UNSIGHTED

Loved the gameplay, atmosphere, soundtrack. The downside is I was hoping we would get more worldbuilding and a more detailed storyline.

It has an incredible, dense and interconnected world where exploring and backtracking are fun and rewarding, and one can take many paths. This together with a really fun combat makes it a hidden gem for me, and it's a shame it's not recognized more.

In 2021 I was playing a lot of demos and this was the most impressive one. Great pixel art, moody setting, tight combat, levels with verticality, and lots of secrets to find. All those things are true, but the thing is the demo area was an alternate version from the full game to showcase several things you find later on. The full game is paced slower, and unfortunately I think the exploration suffers a lot because of that. Everywhere I go in this game is a dead end. Either a one-way wall disabled from the other side, or a pit, or a giant invincible enemy. You get the location of 5 key areas, but I'm finding exploring them to be quite frustrating because it really is linear. I'm only now close to the end of the first of five, about 4 hours of play-time, yet I've explored 30% of the map just trying different directions and failing. I'm not feeling the sense of freedom and discovery I felt in the demo. So traversing the map is more of a chore. You constantly have to hit switches to move platforms around. I wish it were more combat-oriented, because the mechanics are very tight with no jank (good parry, running and jumping feels great, impactful melee). At times I find myself wishing the levels were more like Crosscode, which is insane (the verticality is much better implemented here), but in this game it is actually more tedious to simply travel from one room to another. Last thing, there's a bunch of features in this game (digging, fishing) which you might like but I find over-designed and distracting. You have a dog/fox companion- yay! Except you need to stop and feed it every five minutes, nap every 15 minutes, and if you don't, it makes realistic yapping and whining noises. Yay... As far as the time constraints where NPCs eventually die, I don't have much to say because you can turn it off, plus I don't care because the NPC design is a weird art style that is rather grotesque. The emotional tone in the home village is like, corny, but also gross.

Remember, you can turn the timer off, but leaving it on adds another layer to the gameplay and the real sense of urgency (unlike many other games that tell you to "save everyone before it's too late"). Besides campaign, you'll get roguelike mode and boss rush as well. Also couch coop is quite rare these days. 9.5/10

I was looking for a Zelda-like to play and found this one in my recommendations. Wow. This game takes the old Zelda formula and turns it up to 11. I'm guessing if you like 2D Zeldas, you'll like this one. If you were hoping for "Zelda with far better combat", you'll love it. One note - the whole game is under a time limit. In my estimation, the time limit is integral to the game's story and you'll miss some without it. But you CAN disable it with a very obvious option. I'd recommend not and letting the story happen as intended, but obvs up to you.