Off the top of my head I got some thoughts about what could have improved the game for me
- some kind of map, seriously this game would benefit so much from a hollow knight style explore-first-then-get-knowledge type map, or just fog of war even. It's kind of a hassle without it because
- the game really could have used more differentiation within the zone areas, the environments were great and pretty and there was a lot of different ones, but within many especially the jungle, cemetery, and gardens, it was really hard to find your way around outside of what corner of your TV you were walking in, which wouldn't have been a huge problem is the game had:
- an out of combat sprint, even if it was only available late game like castlevania handles it
- a parry system could have spiced up the combat a bit plus I love me a good parry
- I would have also REALLY liked to see more meaningful upgrades with your soul points OR
- some progression within individual weapons instead. Probably the biggest downer about the game was how shallow the character progression felt vs how it could be
- last complaint is I dont really like the 'Hold R Then Press B' to use your abilities. Why not just B? Also I can't count how many times I went to use the fucking hookshot but instead rolled off an edge because I pressed the wrong button lmao.
- Also wasn't entirely sold on the different weapons giving you different dodge distances, speed alone would have been nice, but otherwise holy fuck were daggers unusable on any kind of small platform because your dodge takes you across the screen and right into water
Despite all this stuff - fantastic game, polished so hard it makes me wonder why they had character upgrades feel so useless. Other pros for me
+ gorgeous
+ incredible soundtrack
+ excellent enemy variety, way beyond most games I've played in this genre
+ fun boss fights without trying to be TOO hard that it's frustrating
+ nice combat challenges like the avarice's
+ combat itself felt solid
+/- the weapon variety was fun but come on, no scythe?? easy fuckin win there guys, come on
now that I finished, I read about some of the postgame stuff and wow. there's a lot more than i expected and I give them mad props for that. but man, without a map and/or sprint I just don't have the energy to revisit these places. :( makes me sad. Maybe they can patch something in
overall, really loved it, such an easy 9/10 despite whatever "improvements" i might wish for or things I'd have done differently. Doesn't matter. Game was executed near flawlessly for what it set out to do. Can't believe how few people worked on it too, they should be very proud. Easy to recommend to just about anyone who likes zelda-ish action puzzle type game. we're really in an indie renaissance these last few years.
