Hob

Could be a good game but is completely BROKEN by the game saves bug. There is no excuse to releaase a game in this condition. There are suggested fixes/workarounds all over the place, unfortunately none of them work. I have no intention of playing another 4 hours just to have the same thing happen. If you don't mind playing for hours just to have your game saves disappear, go ahead and buy the game. Otherwise, save your money for a game that is not broken...

The game looks very good and its universe is unusual, I was dragged in by the nice videos and the good reviews, plus having appreciated torchlight which is from the same developers. Unfortunately, that's where the good news stop. The camera can't be controlled and it's hiding important stuff at best, losing your time, or making you fall off cliffs at worst, especially on curvy and narrow catwalks which are frequent in the game. The combats are not very interesting as death gives your full health back but enemies are still wounded though. The music and ambient sounds could be best described as "non-existent". The game crashes at least once per hour. But the real showstopper to me is the very "fuzzy" map and the total lack of indications of what to do or where to go. You have to wander around a bigger and bigger map, hoping you can unlock some new area and maybe progress in the game. But you don't know where in the map there's at least one thing to do. It's terribly boring, you waste your time traveling the map again and again and again. When you gain some ability, you don't even know what it unlocks. You have to watch walkthroughs to find where you should go next. But quickly you wander the map again. When you become hopeless, you uninstall the game, bitter after your wasted time on a game you've been lured to play by nice trailers. There's no story anyway in this game.

I simply could not put this game down. This is the sort of game that doesn't drown you in exposition and cutscenes. It lands you in this beautiful world and prompts you to just go explore, which is exactly what you'll be doing. So if you like minimal story (but enough to be intriguing), incredibly cool level altering puzzles, gorgeous art style with a dash of not too frustrating combat, this is for you. Although, I was just a little bummed when it all ended. Like an addiction, I wanted more.

Hob has a new twist on the basic Zelda-formula: you change the world in spectacular fashion as you progress. And there's one other thing nobody seems to mention: there are no boss battles. Instead you need to find your way through the landscape. This may not sound as exciting as fighting huge bosses, but really was a revelation to me. Don't think about it, just go get it.

I was able to play it under Wine for a few hours and then it stopped working. Now, whenever I try to reinstall or even install on a new PC (in Linux under Wine) it won't go past the startup dialog without crashing. I'll update the review with the specific error message when I get the time. I also installed it on a Windows 10 machine and it worked fine. Unfortunately, that's not where I play my games. 5 stars for the game but deducted 2 for crashing and 1 for zero chance of a fix.