It's really a shame. I was excited that I was still able to live to see this. And while the game is overall alright (the atmosphere seems even more dreary than Hollow Knight - whereas you had upbeat characters like the cartographer in Hollow Knight, it's almost all doom and gloom this time around), the pogo mechanic totally sucks the fun out of the game. Having to do precise jumps during the Path of Pain in Hollow Knight was one thing but managing to hit those "hook points" multiple times in a row and likely ending up in spikes if you don't - no thanks.
I can't say enough great things about this game. Lovely visuals, big world to explore, quite a lot to do, charming story and characters. No real drama, just whimsy. Pretty rare for a well-made game.
TITLE: A lovely game with some unfortunate choices Alba begins with organizing a protest against a hotel getting constructed. Kind of ironic that people who screwed over nature particularly badly by building low-rise houses all over the place would object to the construction of a tall hotel that would make use of space that is sacrificed much more efficiently. But... partly misguided messages about saving the environment aside, it's a really gorgeous and fun game. Nice to have a game where you can explore a beautiful world and do tasks that aren't kill A, steal B, etc. Particularly the animations are fantastic - whether it's the different walk/run animations for Alba or those for all those different animals. Despite the stylized visuals, one can really see all the love that went into creating those. Similar with the care and attention to sound design. Oh yeah, another thing that I'm not particularly fond of is the writing. I think they try too hard to make the kids seem authentic. And the grandparents too awkwardly worldly. There are of course pretentious people like that but I would've preferred it if at least those main characters weren't and they would've stuck with either English or Spanish. At least I suspect that it's Spanish - I can't read those words. And so if you buy it for your child, be prepared to get bugged about the meaning of words frequently. Or supply a Spanish translation dictionary, I guess. Still - overall, a great change of pace compared to most other games out there. And if you don't buy it for yourself but a child, I doubt that it'll notice most of the minor gripes I've described above.
First of all, the performance of the game is just fine. I'm getting 80-120 FPS on max settings with a mobile RTX 2070. For one thing, people underestimate how taxing stylized visuals can be. For another, if you want all games to run similarly and be able to run them just like everyone else does, buy a console! At least as far as I've played it, I had a great time with exploring that gorgeous island and solving some basic puzzles. BUT... Based on the description, the trailer and reviews, I assumed that this game only draws very slight inspiration from Lovecraft but being about a milder form of mystery. More focused on the fantastical and surreal instead of being creepy or featuring violence. Well, I was wrong. It didn't take long for the first death and blood to make an appearance. And so it's too dark for my taste. Despite what I would argue is deceptive presentation, I'm neither going to subtract points, nor ask for a refund because it's a great effort that I'm sure many people will enjoy. (Character movement really should be faster though.)
The writing is obviously where this excels. One might think that the whole shtick gets old after a while but - it doesn't. There are layers upon layers of wall-breaking and it's hilarious to see it unfold. Which is not to say that the puzzles weren't designed brilliantly as well. Including the hint system. Because sometimes, you don't necessarily need the hint but just realize what is clickable on screen. Overall, I think I used the system maybe twice to figure out what's clickable and twice for actual hints. The other times, the puzzles were mostly straightforward. Now, personally, I prefer my games to either be light-hearted or have no story at all, so I didn't care too much for the drama that got pretty thick at the end. I suspect that most people won't mind though and even for me, it was a mix of being teary-eyed and laughing a lot at the absurdity of what was going on. I did love the inclusion of being critical about the games industry, down to the Kickstarter campaign. Wonderful how all of that sort of built the core for everything. Oh and - there's a ton of content. Took me almost 11 hours to finish it. And then I realized based on the achievements that there's actually some more stuff hidden in there. Given that one can revisit previous chapters, that's quite an incentive to go back and figure out what that was about. (Same for the different endings - which I always appreciate.) Can't wait to see what's next!
