Full Quiet

Hidden gem alert! You are currently reading a hidden gem review. Proceed accordingly. Despite some of its flaws, I really enjoyed this retro-beautiful metroidvania. Graphically, it's pure joy to look at for anyone who enjoys NES pixel art. Has many beautiful, varied areas, and each one of those areas even has different colour palettes depending on the in-game time of day. Gorgeous. The music is good too. Very impressive presentation. Gameplay-wise, it's a bit of an acquired taste. The combat feels engaging at first, but as you revisit each screen for the nth time, it will start to feel more and more repetitive. With rare exceptions, enemies respawn every time a screen is loaded, which means even doing something like reading a note will repopulate the screen. Add the game's "be at camp before 2 AM or it's game over" gimmick, and you'll be fighting the same guys much more often than in other metroidvanias. And once you know which buttons to press, combat devolves into button mashing. So the combat isn't the game's strong suit. But that's okay! There's rarely a reason to fight anyway. Some of them do drop crafting resources, but other than collecting fungal snakes to craft medkits, …

I think the game world will probably entice fans of a certain genre of sci-fi television and action movies, especially around the 1990's and 80's. Full Quiet is a thoroughly retro experience (even save file corruption, taking me back to the unreliable save battery in our Zelda II cartridge.) Knowledge gained helps speed things back if you lose your progress and having a notebook on hand is probably sane if not essential. Fans of the NES era of exploration (Zelda II, Metroid, Faxanadu, Star Tropics, Xexyz all come to mind), quality platforming (Bionic Commando) and even "point-and-click" adventures will be pleased, while the inclusion of modern game trends like the dodge roll make movement and combat feel very tight. There are some truly twisted mazes to be had, which encourage the player to make their own maps in addition to the ones provided in the game and manual. The puzzle solving is relatively accessible when you learn the format for how the puzzles unlock in each zone. Fans of La Mulana, and other secret rich games with their feet planted in the fertile past will surely enjoy, possible even wishing for the puzzles to be more esoteric. I'd rate Full Quiet around a 7.6/10 as …

I might change my review later, but I'm giving a pre-emptive angry negative review specifically for the blue walls of dung in this game that drag the game down into the abyss. I could tolerate literally everything else if it wasn't for these things. They ruin the game. I assume you get some way to defeat them faster later, but I've been forced to go through so many of these things already and every single time my arm gets tired from spamming the attack button. It feels like the game is artificially gatekeeping me to try and dissuade me away from certain paths. If you don't want me to go that way, then make the walls invincible. Jesus christ. Yet it feels like I am going the way I should and I'm just being forced through these things. This is pathetic as hell game design. I'll still keep going for a bit and see if it gets any better, but I'm ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sick and tired of losing all my progress due to 2am sneaking up on me while I'm spamming the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ attack button. Also no i-frames after taking damage makes it so you can get chain stunned into ♥♥♥♥. Also hate the absolute ♥♥♥♥ out of the tentacle ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Edit: Just encountered some scaly swamp creature. I was able to beat the first…

♥♥♥♥ this game. It seems cool at first and then it blasts the difficulty into the stratosphere, especially with this section where you have to shoot these pillars that constantly regenerate while they spit out these snakes that keep dropping bombs as soon as they're above you. They're also moving at random speeds, so it's a crapshoot if you can figure out a good pattern. Once you defeat BOTH of those on the screen, the following screens are more versions of it. As far as I can tell, I have no other way around it. That section may be the single least amount of fun I've had playing a game in YEARS. Then it goes ahead and just deletes all three of my saves for no reason. Fantastic! Love it! It's entirely possible I'm missing some fundamental thing with that pillar section but I'm not going to get back to it to find out.

Cool game until it becomes a mashfest

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