Buying this game will get you both the original version and the Rekindled Edition.
一个令人叹为观止的美丽世界以及它背后的秘密等着你去揭开。随意附身于任何一个你遇到的动物，以从未有过的全新视角在失落余烬的世界中展开冒险。
以狼为主角，与可靠的伴侣一起揭开一个关于忠诚、绝望和背叛而导致世界分崩离析的故事。
你的精神伴侣-曾经是一个古老文明的一部分-现在引导你穿越一个由大自然重新创造的世界。在旅途中，你会发现你过去生活的记忆散落在这片土地上，这将有助于你理解曾经发生在你和你的同伴身上的事情。...
In short: 9 out of 10
Pros: Beautiful graphics, ability to posses different animals, good-written story, fine soundtrack
Cons: Glitches, not great optimization for PC (mine is ultrabook with intel hd), at chapters 1-3 (out of 7) it's hard to find where to go.
So: if you love animals and walking simulators — then grab it right now!
Maaayyybe with some discount (fully worth price of pre-order — 20$, but not worth full 30$ in current state).
Overall I enjoyed this game :)
In breif: I was tempted to stop playing due the the technical problems with the game, but kept going for the story. In the end, I do not feel the story is good enough to make up for the technical issues.
In Detail:
The story is okay, but not stellar. I felt it was difficult to get into the story for the first half of the game. However, I was more drawn in the latter half. All the same, I did not feel a strong emotional response to the story as I have for games like the First Tree or Gris. I did not feel satisfied with the end of the story once I finished the game, but I won't spoil what happens.
The gameplay was pretty irritating, with the animals getting stuck in places more than I would have liked, necessitating some resets. Once I clipped through the ground in a spot and ended up falling and dying repeatedly. It's often difficult to know where you are going and invisible walls often block your way. If you fall from a ledge you will reset back to where you fell, even if the fall is not very far. The result is that it is difficult to know where you can and cannot go.
Visually, the game did not look polished. For example, animals would sometimes appear to float a little above the ground. The water splashes looked like a bunch of little fuzzy particles. The camera would also clip through objects frequently.
I am not one for walking simulators usually, but I love myself a short linear game if it has a nice story, and I love the feeling of flow that games like, for example, Flower can give the player.
This one indeed has very discrete portions that flow smoothly, but they are:
1. Boring as hell, despite the diversity of environments
2. Continuously broken by the mechanic of soul shifting that requires you to pass from a fast-moving wolf to a falling bird or a terribly slow mole or another mammal.
The story is also incredibly cliché, and I would like to tell the developers that you cannot build up to a character-based plot twist when there are only 3 characters interacting in the blandest of ways and also that world-building should happen before using the world feature as a plot point.
If I were to guess, I would say the devs stopped caring midway and "had" to develop the rest of the game because of the pledges on Kickstarter.
Yeah, you can use keyboard and mouse, but I hope you like the space bar. You will need to tap the space bar to flap the wings of the duck. EVERY TIME. Apparently, ducks can only fly up to 4 feet off the ground. To get any higher you will need to find a higher perch and take off, and you will need to tap the space bar to MAINTAIN altitude. Batman moves better than a duck, even without the grapple boost. And there is a hummingbird that actually flies well, and does not need you to tap space bar to maintian altitude.
And the collectables... There are 77 unique artifacts. Neat! 5 legendary animals. Sign me up! And 4 or 5 types of mushroom. 20+ each type. Not so neat.
And the walls. They like to wall off areas so you cannot climb some areas as a wolf. But no walls to prevent you from falling to your doom. Yeah, that cliff you fell off that you couldn't see since your view was obsured by those bushes you were in.
It is a pretty game but needed more QA.
The story is mediocre, just some well known motives and cliches cobbled together.
Every action on the player's side is basically pointless. You just walk along the most obvious path and press additional buttons when the game tells you to. There are hundreds of collectables, but their descriptions are barely interesting and finding them does not lead you to cool places. So collecting them is just busywork. In the few situations where it is not obvious what to do, the solution is to find the invisible hole in the invisible walls that are everywhere around you.
These walls also prevent you from enjoying the graphics of the game most of the time. You cannot go where you want and the inclusion of Nvidia Ansel is useless as the invisible walls prevent you from significantly changing the perspective. Additionally, the viewing-distance is often disappointing and there is a lot of stuff only popping up when you are already very close.
The developers have clearly worked hard on this game and I do not regret spending money on it. I just wish that they come up with some original story ideas for their next game or omit the story and focus on a more open world where proper exploring is possible.
In summary, this game is boring, unless you enjoy pressing down the "w" key for a few hours, interrupted by fragments of an uninspired story.
