22.0 hours played
Written 26 days ago
For a game that's less like Journey and Abzu than it is "what if the Journey/Abzu developers made a simpler version of Breath of the Wild?", I think it's great. It's pretty fun, though not without issues (one of which is tied to the central premise of the game), very pretty, and another great entry in this developer's games.
The animation is just as nice as it is previous Giant Squid games, [spoiler]with some fun references to Abzu in particular[/spoiler]. Environments are pretty and inviting, and it's very fun to fly around, spot something that looks like it might be something, and duck down to see what's there. The environmental storytelling is a bit more fun than the actual writing, although the writing is fine enough. The eagle is cute and her interactions with the Hunter are lovely. The petting mechanic is fun but does get a bit annoying when you get to one of the areas where it's more necessary and struggle with the platforming.
The story is interesting, and I'm intrigued by one theory I saw that [spoiler]this is a sort of prequel for Journey, and Journey is what happens when the Godslayer was successful[/spoiler], as well as [spoiler]the implication of the connections to that glass dream palace from Abzu showing up here, and how similar the cursed Hunter looks to the protagonist of Abzu, and how the magic orbs are similar to what the Abzu civilization was using for energy, which led to their downfall[/spoiler]. I think the concept of tying the game's core premise to the concept of open-world games as a sort of juxtaposition with their past linear titles is kind of odd, especially since it seems to be such a firm part of the marketing (e.g., "Look, it has no map! You have to just explore! You're truly pathless!"). It also results in, in all honesty, [spoiler]a kind of lame climax, which is basically, open-world games are the best[/spoiler]. While it is fun to wander and explore, it gets frustrating when you have to backtrack to find all the lightstones and keep ending up back at the place to turn them in because it looks little different at a distance from other puzzles you haven't gotten to, or when stuff is tucked into a corner you can easily forget about or miss. Despite the relative smallness of each map, the maps are decently large, and altitudes get increasingly sharp, making it more of an issue to explore. I don't entirely hate open-world games, though I do have a preference for linear stories, and Journey and Abzu definitely appeal to me more than this game does. That being said, a map really would have helped deal with at least some of the frustration. Knowing landmarks, especially if you find them yourself like in say, most other games that involve maps, is not the same as [spoiler]following someone else's path[/spoiler].
Mechanically, I think the game looks harder than it is. I avoided it because "shoot arrows to traverse" seemed too frustrating, but it's a lot easier to learn than it appears, and is quite fun in practice. There is still stuff to figure out with movement, particularly during [spoiler]boss encounters[/spoiler], but generally it's pretty simple. As it's a simplified version of a more regular RPG made by Giant Squid, everything in the game is largely focused on traversal and exploration: learning to travel farther and faster, and learning about the world's history. And that works well. There's no issue with weapon durability or storage space or "rain makes you fall off mountains" or upgrading your armor. It's very simple: solve puzzles so you can go farther and faster. And the puzzles are generally interesting. They're not too huge, at least not like some of the early Tomb Raider puzzles could be, but more focused on relatively small areas (e.g., even puzzles that cover an entire fort are relatively easy to bounce around without getting lost/confused). I only had issues with a couple of puzzles, one of which was in the fourth zone, which involved [spoiler]timing and honestly luck, and which I felt was very frustrating[/spoiler]. Speed puzzles (with golden butterflies) are also generally frustrating, and there are some torch puzzles near the end of the game with particularly tricky and irritating angles. Otherwise, the vast majority of puzzles are decently simple, with increasing difficulty as you go through the game, and they're a nice challenge. The similarity to Korok puzzles in BOTW is incredibly obvious: I was relying on tricks I'd learned in BOTW and Tears of the Kingdom to find where lantern puzzles might be, and more right than not.
I think some reviews overstate how frustrating the boss fights can be, while not quite stating specifically what the issues with the boss fights are, or doing so accurately. The first four boss fights [spoiler]involve chasing after the boss and shooting them until you get to the phase change, and this can be frustrating, especially as you traverse over rivers or odd hills, and relies sometimes on luck to you eventually getting alongside the boss to shoot them[/spoiler]. Bosses 1 and 4 weren't an issue for me, but bosses 2, 3, and 5 all had issues, some of which I felt weren't properly explained and were honestly unfair and partially based on faulty platforming mechanics. Boss 3 has [spoiler]a phase where you have to traverse across the arena while the boss shoots at you, and it's hard to gauge depth or when the boss will fire, while dealing with incredibly poor platforming[/spoiler]. Boss 5 [spoiler]has, so far as I can tell, an attack that you can only randomly dodge, which is when the eagle attacks you. Sometimes I dodged it, sometimes I didn't, even when I seemed to. I have no idea why. The only good news is, so long as you keep getting back up and fighting and getting through the other attacks, you can get the boss down[/spoiler]. Boss 2 was annoying in part because there's a section that's also in God of War: Ragnarok and I hated the mechanic then, and it was unfun to see it again here. Frankly, the platforming is a central issue for this game, and I hope it's fixed a bit in Sword of the Sea. I also think the stalking catch mechanic before you trap bosses with pillars was incredibly irritating. The stealth sucked and the permanent XP loss was worse.
A number of reviews insist all the areas are the same/all the bosses are the same, which I disagree with. While there is repetition (the game is mostly big open grassy areas with mountains, towers, big animal bones, ruined buildings), and a number of mechanics get reused in boss fights, the boss fights are not identical or even near identical, at least after the first phase. If you are choosing not to explore the environment and learn about the stories that happen - and there's some interesting lore in this game - then it's on you for insisting every zone is the same. By that metric, the zones in Journey and Abzu are all pretty identical as well. It's not as complex as fighting bosses in BOTW, but it's still relatively unique each time, especially after the first phase. And for all I found boss 5 frustrating, there were even visual elements of it that I enjoyed, particularly [spoiler]the moon shots when they formed a line of moons[/spoiler].
This isn't my favorite of Austin Wintory's soundtracks for these games (Journey and Abzu are just more memorable at the moment), but he does a good job as ever, and his music is worth checking out if you haven't. It's all DRM-free on Bandcamp as well. I want to shout out one track that only played when [spoiler]I got into an underground puzzle in zone 4, and which was quite beautiful, though I don't know which track it was. It reminded me a lot of Journey's soundtrack[/spoiler].
Overall, if you liked Journey and Abzu, and generally enjoy puzzle games, and maybe even like RPGs, this is worth giving a shot, especially if it's on sale.
