Owlboy

I have to say, this is just what I needed. It's a very good looking game, good controls with a very touching story. It's very forgiving, so it's perfect for people who don't like games to be too hard, but it's still engaging. Battles remind me of the old Mega Man games, patterns are clear and still a lot of fun. I played it using a PS4 controller, it worked flawlessly on Linux.

Owlboy suffers from a fatal combination of really bad controls and mechanics, to do with general exploration and especially grabbing your buddy and having to fire and dodge enemies. The game is not a twin stick shooter although it seems as though it dearly wants to be and is frustrating to get to grips with. Boss battles amplify these issues and combined with poor indication as to what to do and far too nasty/fast boss moves makes these nearly as bad as Shovel Knight, although not by much. "Story" is boring and there is no sense of excitement is in looking towards the next area...if anything Owlboy feels contained - quite stupidly so - which is a disappointing contrast to the promise offered by the titular character being able to fly. Characters seem well fleshed out but are often more decoration than anything to properly interact with or get to care about. I liked the dungeons although the combination of screen transition switching, at random, from screen slip to camera track was ghastly. I wish it would have just done one and not both. Also you collect coins but no shop - dumb - why not just called them something else that unlocks abilities? A note about the software itself - it will crash on you.

If you want to know what happened if game development will be stuck in 2D, this game is the perfect example. The developer use 'high-bit' term, and I couldn't agree anymore. The pixel arts is so beautiful! The attention to detail is absurdly high. The animation is very good, the music is pleasant, and the sound effect is appropriate. But the story and gameplay itself..... The gameplay is okay, just okay. It's not bad, but not that good. Flying feels weird (I like tapping double jump, not jump and then direction) The platforming is not challenging enough, one of the boss have difficulty spike but that's the most fun boss fight, The story is borderline anime cringy, your character is lonely because everyone around him is a dick without good reasons. The story is trying to epic but full of mystery-science-non sense.

Just like Boyhood, it took 10 years to make! so it must be good, right? Wrong. I ran into a bug at the beginning of the game that forced me to backtrack for an hour, only to realize that all I could do was revert to a previous checkpoint. Combat is deceptively simple for seasoned veterans of hardcore platformers, but will leave noobies in frustration due to its muddled and cumbersome mechanics. No one is satisfied, so who was this game made for? The story starts off on a very wrong note, regardless of what message the developers wanted to send and continues to chug along, not something worth sticking around for. The art and the soundtrack are great, but that's not anywhere near enough to make up for the terrible combat and mediocre story. DIssapointing, seeing as the game misrepresents itself as a light nostalgia trip with Zelda-esque qualities. Instead it's just a disappointing mess.

I might update my review later but after about 6 hours i can already say this game is worth the price. The game controller (using Xbox one) and the whole feeling is amazing. I love the characters, music, story and the gameplay. These days with all first person shooters and open world environment, story driven nostalgic games such as this are very rare. Really recommend this game, specially for this price.