Noita just feels, sounds and looks great, which makes it a blast to play.
Controls and responsive and wand customisation gives heaps of freedom in your playstyle. You explore, fight and plan at your own pace.
Ambience, explosions, spells and enemies all have sounds that fit and sound great.
Given my preference for the pixel art style I'm a little biased, but they executed it really well. Animations are fluid and clear (You're not often confused at what a thing is doing, unless lots of stuff is happening at once). Art style is also great, and there are a lot of really creative enemy and environments to discover.
It makes for a really addicting roguelike that keeps you playing for hours...
Noita is a great sandbox, in the literal sense of the word, but it's a poor game that lives off of its flashiness hiding the major flaws.
On a positive note, the sandbox simulation of materials, fluids and reactions is great. It's obvious they tried to one-up those "sand games" from a decade or two ago we all loved to mess around it, and I would say that they've largely succeeded. That's the only truly good thing about the game though.
Noita is a 'roguelite', and for once, one that isn't marred by a tacked on and grindy meta-progression aspect. But, beyond the very, very basic core design ideas, Noita doesn't really try to be a good roguelite. And that's where things start to fall apart.
Roguelikes and roguelites are built entirely on progression, and progression is the weakest point of Noita. Why? There's two big reasons. For starters, the design of a lot of spells, perks, potions, etc., is absolute trash. Many spells are almost completely useless or simply inferior to others, they're too gimmicky or serve no purpose but to compliment a very specific set of other spells, many are just modifiers of varying degrees of utility (read; almost none for 90% of them), and overall the balance is almost non-existent. Perks suffer a similar fate, with many being extremely situational, or 'wacky' largely for the sake of it, and some being significantly stronger or more useful than the rest. Potions are arguably 'better', in the sense that they have such marginal impact on most scenarios that it matters a lot less that most of them are pointless and gimmicky.
"Alright," you might be thinking to yourself, "that's no problem if they space out the actually useful stuff throughout the run, right?". Well, that's where the second major flaw comes in. RNG. The randomness in this game is damned bad. You might get the spells you need to tear ass right from the get go, or be using the starter wand an hour in.
There's a lot more to say about it, but GOG's word limit is tiny, sadly.
Looks like the game appeared after authors created this physics sandbox. Tech part of game is much better that its... you know, game part. Maybe it's just me, but I don't understand why it has so high ratings. I love such games as Enter the Gungeon, Dead Cells, Magica. But I don't get this game at all. There is no game in this game. You don't become stronger between your runs. There is no any sort of progress. Short runs (1-10 mins) where the best tactic is to avoid any confrontation and fly directrly to level exit. There is no any point in fights. You are too weak for fights.
I have bought it after one watched review on youtube. It would be better if I watched letsplay instead. And that is my advice - watch gameplay on youtube first. It may be not as fun as you think. 2 stars only for technical part. Looks like unfinished experiment. Idea without proper gameplay. There is no any point in this physics for current gameplay.
The game is so difficult from the start that no real progress s can be made for a new player. The computer is 100% accurate, whereas for a human, trying to hit the enemy is like trying to shoot a fly with a handgun.
Great idea, badly implemented.
This game is great! I feel like a child in a sandbox. You can do so many things and there is always something new in each run.
The only issue I ran into so far is that one some very impactful spells (or rather a combination of those) my relatively good computer drops fps to 15-20 :)
