Dust: An Elysian Tail

The voice acting, art, and the area design is really amazing! The variety in combat is a bit lacking as the game goes on, unfortunately.there are too many enemies that follow the same "humanoid enemy with a melee weapon which you either dodge or parry". The exploration is good, but the enemies feel like they distract rather than add to the level. I still play the game for the story adn art alone though.

GOAT. Awesome. Absolutely amazing.

First on Steam and now on GOG! This game is absolutely fantastic. At grass roots, it's a easy to play but hard to master side-scrolling RPG that visits many beautifully drawn areas throughout the world, and has you encounter a variety of well designed enemies throughout your journeys. I'm not sure why I love this game so much... It just has some kind of charm, I think. A charm that made me play the game from beginning to end with only one break, and it lasted me a good 23 hours! To be honest I didn't find or unlock all the secrets within the game though, so there's probably more gameplay to be found. You simply need to play this game. The combat flows beautifully and gives a wonderful sense of challenge; When you die, you know the only thing you can blame is yourself, because the controls are so very crisp that it all comes down to you and your ability to master them.

I truly love the idea of Xbox Live Arcade: to support independent developers to release their games and to show them to the public. A lot of great games were "born" there, and Dust is one of them. It has beautiful graphics and nice voice acting. The gameplay is not so various. 90% of my in-game time I just flew and spread the lightnings everywhere. All the rest I spend on crafting new cool stuff for Dust (armors, rings, etc.). Yeah, the rpg / platforming / fighting elements in this game are weak, but it has its style, and it's interesting, how the story ends. Only this thought made me make my way to the end.

All I can say that this is an incredible game. One of the best that are here on GOG. But I'll note here at the start - I don't recommend playing it on keyboard, it was designed to be played on a pad. If you're a metroidvania type of game fan - you're at home. If you're not - do not worry - I'm not to and despite that I enjoyed massively this game. The combat system is simple enough to learn it and it doesn't take that much to master it and have fun. There are some RPG elements in the game, you gain exp from slaying monsters (additional bonus exp from big hit chains) and you distribute the stat points. You also have an inventory which enhances further your stats, you can gather materials and "craft" the stuff. Honestly it's just a way of progression in the game, something to keep you interested beyond the story and hacking through enemies, it is also a good system of rewarding the player - the best stuff comes from treasure chests that are optional, but many of them require more effort to get to them. The visuals are amazing, everything is hand made, very coherent and just full of character. I loved the voice acting in the game. And the soundtrack is also very good. The story.. The whole game is just worth playing for the story. Although it's not very complicated it's very interesting, inspiring and at the end - heartwarming. The world that was created for the game contains many mysteries that are unsolved, many basics of this universe are very shortly described without much background, but that really didn't bother me, it's not a massive AAA openworld rpg (thank God). Consider it as a tale. It's not a very long game, it took me 9+ hours to finish it doing some of the optional quests and stuff but I can say every hour was worth it and I'm satisfied with it. Go buy it, support the devs and enjoy the game.