Posted on: February 14, 2024
Northensnow
Verified ownerGames: 566 Reviews: 8
Charming but poorly paced
As a € 5 DLC, Octopia is understandably not very long or brimming with content, but even in that optic there are a couple of ways it didn't quite nail the landing. - First and foremost, it's weirdly stingy with information where it matters. As an example let's look at the unavoidable fishing minigame: multiple recipes require the elusive Octopus, but the game doesn't specify where or under what conditions you can catch one, even in its description. It doesn't take a genius to know that it can be found in the sea, but where other games would at least give you a couple of pointers or make the animal in question more common during certain times/conditions, Octopia doesn't seem to do anything to facilitate yo, and as a result catching all fish ends up feeling more annoying than rewarding. Other things in the game have the same problem. In a game brimming with content like Stardew Valley it's ok to have the occasional mystery to figure out, but this game is relatively light in content, so the small arbitrary setbacks feel more annoying. Which leads me to... - As I just said the game doesn't have a whole lot of content in it, but it arbitrarily gates certain unlocks in a way that towards the end it required me to skip day after day, not having anything significant to do but wait for the NPC that would give me the last seeds I was missing to craft the last recipes. This could have been easily sidestepped by having something particularly expensive to aim towards, that would require me to keep farming/foraging. The game features mysterious "boxes" that open only when you have completed certain tasks (all recipes cooked, all crops harvested, all fish caught) but several of them end up feeling a bit anticlimactic due to this problem. I would say this DLC is worth the money and it's still brimming with charm, but there's something about the design philosophy of this studio that doesn't quite hit the mark.
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