At first sight, I was not that impressed. It was more of a "oh no, not yet another random 2D platformer". But after 30 mins of playing I got the metroidvania feeling. It actually reminded me of the old NES game Ufouria/Hebereke combined with Salomons Key and Metroid. Not that I'm a fan of Solomons Key puzzles, but It was a perfect balance of those kind of puzzles and it kind of made sense to the game mechanics. While writing I'm at the Beholder and I've destroyed the three other guardians. I'm very impressed and I regret I didn't buy the second one as well on the Sale. I have to wait to the next sale ;)
I saw the pictures on this game and it looked pretty nice. I was expecting some kind of Settlers or Age of Empires look-a-like game but in this beautiful world. But what did I get? Some kind of mobile game. It was basically no interactions, no characters moving, you couldn't control anything. It was just clicking on all highlighted places opening up a popup with yes or no. Clicking around everywhere and then stuff just disappeared from the world and you could proceed. If you're a fan of Clash of Clans and similar mobile games, maybe it's for you - but imagine Clash of Clans in single player. This is basically what this is. No no, I wasted my money. To be fair to the game, I played it for 10 minutes, so maaaybe there is a chance it will get better the more time you give the game. If that's the case you can ignore this comment. But those 10 minutes did not catch me even a second.
I got kind of sad when the work in DK3 was interrupted and Bullfrog died. The games has always followed me almost my whole life and they have high replay-ability. The original one DK1 is of course the best of them all still and no clone can compete with that game. However, if you compare DK2 with War for the Overworld, it's actually not that much different at all. It has basically everything that DK2 has, but with some extra stuff like potions and the sanctuary. I did not really find the potion stuff that useful but it's a fun addition. The only thing I miss are the original monsters from the DK series, but since it's a spiritual successor, I understand they could not use those characters and names. I don't "feel" that much for the WFTO monsters as I feel with the DK monsters. But they have a similar monster for the corresponding character in DK, but with less personality. What bugged me more was when you play as one of the monsters, it was quite a bad UI for switching between the weapons and I could not really see any difference while switching weapons. Imagine DK1 when you cast those red little screaming blobs and then switch to a fireball, and then switch to healing - it's all very clear and visible. In WFTO, it was more of "I have no clue what's happening now, but I'm switching weapons at least". However, it's a very good game even though the DK games are still much better.
I started playing this game 3 years ago, and I saw on Gog that I by that time gave it 7 minutes of playtime. I don't know why, I probably was not in the mood for a game like this at that point. I just gave it another try and I've finalized the first 2 chapters. And darn, I'm so happy I gave this game a second chance. It's so few pixels, but yet so many details. It's extremely good artwork since I with 5 white pixels can see that something actually is a letter for example. The context really makes everything fit very well. I really boosts your imagination while playing the game and that's a very important part when it comes to these kind of games. Compare Monkey Island 1 with the remastered version of MI1. I 100% prefer the old style because I really prefer that world I imgine from the pixels over the very describing remastered world which does not let you use your imagination at all. Last Door really puts me in another world and I totally love that.
Games nowadays kind of has to catch the interest quite fast if people are going to play the games. After spending 200+ hours in Cuphead and Hollow Knight, I really wanted something similar. I felt this was exactly the game I needed. I gave it 1 hour of gameplay, I beat the first boss and came a bit longer. But there was just something annoying about the level design that bothered me. It felt like Meat Boy or some game that was just made to have a lot of obstacles just for the sake of having obstacles. The graphics was nice, but it felt a bit repetitive and monotonous after a while. I did not really get any feeling for anything, even though the game mechanics were pretty cool. It felt like they got inspired by a lot of nice parts from Hollow Knight, but made it worse in some way. I may give it another hour to see if I will start enjoying the game but this far I don't really want to keep playing.
My first impression of this game was. "Yeah, this will be my new Hollow knight experience in a musical sense while waiting for Silksong". My expectations was waaay to high though. It's kind of a musical Hollow knight clone when it comes to both graphics and controls (if you play with Xbox controller like I did). I enjoyed it for 30 minutes, then I just got bored. It was just not entertaining enough for me. I have always disliked puzzle games (I love logical puzzle games though like escape room isch style) with rotating cubes and how to get from point A to B and then proceed to next stage. Trine series are an exception though. I was expecting some more metroidvania RPG feeling on this one with characters to interact with and going back and forth throughout the world etc...just collecting "coins" and getting over obstacles is not really fun. It should contain some more in my opinion. It's not a bad game, it's just not the type of game I enjoy. It would have been a success though if it could be minibosses and enemies and less focus on "hmm, how do I get past these obstacles".
I only played it for about an hour or so, but I can't really say I enjoyed it at all. Combat was not fun, HUD looked a bit too...clumsy in some way. It felt like a typical "I also want to make an RPG game with "X of Y" items. What made me not continue playing was lack of feeling in the combat. You hit a dog for example and there was no "is hit" animation or nice sounds that makes if fun to fight. I appreciate the effort, but it was too generic for me. Maybe I should have tried a couple of more hours to give it a fair review since I did not really get into the story part.
