Bought it because I kept hearing about it. A difficult open world exploration game where you progress using your knowledge of the surrounding ecosystem, encountering various weird species interacting in interesting ways. Great graphics too. 5 hours in and I am very unimpressed. The game is difficult but more than anything because of how terrible the controls are. These are some of the worst controls I've encountered and in a game where everything instakills you. Slug cat moves like a piece of garbage. Very little information is shared in game. You will need to read up online if you want to understand almost anything at all. Even some fundamental and very important mechanics are not described in game. The story itself seems extremely bare bones so far. Progression is extremely bare bones. Even the ecosystem part is disappointing. OH WOW SOMETIMES A VULTURE ATTACKS A LIZARD THIS WORLD IS SO ALIVE SAME AS THE REAL WORDL WOW! Come on, are you stupid or what. Many good individual parts but as the game itself is next to unplayable because of how tedious and boring it is, I can't rate it higher than 2/5. Considering a refund.
Feels like a great game for those who love replaying the same game hundreds of times, learning about the deeper mechanics, trying out different setups, unlocking achievements etc. For anyone who does not enjoy achievement hunting, there are bad news: ingame progression is tied to it. Every achievement you unlock (e.g. knock 5 enemy units into the water in one skirmish) gives you one coin to unlock new squads with. There are 20 squads or so, with different mechs, weapons etc. They cost 2 to 4 coins each to unlock. As most of this currency is locked behind very niche interactions, like burning so or so many enemy units with this or that specific squad, the game not only forces you to play it in a specific way, but also with specific squads. If you are not interested in achievement hunting, you may find this mechanic very limiting. The game itself feels like it plays second fiddle to the coin grinding and unlocking new squads. I'm sure people who enjoy unlocking stuff will like this but for those who are not as excited about playing a building defender game again and again, it won't be as appreciated. I don't know how much time they put on the various squads, mechs etc but it felt like if they had been satisfied with 10 mechs instead of 27 and instead added a story, more diversity in the scenarios etc, they would have succeeded with making an actually good game for those who just want to play a good tactics game through once or twice. You could play this through in a few hours first time you pick it up. If at least the game had some sense of progression, e.g. that you to replay parts of it, gradually becoming more powerful, i guess it would be ok, but characters reach max level quickly and when you die you restart without any of the stuff you have collected and can only choose one character to restart with. There is no real progression except for achievements and the number of unlocked squads.
Voice actors are much better and it suits the catholic horror vibe well.
Strong 2. The game is decent but unpolished and with many questionable design decisions. Some platforming sections are fun, as are the boss fights. It just doesn't make up for the other extended parts of tedious repetition. Stages are too long and 70% of the rooms are similar to identical in how you approach them. Combat is not fun enough for it to remain fresh. Neither is it very varied. Few enemy types and no variety with attacks or weapons either. Barely any new mechanics are introduced. I found myself playing on despite of that but stopped after spending some time one the tower of time, which was incredibly annoying. I felt like I made good progress but just felt bored and like not playing. Felt kind of cheap with these annoying lasers and spikes everywhere as the game really slowed down a lot and became restrictive. You have to stand around and wait for platforms to cover lasers, playforms with spikes to move here or there etc. And just one mistake or slip on the often overly sensitive controls has you restarting from the checkpoint to wait around again. It felt more like a chore. I am not a big fan of that in platformers, as I mostly play them for fun. I don't mind difficulty but neither to I get a sense of fulfillment from clearing a difficult room. It has to be fun/interesting/whatever besides from being difficult. Asked for a refund after googling a bit and realising that soon the game would turn into a subpar metroidvania with constant fetch quests.
