Hero's Spirit

I wanted to wait until I finished this game to really give it a review, but I've known that this was going to be an extremely positive review since around the ~5 hour mark. This is an exceptional game. Every single time I thought it was about to end, there was another layer to the rabbit hole. Hell, even now, I'm not even [i]done[/i] done with it, I've only finished all the achievements. There's still a whole game mode I haven't gotten very far in, and another I've "finished" without 100% completing. There are so many brilliant things about this game, but I feel like I can't tell you them without spoiling some aspect of the experience. I'll just say that it features both an extremely original final boss and an extremely original NG+ system. This game took over my brain in a way that's pretty rare, and I've never quite seen a game exploit my obsession with poking around every single corner of a game world quite this well. If you enjoy speedrunning as well, this game is a total dream. You [i]will[/i] feel like Neo in The Matrix on your third playthrough and beyond as you bob and weave through illusory walls that let you reach distant places in a fraction of the time it took on your…

secrets are cool and all but only when you have gameplay to back it up (it does not)

[i]nodding sagely[/i] ah, I see, it's an askmehowiknowlike

good game

I absolutely love the exploration and collecting in this game—it scratches a deeply primal completionist itch. While the core loop seems incredibly simple at first (get more swords, defeat monsters, explore further), it quickly opens up to reveal surprising depth in both its mechanics and lore. I'm 67 hours in and still haven't seen everything. That said, it’s definitely a niche title. If the trailers don't grab you, or if the idea of scouring every single nook and cranny to hunt down hundreds of collectibles sounds tedious, this might not be your cup of tea. But if that's your jam? You'll love it.

This is a thumbs-up with a caveat that I think you have to really like what you see to get the most out of the game. I've just finished 100%ing my first save file of the game (at about 10 hours in), and it's clear that this is going to be one of those kind of iceberg-style games that has a lot more to it than it seems. However I think the game is sort of sharply divided between the gameplay-elements (essentially a sokoban-lite, with little to no puzzles compared to your average sokoban games) and the meta-puzzle/investigation elements where they rarely if ever mix. If you played Tunic into the later game, I think you get the idea. The game also has a tendency to overuse illusionary walls to hide items or paths as a way to compensate, but the end result makes some of the attempts to fully explore the game tedious as you smash your face up against an entire section of a mountain to find the one invisible path to the item you're missing. That said, despite those two elements not quite mixing together everything else is very well done. The game looks and sounds great, though there can be the occasional sprite readability issue with red enemies on red tiles. Overall I think if you're…