Bramble: The Mountain King Review (raw maw)
Bimblo: The Scrimblo King
YES! YES, YESS!!! A fixed camera angle! Wow. I'm really been missing such a thing in modern games for quite awhile. I'm so fucken tired of solely over-the-shoulder 3rd person player-controlled cameras or just another cramped first-person camera.
I'm so desperate for another fixed-camera game. And this game has quenched my thirst for the time being until I begin to get desperate & claw at my neck until I begin to spray blood again.
I love fixed-camera games.
Also, the gameplay alone is so good.
Much like games like Celeste , your movement is pretty basic yet snappy. The gameplay instead more-so being applied to how your character, Olle, interacts with the world through its unique, ever-changing ways to constantly have you enthralled in the game's magnificent gameplay.
You never know what's next, what next to expect. Every area feels completely different & individualized by their personalized mechanics or themes. One area will NEVER feel the same as the previous or upcoming one.
This why short games are so unbelievably good, as they allow to cramp all its good stuff within a 4/5 hour long package, keeping the player constantly engaged and excited to experience the next part, instead of spreading the excitement out so thin by same-y experiences.
It's like a huge pie but most of it is crust with only a few, yet delicious strawberries placed about. Absolutely lessening its impressive size, making the much smaller yet more delicious pie to be so much more noteworthy compared to its counterparts.
Anyway, AAA open-world lite-RPG rant is now over.
Moving on... I think one of my favourite moments in the entire game actually pretty late into it.
I'll have to spoil a bit, but I think it's a worthy exception of such.
But essentially there's a part where you wander into an abandoned house from the lowest floor. You see a staircase & a huge empty room only blocked by a wooden box that you can crawl over & through.
Okay, cool.
But walking up the stairs leads you into a nearly pitch-black attic with stray holes spread all-over it. And in the attic it's home to many enemies. You can either lure these enemies to accidentally fall into the holes by luring them or try to avoid them when crossing this area.
It'll be hard to get by them because the area is so claustrophobic & cramped with enemies.
But if you instead lure the enemies down into the holes... and you thereafter fall into said holes too while attempting carefully walk over them by balancing on small wooden logs... then you'll now be stuck in the huge empty room from the floor below, desperately trying to muster through a horde of enemies to the exit blocked by the wooden box that only you can climb through.
FAN-FUCKEN-TASTIC!
That's such a perfect encapsulation of risk/reward game-play, where you try to balance enemies both above & below as to minimize risk in both areas as much as possible to your personalized will, that will possibly have consequences if you misjudge yourself.
Holy shit that's just amazing. I sat there with gauged eyes & hanging jaw the second I left that area. WOW.
Bosses
The bosses in this game are so good that they deserve their entire dedicated section.
Each boss-fight plays out entirely differently, helping establish their individual characterization through their fighting style & methods; and also keep the game-play new & ever-changing.
I don't want to spoil any bosses, as they each are so impressively unique & shocking that by merely describing them will ultimately desaturate & degrade first-time impressions from this that will hopefully be reading this.
But straight-up, they're all so good...
I adored every one of them.
My ONLY complaint with literally any single of them would by the "skull" boss (not spoiling anything beyond that) & how I felt it could've benefited from adding an additional & new phase; and thereafter shorten their first phase, as it is a little too same-y after awhile & underwhelming considering their wonderful visual character design.
Still though, the rest of the boss-fights vastly make it up for this sole underwhelming boss-fight.
I don't even feel comfortable describing it as "underwhelming" as it's still a pretty alright boss-fight, it's just that stacked up against all the other boss-fights it sorely lacks behind, sadly.
But with fights like the Nøkken one & the last boss-fight... yeah there's just no way all of them can stack up equally. That's to be expected.
I also just adore how a lot of the boss-fights based on actual folklore & fairy-tales have actual in-game collectible fairy-tale books explaining their history in great & honest detail.
All detailed with gorgeous artwork & great voice-acting.
It's these small things that just greatly enhance so much of the game, especially to those who may not know all these creatures & beasts since they possibly don't interact with so much mythology/folklore/fairy-tales as peeps like I do.
Conclusion
It's really hard to talk about this game & review it.
Because almost anything I have to say would end up being constituted as spoilers, since so much of the game greatly just benefits and relies on the act of surprise. That's why I have had such a hard time trying to actually write a review for this game.
Still, I hope I did it quite fairly for this gorgeous & wonderful experience.
Utmost certainly one of the greatest games I have played this year.
It deserves every bit of praise that it has received so far + more.
Please check this game out if you haven't already!