Depending on one's taste, it's been quite a while since the last one. And in my opinion, Batbarian is right up there with e.g. Hollow Knight and Axiom Verge because of its innovative mechanics. Not that it has much in common with those two games. Or really most metroidvanias. It's as if its puzzling and trap elements were inspired by La Mulana but then - it is more forgiving, making it more enjoyable in my opinion. The humor reminds me a bit of Unepic - but the comedic style is very different. Then there is the bat and the companions. Familiars of course exist in a few metroidvanias but they never work like this. By which I mean they are usually not involved in the puzzles and story. Boss fights are incredibly well-designed too. And so - sure, Batbarian may have been inspired by games of the past but it puts that unique spin on them and combines those elements into something that feels unlike any other metroidvania. It even incorporates shmup elements here and there! Another thing it does that I don't recall having seen in other metroidvanias are regular auto saves. And you can pick whether you want to reload from such an auto save or the last save point. Which really helps with not getting frustrated by puzzle rooms that at times already can take some time to get through. If you had to keep running/fighting to said rooms, it would be a bit much. The only thing I really find lacking is enemy variety. About 15-20 (which even includes some that are rarely used) during the first ~10 hours and ~35 total (including bosses and semi-bosses) often feels like you're seeing the same ones again and again. And indeed, you'll still encounter the blobs from the very beginning hours later. And some minor stuff, such as not being able to skip dialogue before a boss fight, even if you already failed the fight once. But none of these flaws take away enough from all of the aspects that Batbarian does really well that it would be worth reducing the rating.
(Based on the demo. Had I bought it, I would've requested a refund at the same time that I Alt+F4ed out of the demo because I didn't want to spend another second in this game.) The very first scene is already an indicator of things to come. The main character saying to herself: "Mom's gonna save the day!" Tacky lines like that belong in cheesy action movies, not sci-fi puzzle games. The main character is established as somewhat arrogant, irresponsible, unprofessional (to be fair, so is at least one of her co-workers) and lacking basic parenting skills. I would not have expected her to apparently be middle-aged. Overall, the dialogue seems like something an immature student would come up with, trying too hard to write something authentic. Usually, I don't find myself analyzing visual flaws in games but I suppose some of them were so apparent, that the other ones naturally followed. Like the tiny subtitles, the awkwardly placed fps meter, the trees that look like relics from a number of years ago or the jittery grass. I would expect there to be ready-made assets that look and animate better these days. Which might have been the reason why I also noticed the lack of detail on the ground (~10 years ago, parallax maps were often used, not sure what tech would be common today) and that the water shader seems messed up. The geometry of the river bank, as well as hands and orbs of the character blend into it. Now, I love puzzle games and there aren't a lot of high quality games released in that genre. So just based on the mechanics and overlooking various visual flaws just mentioned, it would've been an interesting, somewhat decent looking games, since I find the setting and overall design quite appealing. Hence the relatively high rating. I think the effort invested and potential that is there has to be recognized. But I obviously just can't stomach the writing and based on how asinine it is, I don't have high hopes for the quality of the puzzles anyway.
I'm not quite sure what it is. When I first started playing the game, I was really excited to see them switch to high fidelity 2D visuals. (Although I wasn't too big on Shantae flashing her boobs at me whenever the game starts. In the past, I usually thought that people made too much of it when they complained about fan service but in this case, even I found it too sleazy. And then they have awkward "girl power!" stuff in there. which I find equally cringy...) But after playing it for a few hours, I just stopped losing interest. Maybe it's the pretty bland level design, maybe the fact that you can't place map markers to e.g. remind you where cave entrances were, maybe it's the unnecessarily lengthy backtracking and searching around. Yes, that's a thing with Metroidvanias but it heavily depends on how the world is designed whether that's enjoyable or not. And the more I think about it, the more it seems to me like WayForward is may simply be better at designing stage-based games than full-blown Metroidvania worlds. But you know - characters look good, the concept of card collection is fun and so I'll probably get back to it eventually. It's just not what I imagined when I immediately bought the game upon seeing that it got released. And I'm currently VERY Metroidvania-starved...
