Anodyne

Anodyne plays with nostalgia with gameplay clearly inspired to old Zelda's games and with a story that reminds me somewhat of earthbound, with surreal themes and some oniric maps. Its major points are exploration and some boss fights ( few of them actually) Beyond that, the game, after 2 hours of playing it, becomes extremely repetitive and bland, with a narration that most of the time is a little pretentious. However, if discounted and if you are a fan of this kind of game, sure why not?

After 6 hours I finished and I must say the game is good, would I recommend it? yes, if you catch it at a discount, is simple, falls on the easy side, the story is serviceable, and has a bunch of little charming details, with an exploitable jump so you can make your own fun. Graphics: as you can see from the screenshots it is for the most part like an old SNES game with some decent sprite work and a good variety of locations Sound: again, the sound desing is very evocative of the era, there's no voice acting and the music fits perfectly with some catchy tunes (reminds me a bit of Earthbound) Controls: the controls are simple, and if you plan to paly it with a gamepad I suggest you to use the D-pad since the sticks can make it feel too responsive Mechanics: This is really where the game shines, it plays like an old Legend of Zelda, but without the mountain of gadgets, instead it focuses more in well timed jumps with your weapon doubling as a tool. It goes like this: go into dungeon, jump a lot, grab some keys, open doors, battle a boss and claim your rewards to open new paths in the overworld (you can easily travel to certain points with teleporters) The game feels too easy at times since there are checkpoints inside the dungeons and if you die you just respawn at the last checkpoint you activated with full life without losing your progress, ah, and you don't take damage if you fall into a bottomless pitsin case you miss a jump, I guess it is a bit balanced with the plethora of traps waiting for you and the scarce means of healing. To tell the truth my absolute favorite part was to try and exploit the jump to cheat the puzzles, it was quite entertaining and when it worked it was glorious (you can return to the entrance of the dungeon at any time in case you get stuck) The story is a bit dark with some colorful NPCs sprinkled around the world, you can see the plot twist coming from miles away and the ending is a cliffhanger, but overall it was ok

Playing Anodyne, I couldn't help but feel like it's more a proof of concept than a game. A game with stand-ins, until a plot is decided upon, & the game gets a complete overhaul. Because although the mechanics at the base of this game are good enough, playing it leads to a hodgepodge experience. Nowhere in the game do you get a reason to keep on playing. And the more you play, the more difficult it becomes, & the more it requires backtracking. Which makes it hard to continue, considering the game's bad controls, generic enemies & the empty & somewhat linear world you're forced to explore. Some areas in this game are beautiful, & some enemies are interesting, but they're greatly outweighed by repetitive levels where the only thing unique about them is that they contain yet another dungeon. Enemies range from inconsequential to extremely annoying, but most of them you can simply avoid. In fact, it is better to avoid them, since the more annoying ones will push you into pits, causing many cheap deaths. You'd do much better by running through levels & avoiding conflict, rather than slowly exploring. But cheap deaths can't be avoided completely, due to this game's bad controls. It seems the interaction & attack buttons are the same, meaning that trying to attack an enemy, you'll sometimes find yourself doing anything but. Luckily your character has lots of health, & save points are scattered throughout the levels, but it doesn't make the experience any more fun. It simply avoids making the game unplayable. The creators do try to make the experience better, by adding humor throughout the game, but most of the time it's cringeworthy. All in all, Anodyne reminds me a lot of Evoland - a game that's more an homage to games of its ilk, rather than a game. Anodyne apes Zelda so much, you can't avoid thinking about it. Especially since Link makes a cameo during the game. Frankly, I'd much rather see Anodyne stand on its own two feet.

I wasn’t sure at first what I was getting myself into once I started playing Anodyne. However, after finishing my playthrough, its aesthetics and narrative outweighed whatever concerns I originally had prior. Anodyne is very Zelda-esque in terms of its top-down perspective, more in the lines of the Game Boy entries. You traverse through various areas while figuring out the mysteries behind the game’s world and story with the inventory at hand. The puzzles and bosses may not be as fleshed out but at the same time don’t hurt the game design either. The soundtrack on the other hand speaks for itself given of its haunting/eerie chiptune-like nature that helps elevate the already haunting/eerie nature of the game. Overall, if you love the Zelda series or any top-down classic/8-bit/16-bit/retro adventure game meshed with dark, subtle, and obscure aesthetics, Anodyne may be your type of game.

This is what you get when you slam Yume Nikki together with Zelda. Oldschool, exploring-is-the-primary-focus Zelda. No formulas; no stun-and-chop bosses; just a big world with many secrets to discover. You receive very few mobility upgrades as you go, so the challenges that you face are just different, rather than getting progressively harder. It's a strange world, too; some of the things that lead you to new areas are a call back to the days when video games would celebrate those weird, dreamlike experiences that made them special. Puzzles were clever, music did a great job of fitting the mood, and visuals did far more than you usually see them do in one of these retro pixel throwback titles. This is an all-around lovingly-crafted game that I can't recommend enough to explorers everywhere. So, why only four stars? The game is excellent... until you beat it. There's a postgame in which you have a new power that lets you explore the world even further. The problem is that you are asked to explore in ways that actively break the game, and sometimes do, forcing you to restart again and again from your last checkpoint, because you're stuck; completely unable to move. I don't dislike the mechanic, but there are tons of required blind leaps that will often result in failure if you want to get all of the items. It's Zelda to the bitter end, including the second quest that soured my experience.