izigame.me

Since the game started off being such a piece of garbage I'll return the favor and talk about what I hate before what I like.
7.5 out of 10.. but I really want to drive home a point by not 👍🏻 recommending. I want to make sure you're not like me that gets suckered in by the "oh my God it's good now, so much better than release" types of reviews and comments and promises of an "open world"
Worst character creator OF ALL TIME
Worst prologue OF ALL TIME
Hideous characters, ugly baggy cosmetics
God awful voice acting
Every quest is a SIDE QUEST! Even the MAIN STORY QUESTS!! I'm not joking litterally everything you do is a get 3 of this thing or 5 of that thing or kill 3 of this thing type quest..
Clunky button mashing combat, bad lock on.. you do get these indicator arrows for enemies about to push your shit in from off screen/directions you aren't facing but it's very hard to see or get used to them.. and in the heat of a fight you may just want to pummel away at your main enemy and ignore the rest.
(ZERO SPOILERS) The Story is one of those stories that makes you pull out your phone every cutscene.. you won't know who anyone is, why they are doing what they are doing nor will you care. You'll absorb what everything is via osmosis if you play the game to completion..but really what you get is some rather bland animatic cutscenes.. everything else "story" is just over the shoulder static shots of the person you are communicating with while they spew dialog while you press x to skip.. it's bad. You can't even rotate your camera while spew and spew and spew dialog.. The trailers give the impression there are animated cinematic cut-scenes, but there are none.. all those shots they use in the trailer were custom cinematic shots they made of in game events that they made specifically for the trailer. The game has the cinematic experience of an MMO from 20 years ago.. which is to say, it doesn't exist
Can be very hard to get attacks to connect, especially with the stupid mid air combat where your melee attacks keep you in the air and the lock on is clunky and messy. Air enemies can be very frustrating especially if they stay high out of reach and rain down fire at you. Maybe it's a skill issue but it felt like I was constantly missing while using abilities. Felt like I was chasing down enemies a lot and they would constantly hop away then pounce me.. everything is so chaotic at times that I felt like I would never GIT GUD and I have to cheese the game by being more powerful than what I'm fighting
Camera can be crap, especially when fighting the bigger enemies it can be so hard to tell what the hell's going on.. hard to tell why you aren't hoping when pressing jump or why you got laid out or if your attack connected.. and you'd think with the verticality of the levels you'd be able to pitch your camera up higher but NO!!!.. you can only look up about 50° 🤬
Constantly constantly constantly destroys pacing with pausing and popups in the beginning.. I swear you are getting a game pause with a popup every minute or two for the first few hours of the game.. explaining shard fuses or double dashes.. they explain everything this way.. even had the press a to jump one.. it's relentless, tedious.. you'll be screaming at your screen to STOP the 50th time it happens yet it keeps happening. You'll want to uninstall by the time you get your 10th essence stone or an idol or whatever other crap they throw at you.. there's like 150 unlockables or something and every single one has its own tutorial popup.. this isn't even including the dialog scenes that stop the game and which occur just as frequently.. what the hell! I just want to play the game!! Eventually it relents about halfway through the 1st open world... but the bad impression you get in the beginning lingers
Sand surfing is stupid.. it's just double sprint.. it's effectively your horse though you barely go faster than your already very hyper normal sprint. it has absolutely zero reason for existing besides marketing trailers. You'd think there'd be racing or enemies surfing alongside you or cool jumps and tricks or specific sand surfing attacks or just any reasons at all to use it besides just going a little faster.. but nope!

You can do a lot better than this if you want an open world action adventure game. Normally I'm very against critics on games like Star wars outlaws or forspoken.. seeing tons of value where others see rubbish... This game though.. it may be because the constant pausing and horrible prologue but I got so pissed off and never stopped being pissed off the whole playthough
The good?
The combat is fun despite being a mess.. I enjoy taking out body parts too.. like if that damn scorpion tail is bothersome go for it first.. that claw giving you a hard time go for it first, I did enjoy that. Enemies animated nicely and effects are pretty good even if it can get hard to see up close
Enemy variety is pretty decent, you'll see a few new types every level that mix it up a bit.
Co-op is nice, though it could be dead by the time you buy this.
the world can be quite beautiful at moments so there's decent fun in exploring and sight seeing... Very impressive vistas and open exploration throughout the 4 bite sized open worlds that each feel like one of the regions in a game like Elden Ring. The 4 worlds are all connected by a door in the level that triggers a loading screen.
It's a Metroidvania (lite) and frankly most good games should be Metroidvanias IMO.. so I appreciate that.. if every game was like control or resident evil or dark souls where you got a well designed and focused world with gates that require you to get a key then I would be very happy. I want to walk past that mysterious door with the golden lock 2 or 3 times before I have the golden key to open it. It's something that I enjoy a lot.
I'm a bit negative here but I want you to know what you're getting into. It's a good time but a very flawed good time with a start so bad you'll want to uninstall in the first few hours.. but stick with it and you'll get your moneys worth if you buy it on sale.

I paid 20$ and that was fair and reasonable for what I got