The game looks very nice and sounds pretty good too — some sound effects are from a stock library, which made them feel uninspired; the songs are mostly good. The combat has quite a few issues, but the weapons are solid and fun: the targeting with the shield or a ranged weapon is undependable — cycling through enemies is often not a viable option and my shield (or ranged weapon) locking onto the incorrect enemy usually leads to feelings of unfairness — the enemies are mostly okay, some are very frustrating to fight — the frog-like enemies with armor on the front are annoying to fight and often frustrate; the eyeball enemies are also annoying to fight and take a while to kill; the bull enemy is pretty much a waiting game, because after he starts attacking you can pretty much just defend with your shield and wait for him to stop; the turrets are similiar to the bull, as they also turn the game into waiting, but thankfully not all of them: the spike enemies can be dodged, but if you don't dodge them when they start attacking it's just best to defend until they stop; the orb shooting turrets are fine, you can counter them easily and they don't shoot for long; the turrets who turtle can be fine to deal with if you can one-shot them with a counter or a weapon, but slow down the game otherwise — the animation is very problematic: some enemies don't have clear telegraphing or almost any at all; the rolling is fast, but doesn't have i-frames, which means it's just mostly used for maneouvring around the battlefield. The challenges are very different from one another, but this leads to big spikes in difficulty — one challenge I beat perfectly on my first time, others I didn't win at all — however they are overall a nice idea executed well. The plot asks somewhat interesting questions, but it's not too interesting overall. Overall the game is mostly noteworthy for it's art (visuals, music); the story and combat aren't too good. Together they create an alright to good game.
As a proof of concept this game is very well done, however it lacks polish, patches (from console version) and DLC (also from console version). The traversal is quite relaxing, never challenging, but quite frustrating on few occasions. The most of these frustrations are because of the delay of your actions being performed by the Prince, it takes a while for him to start running and other actions too. The worst of these is probably pole climbing as you cannot ascend or descend while changing direction, which you could in the previous games. The second worst are probably the vines, after you get on them you have to wait for Elika to reach you, at which point she jumps on your back, this gets less annoying over time as it's one of the ways Prince and Elika connect. Actions which were not performed are usually stored in a queue, which is good and bad. The combat could've flown together really well, if it wasn't for the QTEs during bossfights, which sometimes just don't stop, stopping you from getting to the actual combat of flowing through combos and parrying. The arena's end corners function as activation points for enviromental attacks, which for bosses means, that they'll either teleport back, when it's corruption or you get to throw them back in the middle, when it's not corruption. These do trigger even if you're in air doing combos, this frequently interrupts the combos, because the arenas are relatively small. QTEs, enviromental attacks and attack range are probably my only and biggest complains about combat. The story isn't the best, but the storytelling is well done and interacting with Elika is well executed. As character Elika can be interesting, it's just that she is also used as a wiki for exposition, which always kills her personality. Overall gameplay is too restrictive with its mechanics leading to some frustration, but it's permissive enough for it to be fun. I recommend that you get hotkeys for rapidly pressing keys for the fullest enjoyment.