Weak 4. Not a typical platformer. Not at all like Limbo except the use of sillhouettes. Main strength is the intense combat where you typically find yourself fighting hard just to survive. Beautiful scenery as well and a great immersive soundtrack. The story is minimalistically told but does its thing. Puzzles are mostly physics based platformer puzzles. Found the game challenging but not overly difficult. Flaws: Movement at times wobbly. Can be annoying as the game requires a lot of precision. Menus barely work. Lots of weird decisions with the menus and when trying the change key bindings the game crashed. Once i pressed L1 by accident and restarted the game from the beginning. Quickly alt+f4 before it autosaved. The game at times fails to communicate what is going on. E g during the first boss fight, a rope hangs from a tree. A few minutes i tried my best to use that rope to escape, as the boss creatures had been portrayed as impossible to defeat in combat until that point. The rope is just graphics though. Small things like that. I think a better game design is to more clearly show what is needed without spelling it out. Wouldn't surprise me if some people wast like 20 min trying to find ways to escape using the rope. Which is a lot in a 2 hour game. Sometimes annoying random deaths due to how physics based the game is. E g some stone just bounces around, collides with another stone and drops onto your head. Some deaths feel truly random which leaves a poor taste. Checkpoints are never far though and the positives of the more sandboxy platformer feeling outwheigh the negatives. Short. 2 hours. Still, very enjoyable. Recommend it but beware that a lot of people seem to struggle with the difficulty. Just proceed cautiously. Dont run head in as if playing Diablo 2. Its more like Unto the end but with cute magic animal graphics.
I really enjoyed the game and 100%ed it after finishing the story. Great fun and a novel experience. I really enjoyed the atmosphere and the locations. Controlling the monster felt great as well and different to controlling any other video game characters. It has a nice sense of weight to it. I especially love zooming around as the tiny one. A bit short but that's for the better. Had it been 20 hours long, I'd have become bored with it. The game is not a typical metroidvania in the sense that you find new items, skills etc all the time. You're just an organism that has escaped from a lab, trying to leave a high security facility. So no complaints about the lenght. I just think the price is a bit high considering that the game is just a few hours long. I think the game would have benefitted a lot from adding some pacifist run stuff and a pacifist ending. It would increase the replayability a lot and add some depth to the game. As for now, it is a bit flat. Only one ending, which I usually don't mind. No reason to add endings for the sake of it. Its just that I would love to be able to play this game both as a hide and seek stealth game and a devour them all monster game. Good exploration with some secret rooms here and there. Enjoyed the puzzles in these rooms. At times difficult to keep track of where you have been and where you need to go. There is no map and there are no markers etc. Level design makes progress very intuitive and natural but if you do manage to stray of path it can take some time to get back to where you left it. Still, I would not want to monster to run around with a map or compass. Better as it is. I only managed to get lost once, luckily. Recommended but I'm glad I waited for a sale.
This is not an open world game but narrative driven and linear. It tells the story of a lynx cub that is separated from its family and a lost bear cub that it befriends. They search the forest for their respective families. The story is told through visuals and occasional lines of text. Simple, relaxing gameplay. Great music, mostly unimpressive graphics that at times are pretty.
No more arguments about which is the best game. OoT, FF6, Darkwood or Inside... I am sorry. You may quarrel among yourselves about which of you is second best.
It feels a lot more polished than previous games in the series. I liked the setting, the characters, their interactions and the gameplay itself, even though a few were very vague and had me consult a guide in order to progress. Main strength is the characters and how they change throughout the game. The characters have very different personalities and they themselves and their relationships change a lot as the story progresses. I found myself inspecting new items with every character as I wanted to read what each of the characters thought about a certain item. There is a lot of hidden storytelling in details like that and especially Moses' comments are very fun to read. The only real weakness is the at times a bit out there story. Without spoiling anything I felt like the story was made up of many separate parts that at times did not blend too well and could have done better as several separate games. It felt a bit more like Beautiful Desolation in that regard. A lot of wild ideas packed into one game. Previous Stasis titles were kind of subtle in comparison and focused on the main ideas and a main story. Difficult to say if its a 4 or 5 out of 5 but I'll give it a 5 because of the characters, their interactions and the great variety. Really solid game despite the story sometimes being a bit too out there.
